Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Were We Swimming in Your Drinking Water?

No, we weren’t swimming in your drinking water, but these two are.

Our Town downtown
May 21, 2007



A trip back to the ‘burbs to pinpoint the body of water in which we used to trespass

You may have read that New York City is planning to raise your water rates starting in July. Since you probably don’t pay a “water bill” – for tenants, the water charge is generally built into the rent, and for apartment owners, it’s part of the maintenance fee –you may have filed it away in the someone-else’s-problem folder and gotten no further than the headline. That’s what I did.
But then I started thinking that given the subject of my column, perhaps I should understand why our water was getting more expensive to avoid the potential for embarrassment if it should happen to come up in casual conversation.
Turns out the rate hike will be going toward some multi-billion-dollar fix-ups to our water and wastewater infrastructure.
The third-largest item on the New York City Water Board’s agenda is a $1.6 billion filtration plant underneath Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. It will remove biological pathogens from the Croton Water System, which provides us with 10 percent of our water. City water has never been filtered before, but the reservoirs that feed the Croton Water System are located in Westchester and Putnam Counties, where building and population booms have apparently polluted the water to such an extent that it’s become necessary.
“Anybody can go up to Westchester and look around,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection. “There’s a lot of sprawling development.”
That’s where I’m from, and I didn’t need to drive an hour back home to know that he was right. I saw housing developments aplenty sprout up off of back roads and grow like teenage boys. When I was in fourth grade, the elementary school in my town reopened after decades of disuse to accommodate the rocketing kid population, and wing after temporary wing was tacked on until there was barely any playground left. My high school is hardly recognizable as the same place I graduated from in 2000; a huge, institutional-looking edifice ate the two-story brick building that once sufficed as Fox Lane High School.
But I did need to check on something. All this talk of reservoirs had gotten me daydreaming about a soft mucky bottom dotted with hidden sharp rocks that made you step gingerly; floating downriver beneath a canopy of fluorescent-green beech leaves; the claws of our chocolate lab, who would paddle after my brother and me and half drown us in a frenzied rescue attempt; the unpleasantness of putting socks back on wet feet.
That river we used to swim in, the one that fed a reservoir – was that part of the city’s water system? Was that what those No Trespassing signs were about? Had we grown up bathing in the water that then filled your bathtub? The idea pleased me, in a “we’re all connected” kind of way.
I called my dad, my brother – useless. This mystery called for a field trip to my hometown, beautiful but boring Bedford.
It had been awhile. In search of the entrance to the hiking trail that led to the river, I drove all the way to the next town on a winding dirt road, but a few gravelly U-turns later I was there. I parked and jogged the familiar two and a half miles to the river – passing an office retreat, three women with gardening hoes, a father and son, and finally a sign that said “DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT / PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNED BY CONNECTICUT-AMERICAN WATER CO.” – and dove in.
To pass the time as I dripped dry, I sat on a network of twisted roots and looked over the pamphlet I had picked up at the map shelter in the parking lot. It showed the Mianus River – the one I’d just swum in – flowing into S.J. Bargh Reservoir, which, according to the map legend, provides the drinking water for 130,000 residents of Rye, Rye Brook, Port Chester, and Greenwich.
You may be glad to hear that I was not sullying your water, but I was out of a column idea. Refreshed and utterly dejected, I wandered back to my car. How was I going to make this now pointless and time consuming (although admittedly pleasant) trip applicable to the city?
I did know that the nearby Cross River Reservoir was a feeder of the city system; I had looked it up the day before. And although I’ve never recreated in or on said reservoir, I’ve passed it many times and seen dozens of fishing boats on the shore. Maybe something was going on there, or if not, at least I could paddle around in a boat for awhile.
But all the boats were chained to trees to prevent against just such an outing. These were responsible boat owners: on the bench-seat of one upside-down aluminum rowboat was a bumper sticker reading, “I Fish & I Vote.”
There was no one to talk to, absolutely nothing to report. I got back in my car and gunned it New York-ward – inspiration sometimes hits when I’m moving fast – then screeched into a residential side street, grabbed my camera and backtracked on foot.
The swan couple that had caught my eye was elegant but camera-unfriendly: one would plunge its head underwater for fish just as the other’s snaking neck emerged. Despite my stealthy bushwhacking they floated away just as I approached. I waded after them, past broken tree trunks and through a screen of overhanging foliage, determined as a paparazzo after Lindsay Lohan to get a decent shot of the pair of snow white swans bobbing in the water that will course through your dishwasher.
It’s not breaking news, but it’s sort of pleasing in a “we’re all connected” kind of way.
rtucker@manhattanmedia.com


Posted by Tucker at 1:31 PM | | Comments

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the Rock"

Me, angry, waiting for the ferry in a line thousands-long.


