The city is giving the concrete jungle a makeover: Some 1,000,000 trees are slated to be planted across the five boroughs over the next nine years.
Officials say the Million Tree NYC campaign will boost the number of trees in the city by 20%. The city has raised some $600 million in seed money to fund the greening effort.
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DUMBO’S got a brand new bag.
The DUMBO Business Improvement District is handing out free reusable canvas bags to the neighborhood’s 1,300 households - and some storeowners are offering shoppers incentives to use the environmentally-friendly sacks.
“The plastic bag situation is terrible for the environment, and we know that paper bags are equally as taxing,” said Anna Castellani, owner of Foragers Market on Adams St., where shoppers who bring a reusable bag now get 10 cents off their bill.
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The battle to redevelop Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has been going on since the 1960’s. By then, the canal, once one of the state’s busiest waterways, had fallen largely into disuse. Many of the warehouses, factories and other industrial sites that lined the canal’s shores were abandoned.
Now, with residential real estate booming and the city’s population expanding, the area is on the verge of a new era of residential development. But as development plans go forward, every step requires a delicate balance of the city’s enormous need for housing, the environmental cleanup required on a century-old industrial waterway, and the ongoing needs of the businesses that remain in the area.
Click here for Matthew Sollars’ multi-media report.
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Poet William Blake once said, “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”
Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents gave fresh meaning to Blake’s words last week at a Community Board 1 meeting as they voiced concerns about trees that get planted by the city and aren’t maintained.
And trees whose roots grow under sidewalks and buckle them.
And trees whose branches fall, creating potential hazards for senior citizens.
These concerns, and more, were among the chorus of complaints residents voiced in reaction a city official’s presentation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s MillionTreesNYC initiative, under which 5,400 new trees would be planted in Brooklyn by next spring.
Not so fast, residents said.
“I understand that they want to put the trees in, but they have to maintain them,” said Marie Leanza, 65, who has waited two years for the city to remove the stump in front of her house.
The trees the city planted in front of Leanza’s home four years ago have lifted the sidewalk.
But CB 1, which has the fifth lowest number of trees planted among Brooklyn’s 18 districts – at 9,351, that’s only 54 percent of the available tree pits – needs more trees, said Eric Peterson, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation manager.
Peterson presented to CB 1 the initiative to plant one million trees across the city’s five boroughs over the next decade. This is particularly important for Brooklyn, which has which has less than the 10 percent of the city’s current 5.2 million trees.
Peterson emphasized how trees lower air temperatures, reduce air pollution, capture and store carbon emissions, save energy and help prevent storm water runoff. That’s on top of improved human health, increased property values and better quality of life. Peterson even put a price on how much a tree saves in costs to the city: $14.94.
The residents had more immediate concerns.
When Leanza called 311 to get the stump outside her home at 198 Powers Street removed, she was told the city didn’t have any money and she would have to wait.
“We have people on a seven-year list waiting for their tree to be pruned. You need to deal with tree pruning and stump removal before planting trees,” another resident told Peterson.
“Trees are a trip hazard,” said board member Del Teague.
Peterson acknowledged some problems with tree maintenance. Amonth ago there were 22 stumps still to be removed in the neighborhood, he said.
The city has 21.5 maintenance crews. But by 2010, it hopes to have 30 more.
There were those who responded positively to the mayor’s initiative at the meeting.
“Trees are good for the environment and make the area look a lot nicer. We need more trees in Brooklyn,” said board member Yenfiri Gomez.
“This city doesn’t have the best track record of thinking things through properly, but it’s doing OK with this,” said Heather Roslund, another board member.
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Hunts Point Riverside Park is a pristine patch of green surrounded by rusting metal: train tracks line one side of the park, and mountains of scrap metal another. But the salvage yard where the Sims Metal recycling company collects discarded metal will soon include its own patch of green: a wall covered in moss and ferns, and a wet meadow with native plants.
The plants are part of a $2-3 million water treatment system aimed at keeping pollutants out of the Bronx River by imitating natural wetlands.
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Adam Brock wants to keep his Williamsburg neighborhood green. That’s why the 21-year-old New York University student challenged two mega developers’ plans for the landmark at Community Board 1’s last full board meeting.
