About This Project
New York City’s ecology is under siege. This city of 8 million people produces 50 million pounds of trash every day and is home to two federally designated Superfund sites – the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and Newton Creek in Brooklyn and Queens and experts warn that with global climate much of lower Manhattan could end up underwater by the end of the next decade.
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.