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Mayor Blows Off Resiliency Meeting With Pols For Walk In The Park
Mayor Bill de Blasio was spotted walking through East River Park.
By Sydney Pereira, Patch, Sept. 28, 2019
East Side Flood Protection Plan Gets Go-Ahead From City Planning
By Sydney Pereira, Patch Staff, Sept. 23, 2019
“…A hotly contested plan to bury and rebuild East River Park to protect the area from flooding was approved by the City Planning Commission.”
“Hundreds of people protested the project on Saturday, holding a mock funeral for East River Park as summer comes to a close, the New York Post reported.”
At the March and Rally to Save East River Park
EV Grieve, Monday, Sept. 23, 2019
Great coverage of our march and rally Saturday in EV Grieve. Photos by the talented Stacie Joy.
Protesters hold mock funeral to urge city to save East River Park
by Melissa Klein and Olivia Bensimon, NY Post, Sept. 21, 2019
NY1 coverage of East River Park ACTION march and rally
East Village Marches in Protest of Plan to Bury East River Park
Miliana Bocher, Contributing Writer, Washington Square News, NYU’s Independent Student Newspaper, September 23, 2019
“Living on the Lower East Side, where there’s more and more traffic, we’re getting more and more kids with asthma,” Rachel Bernstein said. “We need trees more than ever to help us breathe.”
The fight to save East River Park
video by Sophia Lebowitz with The Indypendent, Sept. 17, 2019
The wonderful character and characters in our park and the reasons East River Park ACTION opposes the terrible plan to demolish it.
Fighting For Their Park, LES Residents Challenge the City’s Climate Change Plans
by John Tarleton, Aug. 9, 2019, The Indypendent
“They’re asking us to sacrifice something that’s essential for our well-being and for a generation of children,” said…April Merlin, a mother of two who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and comes to the park regularly to jog and ride her bike.
East Side Resiliency Plan Faces Key Hearing
By Jose Cardoso, City Limits, July 16, 2019
It was an accomplishment when the community of the Lower East Side and the city agreed on a plan for resiliency. The effort took around four years.
In the original plan, the city was going to build multiple berms, floodgates or a small shelf of land next to the FDR Drive. The purpose of this would have left the East River Park as a sponge when a major storm hits. Then park would’ve taken the hit instead of the nearby homes.
On September 28, 2018, however, the de Blasio administration issued a press release announcing it was pursuing a new plan for some of the East Side Resiliency Project. Some of the community plan survive intact. But about 70 percent of it changed.
…The city’s main reason for making the change was because they wanted to accelerate the construction process and have less traffic disruption.
Panic and protest over East River Park-closure plan
The Villager, June 13, 2019 by Gabe Herman
An article about the 70 people who testified passionately, almost all of them against the flood plan, to Community Board 3 Manhattan. Here are excerpts quoting two East River Park ACTIONEERS:
“… Ted Pender, vice president of Friends of Corlears Hook Park, said he was concerned about air quality from all of the soil that would be dumped in the area. He said people would breathe in particles, and that the area already had high asthma rates….”
“We deserve a safer plan, and don’t need another World Trade [Center] respiratory event in our city,” he said to more cheers.
“A local woman [Pat Arnow] echoed concerns about pollution from the project and about the area already having high asthma rates…”
“Don’t cut the heart out of our neighborhood,” she said, adding, “Let’s see you try this crap in a rich neighborhood.”
Unfortunately, the Board was not swayed. They voted overwhelmingly to accept the plan. They did request revisions that would make the plan less horrible, but the city has been unresponsive to community, and there’s no reason to think they’ll accommodate us in any way.
East Village and Lower East Side neighbors called for an independent review of the city’s east side resiliency plan.
by Sydney Pereira, Patch, June 12, 2019
“Closing up the parks is one of the stupidest ideas they’ve had in a long time,” said Dave Brasuell, who’s lived in New York City Housing Authority’s Jacob Riis Houses for 65 years. “It’s a good idea to fix the park, but they should do it in phases.”
BIG U (East Side Coastal Resiliency) UPDATE FOR JUNE 2019
Summing up, with links, where the project is now.
“To Save East River Park, the City Intends to Bury It”
by Joseph Hanania, January 18, 2019
A cogent article in the New York Times about the new plan and our community’s problems with it:
Other earlier news stories about East River Park are listed in the East River Alliance In The News page: East River Alliance News
Good work with the neighborhood and city leadership is being done by the East River Alliance.