Like the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek, the Flushing River is toxic, troubled and adjacent to residential neighborhoods—yet it’s been largely forgotten.

For years, industrial sites along the water polluted the river. The two World’s Fairs in Queens brought some attention to the area’s waterways, but for decades, the river has been neglected and unmaintained. Now, garbage lines the banks in some areas, and sections of the river give off a foul odor.

Queens resident Sergey Kadinsky grew up in Forest Hills, a block from the Flushing River. He wishes this corner of New York could be improved.

“C’mon, Queens, do better,” he says.

Kadinsky, a journalist and historian, hopes that growing concern about environmental issues—as well as recent attention to Flushing, one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods—will create renewed interest in the river. Kadinsky would like to see the river “daylighted,” or turned into an accessible, navigable waterway. With so much public interest in green initiatives, like bike lanes and recycling, he thinks now is the time for the city to put more resources into the river and the adjacent park.

Recent progress by the Parks Department indicates that Kadinsky may be onto something. The Bloomberg administration is working to popularize the New York City Water Trail, which includes a boat launch right on the Flushing River.

The Flushing Meadows Corona Park Strategic Framework Plan, commissioned by the city in 2004, also includes new ideas for the Flushing River and the surrounding parklands. It’s the first comprehensive vision for the park since a 1988 plan that, according to the report, “went largely unrealized and unheeded.”

But things are looking more promising this time around: In 2005, the city awarded the contract for the plan’s execution to a multidisciplinary team of architects and landscape designers, who have already made some changes.

A promenade is in the works for the Flushing River waterfront, and its boathouse is currently under construction. Separate efforts are underway to add new waterfront developments to the residential and commercial corridors of Flushing itself. The 2004 Parks plan listed three main goals: improve the World’s Fair core, restore Meadow and Willow Lakes, and reconnect the park to the neighborhood and the city.

One part of the plan offers a hypothetical—and hopeful—“page from the guidebook of the future,” which shows how integral the river is to the future vision for the park. “Flushing Meadows Corona Park is defined by its connection to the water,” the report says. “It has become popular for boaters to launch a canoe or a kayak from the area just beyond the tide gate and paddle the entire length of the Park.”

The Flushing River has been partly filled in and re-routed over the years, and it’s now crisscrossed by the Van Wyck and Long Island Expressways. Kadinsky hopes to someday see an uninterrupted waterway would restore the river to its natural state.

“I know the Flushing River is covered by highways,” he says, “but the river itself could also be a natural highway, one that’s you know, zero emissions.”

The Gowanus Creek, the Bronx River, the Harlem River and other waterways around New York are in the process of being restored. “But when will the day for Flushing River come?” Kadinsky asks. “When will Queens get its respect?”

Late night commuters know the feeling well: after a long wait, a light shines through the subway tunnel, but passenger cars don’t pull in. Instead, it’s three flatbed cars hauling trash.

Eight of those trash trains collect waste from the hundreds of subway stations throughout the city. In a single day, their dumpsters carry 40 tons of trash, according to Charles Seaton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That’s more per day than Boston collects per a week from its subways, according to their transit authority’s spokesman.

Given the NYC’s subway system annual ridership of 1.6 billion in 2010, regular clean ups are necessary. Straphangers produce plenty of trash. More than 14,000 tons of it last year, Seaton wrote in an e-mail.

That’s equivalent to the weight of about 3,071 adult elephants.

To prepare the bags for the trash trains, there are 2,500 station cleaners responsible for removing trash from subway platforms, booths and stairwells, while a separate team is charged with removing trash from the tracks.

In the video below, an MTA transit cleaner who works at the 7th Ave. station in Brooklyn talks about the process and his daily duties:

Once the collections are complete, the trash trains deliver the garbage to one of four train yards in Northern Manhattan; Wakefield, the Bronx; Sunset Park, Brooklyn; or Corona, Queens.

Every day, the MTA’s refuse and recycling vendor picks up the trash from the four train yards and transports it to the All American Recycling Corporation in Jersey City, where it’s sorted and recycled. Over and over and over again.

How does this environmental battle play out in the city every day? Students at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism take a closer look by examining narrow slices of how the city’s government, environmental advocates and its citizens cope with the city’s ever changing ecology, from how the MTA tries to control subway litter to how the city plans to turn the Fresh Kills garbage landfill into parkland and from the changing nature of its wildlife to a portrait of the city’s forgotten polluted waterway, the Flushing River.

By Laura Ratliff and Stuart White

Not long ago, Staten Island’s Fresh Kills Landfill was a 2,200-acre eyesore.

Once the largest dump in the world, Fresh Kills was the final resting place for more than half a century’s worth of the city’s garbage before being closed in 2001.

“At one point, before they capped it and captured the gases, you would get an odor on a hot summer night,” said Marie DeBenedetto, a longtime resident of Staten Island.  “The whole island would reek of it.  There were hordes of seagulls.  It was dirty to say the least.”