Our Town downtown




May 14, 2007









How Staten Island became a virtual prison for tens of thousands of cyclists and sort of ruined the 5-borough bike tour

I laid my bike down and flopped onto an unoccupied rectangle of grass in swarming Fort Wadsworth Park in Staten Island. The park marked the end of the 42-mile bike tour, a massive affair that traversed all five boroughs and involved more than 30,000 riders, officially (and probably about 60,000 altogether. As I discovered last year, there is no need to register, or pay).
After having raced a friend across the Verrazano Bridge (“It’s not a race!” old men yelled after us. Oh, but it is. Get out of the left lane!), I was winded and happy to be done peddling.
I was not as proud of myself as the fortyish-year-old woman talking on her cell phone a few feet from where I was lying: “Oh my God I am [ital] so [end ital] proud of myself. I’m going to take the day off work tomorrow and get a massage!”
But I was content, and… suddenly… despite having wolfed down free energy bars and orange slices at every rest stop – very hungry.
When the other two riders in our group finally located us among thousands of bikers and dozens of unmarked tents, we began to wander. There was a pet food display, bike demonstrations, a first aid tent and things of that nature.
But we weren’t browsing. One obsessively punctual member of our contingent had gotten up at 5:45 a.m. that morning, and it was now past four in the afternoon. We were in search of two things and two things only: food and exit.
En route to the food tent, we came across a very long line of people pushing their bikes. I have poor estimating skills, but I would venture to guess that this line, which was five thick and wove out of the park gate and down a service road, contained something like a thousand cyclists.
They were not on the burger line, they were not hanging out. Some even had their helmets on. This seemed to be the line to [ital] exit [end ital] the park.
“Are you in line to leave?” I asked a woman in white sneakers, white helmet, and jean shorts, pushing a mountain bike. She bobbed her helmet. I scoffed silently. Tourists and families could wait in line to exit a public park. We, however, would not be penned. The thought made me antsy, despite the mild spring weather and a brain saturated in endorphins.
Suddenly, finding food was second on the to-do list, behind finding a way out.
We were pretty sure that the rules could be circumvented with a bit of ingenuity. Security so far that day had been limited to some police officers and volunteer “marshals” with bullhorns who coordinated traffic and occasionally told riders to slow down, and a few intimidating-looking men in suits who “guarded” the entrance to the Verrazano, but did nothing as hordes of un-registered riders rode by.
We carried our bikes overhead and wove our way toward the fence marking the park’s periphery. I placed my bike over the chest-high fence, then started to climb over. Two security guards appeared from behind a thicket of trees, shaking their heads.
“Wait a minute,” my friend said to one of the guards. “I recognize your face.”
Good call!, I thought. But she wasn’t playing the charm card; the two of them really used to work in the same building. A little impromptu reunion and lots of smiling occurred, but the goodwill didn’t advance our cause any.
“If we let you through, they’d just chase you down and arrest you on the other side.” I can’t remember if they actually mentioned the possibility we’d get shot or if I made that up afterward.
What we hadn’t realized was that Fort Wadsworth, which had been decommissioned in 1994, had again become an active military base. There were men in fatigues moving around on the other side of the fence, even a mounted guard. According to the National Parks website, the base is currently in use by the Coast Guard.
We gave up on that escape route and attempted to leave the way we had come in, via the Verrazano. We were stopped and yelled at by police officers.
We had reached the equivalent of a dead-end in a maze, and would have to backtrack to the one and only correct exit. It was a situation you will never encounter in Manhattan.
Dejected, we made our way back to that massive line and walked our bikes along with the tourists and little kids for about half an hour, until the crowd was sparse enough that we were all able to ride – slowly – with the occasional domino-effect dismount, toward the ferry.
When we were finally within sight of the St. George Ferry Terminal, the spectacle was horrifying: there was a backlog of bikers maybe half a mile long. The sun was going down and it was getting cold. People were elbowing for room in strips of sunlight. Muscles were stiffening. The line wasn’t moving, because ferries weren’t coming, and there was no explanation as to why. A rig attached to the back of a teenage boy’s bike carrying a huge boom box blasting “Shake Your Laffy Taffy” and a stop-off at a pizza place made the wait only slightly more bearable.
Two hours later – long after many private vows had been made never to do the bike tour again, or at least to skip the last leg to Staten Island – a roar erupted: three ferries had shown up at once. We bought overpriced beer at the snack bar onboard and cheered to the end of the ordeal. We had escaped from Alcatraz, er, Staten Island.

