Sunday, July 11, 2010

No money for seawall

From the Times Ledger:

...money remains an issue. Joshua Laird, assistant Parks Department commissioner for Planning and Parklands, said the city agency’s annual budget is generally allocated for specific projects and there is none allocated for this one.

“It’s a source of really great frustration for us, for the commissioner [Adrian Benepe],” Laird said. “We recognize it as a real hardship for the community.”

According to the letter, Maloney secured $555,000 and Nolan obtained $350,000 in fiscal years 2005 and 2006 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a survey and repair the seawall. But the Parks Department rejected the funds.

Laird said this was done because the agency believed the survey was unnecessary.

“We don’t need a feasibility study,” he said. “We know it needs to be done, we need construction money.”

He added that working with the corps could have meant the project would take five years to complete, so the plan was rejected by the department at the time. But money or occasions to complete the project through other means have not surfaced in the same amount of time.

The letter said the seawall should be repaired through mitigation obligations by either or both the city Department of Transportation or city Sanitation Department.

Laird said that in mitigation obligations, an organization that does a city project involving construction on a body of water needs to mitigate the harmful impact by additional construction.


If it was in Hunters Point, it would have been fixed 5 years ago...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seawalls are bound to crack and break. Has the Parks Department considered riprap, wetlands, or a beach for a shoreline? These are more natural and less intrusive than seawalls.

If Gantry Plaza can have a naturalistic shoreline, why not Queensbridge?

Anonymous said...

If Gantry Plaza can have a naturalistic shoreline, why not Queensbridge?

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....hippie.....

Anonymous said...

Penny Lee of City Planning annouced that $21 million dollars is being spent for Jackson Avenue between Queens Plaza and 21st Street - so developers can have a nice street. As a matter of fact, all the politicans and business groups are singing her praises over this.

Hell, there is even money for street art!

This while hospitals are closing and the kids in Queensbridge can fall into the East River.

Maybe she or the politicans would like to stop by Queensbridge and explain this.

(fat chance - the PEOPLE in western Queens are invisible in their world)

Anonymous said...

Penny Lee of City Planning annouced that $21 million dollars is being spent for Jackson Avenue between Queens Plaza and 21st Street - so developers can have a nice street. As a matter of fact, all the politicans and business groups are singing her praises over this.

Hell, there is even money for street art!

This while hospitals are closing and the kids in Queensbridge can fall into the East River.

Maybe she or the politicans would like to stop by Queensbridge and explain this.

(fat chance - the PEOPLE in western Queens are invisible in their world)

Anonymous said...

If this seawall had been on the Manhattan side, it would have been repaired using the finest Carerra marbel, excavated from the remains of the pyramid of Toot-un-common himself, and lovingly placed by hand using platinum-plated tweezers!