Now, the Parks Department is turning Fresh Kills into a public green space almost three times the size of Central Park over the course of the next 30 years.  And though the plan has met with little resistance, disagreements have sprung up over just how green the new park should be.

Wind turbines, says Borough President James Molinaro, would be a perfect fit for the site.  He has been calling for their inclusion on the capped landfill ever since BQ Energy, a wind energy company, and the New York State Energy Research Development Agency confirmed the wind farm’s feasibility in 2007.

“We feel that this is probably the only location that would support a wind turbine farm,” said Nick Dmytryszyn, a licensed environmental engineer for the Staten Island Borough President’s office.

With seven new, 400-foot turbines, Dmytryszyn says, Freshkills Park could generate around 30 megawatts of power, enough to power 5,000 homes annually.

The Parks Department, however, has been reluctant to include windmills in its plans for the proposed Freshkills Park.

“It was basically ignored.  It wasn’t even mentioned,” said Dmytryszyn of the Parks Department’s Environmental Impact Statement for the park.  “So it was very disheartening.”

The Parks Department declined to comment on its decision not to include the windmills.

Early investigations questioned the feasibility of building such large structures on the former landfill, citing fears that the foundations would sink.  Those concerns have been resolved, Dmytryszyn says, and a new engineering report shows that suitable foundations can be built.

According to materials provided by the Parks Department, an adjacent park—Owl Hollow, which is also under construction—will include one wind turbine on the roof of its “comfort station” which would power the building.  But Dmytryszyn and the Borough President’s office are aiming much higher.

Not all Staten Islanders are in favor of wind power.

“They’re an eyesore beyond belief,” said Ira Weiss, a Staten Island insurance agent.  “They make noise, and everybody who’s ever had to live near one complains about it.”

In general, Weiss supports the park.

“Well number one, it’s going to be an enormous park, and it’s going to be the second largest park in the city, and there are going to be benefits for everybody,” Weiss said.  “If they construct it wrong, then it won’t do anybody any good, but the plan is currently going to do it right.”

Weiss—a cyclist—was especially thrilled to hear about Freshkills’ proposed bikeways.

“I’m a very avid cyclist, and I’ve never ridden on Staten Island in 15 years because it’s one of the most dangerous places to ride a bike,” he said.  “I honestly believe for the future generations [the park] could be really valuable for the island.”

But windmills, he argues, would negate the park’s entire benefit without doing anything for Staten Island itself.

“The reality is that I don’t think he’s ever seen a windmill in his life,” said Weiss of the Borough President.  “People say it’s going to supply power to Staten Island, but it’s really going to supply power to ConEd’s grid.”

Dmytryszyn, however, says that Weiss is in the minority when it comes to his stance on wind power.  At a public hearing two years ago, he says, only one of 400 attendees opposed the idea of a wind farm at Freshkills.

The 30-year timeline, Dmytryszyn says, may work against the wind farm proposal, and in the Parks Department’s favor.

“The public’s memory is fickle, but the bureaucracy is always chugging along,” said Dmytryszyn.  “In 10 or 15 years, it’ll be easy to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you wanted that.’”

Yong Hao Wu, a Sunset Park resident, was arrested last month for owning over 400 snakehead fish. These fish, which are not native to the United States, are delicacies in China, but if any number were let loose in local waters they could annihilate entire schools of native fish.

The snakehead fish is an example of an invasive species—a non-native organism that can have harmful effects on local ecosystems—that has been introduced into New York City. But it is by no means an isolated case. In fact, New York is widely considered by experts in the field ground zero for the proliferation of invasive species across North America.

“New York City is the epicenter of invasive species, because it’s one of the busiest ports in North America and serves shipping interests from around the world,” says Glenn Phillips, executive director of the New York City chapter of the National Audubon Society.

New York is also typically the first entry point on the continent for animals and plants that don’t thrive here naturally. Bernd Blossey, associate professor of Life Sciences at Cornell University says, “It serves as a major pathway for invasive species to the rest of North America.”

Problems caused by invasive species have only increased over the past several decades as globalization takes hold and there’s increased international travel and trade, Phillips says. New York has “more different kinds of people from more different kinds of places” who, either accidentally or intentionally, bring foreign species when they travel to the United States.

“Invasive species become problematic because there are not the checks and balances that would have evolved with the species in its native environment,” says Phillips.

These organisms, therefore, have “an unfair advantage” over naturally occurring species.

Invasive species might not be subject to native diseases and are therefore allowed to grow unchecked, for example. Also, they oftentimes disrupt the “predator-prey relationship.” In other words, some species that are native to the area lack the sufficient defense mechanisms to fend off stronger, newer species that prey on them. Also, some invasive species lack predator native to the area to keep their numbers in check.

“The impact of invasive species is both under-appreciated and underestimated,” Blossey says. “The economic costs of invasive species are not insignificant.”