Posted by Tucker at 1:27 PM | | Comments

The Floating Hospital to Float Again

Charles Lercara
Our Town downtown

May 7, 2007


Alumni of a 140-year-old city program are emerging from the woodwork for a big fat round-the-island reunion

Like a superhero who’s lost his superpower, like a poet abandoned by his muse, the age-old Floating Hospital has been stripped of the namesake barge that has acted as its headquarters for 140 years. The medical and social services clinic has been landlocked since its dock space near Wall Street was commandeered post-9/11 to make space for emergency ferries. Suddenly homeless, the program’s 180-foot barge, the Lila Acheson Wallace, was “sold upriver,” so to speak, to an entrepreneur who plans to sell it again, billing it as a potential restaurant, conference center or museum.
The loss of its vessel has not prevented The Floating Hospital from fulfilling its mission of providing health and social services to over 50,000 homeless mothers and children a year. In fact, the program has just opened a new headquarters in Long Island City. New York City’s Floating Hospital could, theoretically, follow in the footsteps of Boston’s Floating Hospital for Children, which lost its ship in a fire in the 1920’s and is, according to hospital’s website, “now anchored permanently in modern buildings in downtown Boston.”
But that’s no fun – and having a good time, with waterfront views, has always been just as much a part of the Floating Hospital’s mission as filling cavities.
Says Darla Pasteur, a spokeswoman: “We don’t want to lose 140 years of good will and good work because we don’t have a ship anymore.”
Enter the Queen of Hearts, a 540-person capacity showboat that boasts “The Largest Dance Floor on the Water.” On June 9, the charter ship will become The Floating Hospital for a day, launching from Pier 40 and cruising around Manhattan like the Lila Acheson used to do.
Onboard will be Floating Hospital alums who visited, staffed or volunteered on one of the procession of barges that acted as The Floating Hospital over the years. The Reunion Cruise will launch a series of Healthy Kids’ Cruises that will take place monthly throughout the summer.
Finding these alums, though, is tricky, since many came aboard the ship as children or young adults and have long since moved. But often it’s when you’re not looking for something that you find it.
Awhile back, two representatives from The Floating Hospital were invited to St. Anne’s on the Hill parish meeting in Flushing, to talk about the program. When they were done, Charles Lercara, now 80, felt moved to get up and “ad-lib.” At age 11, Lercara had been one of the “needy kids” for whom The Floating Hospital had offered an unprecedented field trip.
Much of the trip is fuzzy – sixty-nine years is a long interval – but Lercara remembers it being “a real get-together.” The school trip began with a tour of the Coca Cola bottling company on the Lower East Side, which he remembers vividly because it was on that tour that he had his first taste of Coke. And he remembers something else: sitting in the eighth row of a giant theater aboard the barge – “the back seats were way high up and the front seats were low,” so everyone could see – and “Mrs. Roosevelt came walking down the aisle. I was right, right there. She didn’t stop because she was walking fast,” he says, and he doesn’t remember what she said to them that day in her 20-minute health talk. What stuck in his mind was her stature. “She was a tall woman. She had this flamboyant style of clothes, like she had an evening gown on.”
Jack Kaiser knew Charles Lercara “peripherally,” from having seen him around at parish events, but when he got up and started talking about the Floating Hospital, well, says Kaiser, “that was a complete surprise.” As it turned out, the men had more in common than either of them knew. Now it was Kaiser’s turn to ad-lib.
In 1943, Kaiser, then a high school senior at St. John’s Prep and a promising athlete with dreams of becoming a pro baseball player, was recommended by an athletic coach to be a counselor aboard the Floating Hospital. His job, for which he was paid a pittance, was to “play games with the youngsters” maybe four or five days a week over a summer. The rest of his time was spent playing sandlot baseball.
Kaiser went on to play baseball, basketball and soccer at St. John’s University, where he later coached from 1956 to 1973, then served as director of athletics for 23 years, and still serves as athletic director emeritus.
Kaiser thinks maybe his decision to go into athletic education when his dreams of going pro didn’t pan out were rooted in his summer on the barge. “I have to say, it was a great great experience for me.”
Kaiser didn’t mention it when we spoke on the phone, but on May 1, St. John’s University officially dedicated its baseball stadium “in the namesake of former student-athlete, longtime coach and athletics director, John W. ‘Jack’ Kaiser.”

