Dutch Kills bulkhead erosion gets noticed by electeds

 

 Queens Chronicle 

Over the past few months, observers have noticed large portions of a structural wall along the shoreline of the Dutch Kills tributary on 29th Street have collapsed into the waterway.

As the shoreline has crumbled, it has dumped debris into the water and threatens to further cave in and affect the stability of the roadway next to it.

Last week, the Newton Creek Alliance and elected officials sent a letter to the city Department of Transportation, state Department of Environmental Conservation and Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the plot of land, urging them to address the unsafe conditions that the deterioration poses to the road and surrounding areas.

“In addition to our now greatly elevated concerns over public safety regarding a potential street-collapse, there is also concern about liability, and the process for rebuilding this shoreline,” reads a section of the letter, signed by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn), Councilmember Julie Won (D-Sunnyside), state Sen. Mike Gianaris (D-Astoria) and Assemblymember Cathy Nolan (D-Long Island City).

In response to the dangers posed by erosion, the alliance is asking the city and state go beyond merely mitigating a public threat to creating an environmental benefit. The letter calls on the agencies to rebuild the shoreline in a way that would restore the ecosystem, add public access to the water and remove the two abandoned barges from the tributary.

Though the agencies could not be reached for a response prior to initial publication, the MTA and the DOT said in subsequent statements that they are on board.

MTA Spokesperson Eugene Resnick:

“The MTA appreciates the concerns of the Newtown Creek Alliance and is collaborating with State and City partners to determine the best course of action for protecting the integrity of the bulkhead,” said MTA Spokesman Eugene Resnick.

A DOT spokesman also said his agency is ready.

"The DOT will work in collaboration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Department of Environmental Conservation to develop strategies to limit overweight vehicular access to the street, as well as the area immediately adjacent to the bulkhead," he said.

The most recent cave-in, which took place at the end of January, the alliance says, is actually the third on the shoreline in recent years. Each has ended up dumping tires, concrete blocks and fill into the creek.

Looking for COVID in all the crappiest places

 

THE CITY 

 As the COVID-19 positivity rate rises across the five boroughs, city scientists are working to get the lowdown on the virus, straight from New Yorkers’ poop.

Unlike many municipalities, New York is testing wastewater for the coronavirus in an effort to trace — and stop — the spread. But experts on sewage monitoring say the city could be using the technology to do more to contain the virus.

Microbiologists working for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection test samples taken twice a week by DEP staff at 14 wastewater treatment plants.

At the plant at Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the largest facility by volume in the city, sampling means walking down four stories to large concrete basins that open to a river of raw sewage.

From there, a worker lowers two empty bottles — held securely inside a contraption made of cut PVC pipe, heavy bolts and a long rope — into the smelly stream, waits for them to fill and hoists them back out to deliver to the DEP’s on-site laboratory.

Still, some experts emphasize those samples are mere drops taken from a waste ocean. Each of New York’s treatment plants treat sewage from more people than the entirety of many smaller cities.

DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza noted the Newtown Creek plant collects the waste of about a million New Yorkers. Even the city’s smallest facilities handle “a couple hundred thousand,” he told THE CITY.

 “The data we collect isn’t that granular. We can’t say it’s a specific neighborhood or a specific block where things may be happening,” he said. “Right now, we’re using the data, sharing it with the health department to say, ‘Hey, there may be something there.’”

At that point, the DEP data hopefully points the health experts in the right direction to then use results from individual COVID tests to further monitor the virus, he added.

Amazon is looking at Maspeth site for next "fullfillment center"

QNS

Nothing happens along Newtown Creek without Mitch Waxman knowing about it first, so he was not surprised to see Crain’s report that Amazon was eyeing an industrial property in Maspeth for a new distribution facility.

As the historian for the Newtown Creek Alliance, Waxman walks along the Queens and Brooklyn shores and updates his Newtown Pentacle website with the daily chronicles of western Queens as it transforms under over-development.

He posted photos of his discovery on his website July 24, nearly a week before the Crain’s report.

“I was on my way to a meeting when I came across heavy demolition going on over on Grand Avenue,” Waxman said. “I noticed the old Cascades Containerboard factory was being torn down by crews from Breeze Demolition so I started asking questions.”

Waxman learned that 54-15, 55-15 and 56-19 Grand Ave. were recently acquired by a California-based company called LBA Realty for $72 million. The deal involves a partnership with another realty company, RXR, to build a four-story warehouse large that would be ideal for the “last mile” of logistics of an e-commerce company.

“Yeah it’s only four stories tall but that thing is going to be massive, massive, massive,” Waxman said. “It’s going to be large enough that heavy trucks will be able to drive around inside the facility, so that the first floor would have to be at least 30 feet tall. As an environmentalist with the Newtown Creek Alliance this set off all kinds of alarm bells with me. This will be a gigantic magnification of truck traffic in residential areas that are already very sensitive to heavy truck traffic.”

QNS reached out to Amazon and is awaiting a response. Amazon scuttled its plan to build to build an HQ2 campus in Long Island City, and create more than 25,000 high-paying jobs, in February.

Now the e-commerce giant is reportedly scouting a million square feet of space in Brooklyn’s Industry City for a new storage and shipping facility in Sunset Park. Amazon may be looking to lease the entire Lord & Taylor building in Midtown, according to Crain’s. 

Waxman, an Astoria resident, is concerned about what is happening in Maspeth.

 This sort of footprint tells me we’re looking at well over a hundred heavy trucks a day as well as additional delivery vans,” Waxman said. “It’s like you’re throwing the whole Green New Deal right out the window with that type of truck traffic clogging Maspeth’s residential streets as they make their way from the Long Island Expressway. This part of industrial Maspeth has a rail spur and it runs right along the back of this property with a direct connection to JFK International Airport. Instead, we just keep building more and more infrastructure for trucks.”