A 2005 report by the New York State Invasive Species Task Force acknowledged that the economic harm caused by invasive species is substantial. Studies at Cornell University estimated that annual costs exceed $120 billion.

The Asian long-horned beetle, both Phillips and Blossey agree, is without a doubt one of the most destructive of invasive species. The long-horned bettle, which was accidentally brought to New York in packing crates and has since spread across North America, is capable of wiping out entire populations of trees, as the beetle’s larva methodically dig tunnels into a variety of hardwood trees and multiply rapidly until the tree becomes infested and dies.

The beetle, Blossey says, has the potential to “completely decimate the American maple sugar and syrup industries because of its devastating impact on maple trees.”

In 1999, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13112 on Invasive Species, which established the National Invasive Species Council to provide national leadership to prevent the introduction of new invasive species and provide for the control of the economic, ecological and human health impacts caused by invasive species. General funding support for the Council is provided by the Department of the Interior.

Still, Blossey says, “Once an invasive species is introduced, it’s difficult to eradicate it, and suppressing it can cost a lot of money as well as have adverse affects on native species.”

New York State, for example, spends as much as $40 million dollars annually in attempts to eradicate the Asian long-horned beetle, according to the 2005 report.

In 1999, the Center for Disease Control, with the help of various state health departments, began using pesticides to try to get rid of mosquitoes that might be infected with the West Nile virus. While many of the pesticides were effective, they also had numerous detrimental impacts on a host of naturally occurring species in the ecosystem.

“These species interrupt the natural order of things, causing an environmental imbalance,” says New York City Audubon’s Phillips.

Rising water levels will be one of the most noticeable components of climate change, particularly in a city like ours with more than 500 miles of shoreline in the five boroughs.

In fact, it already is: the water that surrounds Lower Manhattan, according to the city’s panel on climate change, has gone up by more than a foot since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Flooding is already more frequent. So-called 100-year floods are now predicted to occur every 80 years.

There’s a lot of science behind why the water is rising, but basically hotter temperatures mean melting ice, which means higher sea levels. As the water rises, coasts that were previously at sea-level elevations will be submerged.

Scientists predict that water levels could rise by up to 23 inches in the next 75 years—and that’s if there is no rapid glacial ice-melt in the arctic. If that melt continues at the rate of acceleration it has attained today, that figure could go up to 55 inches.

In response, Mayor Bloomberg convened the New York City Panel on Climate Change, as part of the larger PlaNYC initiative in 2008. The panel released a report two years later.

In addition to making those dire predictions about rising sea levels, the panel found that the existing FEMA flood-plain maps for New York City are outdated.

Those FEMA maps show which areas are subject to 100-Year Floods, a measure of the frequency of major flooding, which is used to determine everything from insurance premiums to city-planning regulations. The coast of Lower Manhattan is already in the flood zone. Within fifty year, the Panel predicts, that zone will move toward Broadway, especially in low-lying areas like Canal Street.

Floods will interfere with subways and sewers, but if the water rises by the amount that is predicted, the city will be dealing with that water all the time.

But what does 23 inches of water look like? Click on the place marks in this map to see what 23 inches of water would mean at various places in Lower Manhattan:

View Climate Change in NYC in a larger map

What about a wall to keep the water out?

Although this seems like an intuitive solution, it isn’t a good enough plan.

At most, say scientists, it would provide a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

According to VISION 2020: NEW YORK CITY COMPREHENSIVE WATERFRONT PLAN, Dikes and levees, “can provide substantial protection from flood waters for a larger area but also bear a range of costs, can alter ecological functions, and still may be over topped by a flood or storm surge exceeding their designed capacity.”

“The estimate is only accurate to a certain extent, and the problem with a wall is that it could go over the wall and get trapped behind,” said climate scientist Rae Zimmerman, who served on the city’s panel. “That’s what happened in Japan with the tsunami. They had a new sea wall, but the water went over it and got trapped and couldn’t drain.”

If water gets higher than the structures, the results can be disastrous – as seen in New Orleans or Japan.

Can flooding be prevented?

One idea: Re-vegetate the wetlands.
Many scientists point to the creation of wetlands as a possible solution to help soak up the extra water that will be caused by rising tides.

“They’re also thinking about re-vegetating wetlands so it retards the flooding,” said Zimmerman. “Wetlands are wonderful.”

According to Climate Change Information Resources, “The Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) carries out numerous projects around the New York metropolitan region that aim to counteract beach erosion, reduce flood damage, and restore natural wetlands and estuaries, some of which explicitly include climate change.”

However, it is impossible to re-vegetate enough wetlands in an urban area and the projected levels of water may be too high to be absorbed.

And while these consequences of climate change may seem far off, unless steps are taken soon – it will be too late.

In short: No, rising water levels can’t be prevented, at least not by the city.

“Preventing it from happening really goes beyond the city’s abilities.”
-Rae Zimmerman, climate change panel member