If you have a Floating Hospital story to tell, contact Darla Pasteur at 212-514-7440 x.220 by May 31, 2007and you’ll be eligible for a free ticket to the Reunion Cruise.

Posted by Tucker at 1:08 PM | | Comments

Greys’ Anatomy


Our Town downtown

April 30, 2007


The drama never ends at the ER for stranded seals, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, and yes, the occasional whale

“One, two, three!”
Two women scoop up an angry baby grey seal in what looks like an oversized pool cleaning net. The one wearing heavy duty welding gloves wrestles it down, straddles its back and pushes down hard on its head. The other, in steel mesh gloves, forces its mouth open and shoves one dead fish after another down its throat while the seal makes frantic guttural noises.
I’m no expert, but this little seal looks pissed.
It’s “not very eager to take dead fish,” the Foundation’s director and senior biologist, Robert DiGiovanni Jr., explains. In the wild, seals like their fish alive. They’re also not partial to being force fed.
“If the doctor doesn’t tell you what he’s doing,” he says, “it’s very stressful.”
Making matters worse, this little one is recovering from a broken jaw. But then it’s done, and “One, two, three!” the seal has been scooped back into the net and hoisted into its tank. And then “One, two, three!” another seal is pinned.
It’s feeding time. This struggle happens four times a day in a quarantine room at the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, housed in the Atlantis Marine World Aquarium at the far Eastern tip of Long Island. The giant warehouse-sized space is off-limits the public, so that the animals won’t get accustomed to people and start associating them with food.
The wrestling matches necessary to get the seals to eat, the growling and flopping around, are actually good signs; these animals are still wild.
In the mid-90’s, about 50 percent of the stranded animals that came to the Foundation survived to be released back into the water. Today, that number is up around 70 percent.
Ten years ago, they were a three-person, $300,000 a year operation; now they’ve got eight full-time staff, 125 volunteers and an $800,000 annual budget, as well as more tanks, a couple dedicated rescue trucks, a radiograph machine, a necropsy room, an in-house lab where they can do blood tests at 3 a.m. in an emergency. They go through 350 pounds of fish every day.
But they’ve also got more animals coming in, and they’re not sure why. “As we get bigger, we’re having more occurrences that are unusual,” says DiGiovanni. The whale that beached itself in the Gowanus last week was just another example of an odd incident. “The last few years, people have been seeing [seals] more often. They might be out molting, sunning themselves.”
The Foundation has started putting some of their resources, which come in the form of state grants and private donations (including tin cans of loose change collected by school kids) toward figuring out why they’re still at maximum capacity. They’re currently caring for four sea turtles, a harbor porpoise and 23 seals, when the season for stranded seals should be winding up.
It might be related to the pack ice breaking up early in Canada. Then again, it might not.
To figure that out, the Foundation has started satellite tagging certain animals so they can follow them once they’ve been released. They’re also doing aerial, shipboard and land-based surveys to establish baseline populations of sea turtles and whales, which are less commonly seen and therefore less fully understood.
“They’re out there, we just don’t see them on a regular basis,” DiGiovanni says of the whales off the south shore of Long Island. “If things change in their environment, we could end up seeing them.”
Preparation is key, because there is no way of predicting incidents like the January dolphin stranding off the eastern coast of Long Island or the beached whale in the Gowanus.
As the Foundation finds out more about the specific behavior of different species, they’re using something like 20 percent of their budget to make that knowledge public.
“Each species has a little different behavior,” he says. For instance, it’s normal for seals to “haul out” on land to rest, but a beached whale or dolphin is in trouble. By teaching the public about the specific behaviors of different species, the Foundation is creating an educated network that will act as its eyes and ears.
DiGiovanni points to a mural on the wall of different seals. “This isn’t a dead seal,” he motions to a beached mother. “This seal isn’t crying,” he says of one with runny eyes. “This one doesn’t have a bullet hole in its head – that’s its ear.”
rtucker@manhattanmedia.com

Posted by Tucker at 1:00 PM | | Comments