Flushing Creek Then and Now
Above: Wahnetah Boat Club in 1906.
Below: same spot in 2022.
–Rob Buchanan
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March 2023
New Boathouse Rises on Newtown Creek
Although it won’t open fully for another year, construction has topped out on the new North Brooklyn Community Boathouse, which will share space in the completed building with Broadway Stages, a Greenpoint film production company.
Due to its proximity to the Pulaski Bridge, an outdoor advertising company has expressed interest in erecting a billboard atop the building (see rendering below).
What’s your first reaction to this proposal? More visual blight? A possible revenue generator for the boathouse? Or a space better used for messaging that’s in synch with the boathouse’s mission–for example, a digital ‘dashboard’ conveying real-time info on the environmental health of the creek?
–Rob Buchanan
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A Dubious Honor
Much has been written on the barbarity of the British during the American Revolution, when (among other things) male “colonials” of fighting age were rounded up and marooned on floating hulks in what is today the Brooklyn Navy Yard. An estimated 10-12,000 Americans died there, more than in all of the war’s battles combined.
Today, almost 250 years later, New York has the dubious honor of hosting the world’s only purpose-built floating detention facility, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a 627-foot-long barge moored off Hunts Point in the South Bronx, opposite Rikers Island.
There’s a short video about VCBC by Laura Poitras and Sean Vegezzi here.
–Rob Buchanan
Seastreak Crash Report Still MIA
You may remember the the accident, way back in June, 2021. A high-speed ferry carrying more than 100 passengers experienced a catastrophic malfunction under the Brooklyn Bridge and then somehow ran aground in tiny Bushwick Inlet, on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
Both the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board immediately launched investigations, and last fall–after nearly 17 months–the NTSB finally released their report. It says that when the ferry’s automated control system failed (after repeated error warnings that went unaddressed) the captain and mate were not sufficiently trained to switch to the backup control system or even hit the engines’ emergency stop button, with the result that they had very limited control of the vessel’s speed and trajectory and could not prevent it from plowing into the Brooklyn shoreline.
Put another way, it’s almost as if the crew of a jetliner, when confronted with the loss of their autopilot systems, did not know how to fly the plane manually. And the result was something like a plane wreck, albeit in slow motion. No one was killed or seriously hurt, but they easily could have been: Bushwick Inlet is a popular spot for recreational boating, and in fact just two hours before the accident a group of people in canoes were working on an oyster float that the ferry ran over.
Amazingly, nearly two years after the accident, the Coast Guard has still not released their own report. Thus some big questions remain unanswered. Does the agency have a substantially different view of what caused the accident? What has it done to prevent similar accidents from occurring in the future? Are any training or operational or policy changes under consideration? Does the agency believe that 38 knots (the speed the ferry was traveling when its primary control system failed) is a safe speed for the most congested part of the harbor–and if not, what are they going to do about it?
–Rob Buchanan
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Water Testing Season is Upon Us!
From the Community Science team at Billion Oyster Project:
Dear friends and neighbors,
Happy Spring! We are writing because the 2023 Community Water Quality Testing (CWQT) season will begin on Thursday May 18. We want to thank those who have worked on this in the past, and invite everyone who would like to become involved to join us this season.
The Billion Oyster Project has recently assumed responsibility for coordinating CWQT from the NYC Water Trail Association. We thank them for their vision and leadership over the last decade of CWQT, and Billion Oyster Project looks forward to continuing their legacy of community and advocacy as we begin leading this program.
At the Billion Oyster Project, we envision a clean, healthy harbor to be enjoyed by everyone. In addition to providing information to those seeking to swim, paddle or boat in the harbor, past CWQT data has been instrumental in supporting community members as they advocate for cleaner water and better infrastructure. Under Billion Oyster Project’s leadership, we will continue to support communities as they use the data for recreation, advocacy, and in classrooms. Billion Oyster Project will also expand programming around water quality, including hosting speakers and holding lunch’n’learn seminars to increase public awareness and agency around the health of your waterways.
We hope that this year will bring more knowledge sharing, more connection, and more advocacy around water quality, and we can’t do that without you! If you are interested in joining us as a sampler, please review this sampler expectation document and fill out this RSVP form by April 1.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to waterquality@billionoysterproject.org with any questions. We hope to hear from you soon! Warmly, The Billion Oyster Project Community Science Team
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