The city’s 600 miles of coastline and centuries of underground infrastructure are a lot to police for the murky problems of illicit sewage connections and illegal dumping. Here’s how New Yorkers can help.
As the decades-long work to clean up the city’s rivers and creeks, canals and bays rolls on, it’s unclear just how big a problem unauthorized sewage connections and illegal industrial dumping present.
The election? Well, duh! The 2020 Census? Wait, huh?
But water-quality advocates are seeking more than just better engagement.
Hundreds of organizations face the threat of high processing fees if the city sells to private entities the right to collect tax and water debts that might not actually exist.
When most New Yorkers hear about cuts to the National Parks Service, they think about Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, not the wetlands around Cross Bay Boulevard on the way to the Rockaways or the beach on top of a landfill behind the tollbooths on the Marine Park Bridge.
Last week, the Delaware River Basin Commission—whose footprint includes the city’s largest watershed—issued a drought watch. But the agency in charge of New York City’s billion-gallon-a-day water system says its forecasts show there’s little risk of any protracted problem.
This week, City Limits has examined how New York City’s water renaissance is working out in two places that represent our waterfront past and present: Newtown Creek and Jamaica Bay. Here are images from both:
It is one of the most polluted waterways in the country. It’s at the crux of efforts to restore health and improve access to New York’s waterways. And from the vantage point of a small motorboat, Newtown Creek somehow manages to be beautiful.
The bay is considered the crown jewel of the city’s green spaces, home to hundreds of species of birds, fishes and marine life. It’s a ecosystem unique within the entire Northeast coast just a hour subway ride from downtown Manhattan. The proximity to the city makes Jamaica Bay a unique wild environment in urban setting but is also its major threat.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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