How to Save East River Park, Provide Transportation Equity, Clean Our Air and Address the Climate Crisis.
by Howard Brandstein
This is the testimony to Community Board #3 Manhattan on ULURP (Universal Land Use Resiliency Plan) to facilitate the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, June 25, 2019.
VOTE NO
1. TIME TO ACT ON THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM
The coastal resiliency problem we are facing is precipitated by decades of decisions that did not address the core cause and problem. We should take this opportunity to act in a new direction that can address them. Over the past 10 years New York City has spent over $150 million to renovate the East River Park. The City now proposes to spend $1.5 billion to bulldoze the entire East River Park and raise the level of the coastline from Montgomery to 23rd Streets 8-10 feet to prevent flooding in Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods. A new park would be built on top of this dirt pile. The City’s plan, however, is wholly inadequate to deal with the environmental crisis confronting us as it utterly fails to address the root cause of the problem: why are sea levels rising? One need only observe the FDR Drive adjacent to the Park to witness the scope of the problem: thousands and thousands of cars polluting our environment 24/7 and wrecking our climate system with their relentless emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. According to the EPA the transportation sector is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions at 29 percent of the total. If nothing is done quickly to forestall and reverse this reality no amount of dirt can be piled high enough to protect our communities from flooding. The time to act is now lest we end up with a massive billion-dollar shrine to the automobile and fossil fuel industry.
2. FDR DRIVE MUST BE PART OF ANY RESILIENCY PLAN FOR OUR COMMUNITIES
Robert Moses designed the FDR Drive as an integral element in a new vision for New York. But this extravagant vision of a car city is a dead-end for our 21st century climate crisis. The FDR Drive provides six-lanes of highway for an endless stream of noisy gas guzzling cars which carry an average of only two occupants per car. This means that more than half of each vehicle is unoccupied. In the midst of a climate emergency why should we continue to enable this extravagance with six lanes of under-occupied polluting vehicles? At the same time the residents of New York City Housing Authority and other developments along the FDR Drive live in a transit desert with limited bus service and subways too distant for easy access. It is time to replace car lanes with dedicated bus lanes on the FDR Drive and put
the residents of our communities first by providing clean, quiet, non-polluting electric buses to speed riders downtown and uptown on the Drive. By substituting electric buses for cars we will be able to shrink the FDR Drive from six lanes to three lanes and provide the needed room to build a flood wall without interfering with Con Edison’s utility lines; one of the City’s primary objections to the earlier community resiliency plan.
3. SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY PLAN AND TAKE IT A STEP FURTHER
The community’s earlier plan calls for decking over the FDR Drive and expanding the East River Park. By shrinking the FDR Drive and introducing non-polluting electric buses this becomes even more feasible as the issue of ventilating noxious gases is eliminated. The construction of the flood wall also becomes feasible in or along the FDR Drive by shrinking the number of lanes from six to three. The City in arguing for its plan has also claimed that the current East River Park is unsuitable to act as a bioswale in the event of a flood as there is too much artificial turf on ball fields. Let’s then remove the artificial turf and restore the soil and grass. This will be a bonus for the insects, birds, and other wildlife that are under threat because of climate change. The additional cost in maintaining natural grass as opposed to artificial turf is more than offset by the savings in the community plan. Finally, it should be pointed out that the City’s plan requires an alienation of parkland request to the State of New York as the project requires State oversight. The City has failed to make this request.
4. LET’S FIGHT FOR A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR COMMUNITY BOARD #3!
A plan that fuses together resiliency, sustainability and transportation equity is the essence of a Green New Deal for Community Board #3. The community’s earlier plan together with the transportation and other elements described above can also be a model for many shoreline communities in New York City. Time is short. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) tells us we have about 10 years to make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or face dire consequences. We have the opportunity now to do something that will have a real impact on climate change and flood protection. It will not happen without us and without a new vision for New York in the 21st century. Now is the time to seize this opportunity to implement a real plan for survival. If we fail to act a degraded nature will implement its plan, and we are sure not to like it.
Despite overwhelming grassroots opposition, CB3 cast aside the community’s plan and voted to approve the City’s reckless scheme. Our fight is just beginning!
Howard Brandstein is executive director of Sixth Street Community Center.
Congratulations,Howard, on offering an ecological plan to protect your community. You are right in describing the Lower East Side as living in a “transit desert”! The city needs to replace the cars on the FDR Drive with electric buses. They need to figure out how to find parking space outside of Manhattan for a bus depot where people from outside of the city can park their cars and hop on to mass transit into the city. That is done on Long Island for commuters to the LIRR. There is no reason why it cannot be done in NYC.