LES Sandy-impacted NYCHA Residents are given first priority for the spring 2018 session. Graduates receive interviews with Building and Construction Trade Unions; this is the first step to not just landing a job but to starting a career in the unionized construction industry.
Please disseminate widely to NYCHA residents interested in a long term career in construction.
We love SDR Park. Funky, unique, charming, beautiful, humble, anarchic, often dirty, mostly safe, welcoming, wild, frustratingly cluttered with cars & trucks. Never too tidy, never too tamable, built by people for the people’s use. Still an all-comers meeting place – democracy in action – where imaginations can still be unleashed, where attempts to tightly order its chaos are thwarted by the people who use it (and sometimes abuse it), care for it, and consider it theirs.
A quintessential New York City Park.
“When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough” – Fran Lebowitz
From Brad Landers City & State website:
“Every month, NYC residents send 750 million plastic bags to landfills, which is more than 7,500 tons of solid waste….
Plastic bags aren’t just needless solid waste. They are made from petroleum. They litter our trees and parks, clog our storm drains and recycling equipment, and foul our oceans and beaches.
In 2016, with NYC Councilwoman Margaret Chin, I led the effort in the New York City Council to do something about plastic bag waste. Our Bring Your Own Bag Law, which was passed by the City Council in May 2016, would have placed a 5-cent fee on all carryout bags. In cities, states and countries around the world, bag fees have reduced plastic bag waste by 50 to 90%. It would have worked here.
Unfortunately, [Governor] Cuomo, state Sen. Simcha Felder and the state Legislature killed the city’s plastic bag law before it went into effect…”
Read more here.
East Side Open House Jan. 31
From the Lo-Down (more details on the Lo-Down website):
“The MTA and the city’s Department of Transportation are kicking off a series of public meetings ahead of the L Train shutdown that’s scheduled to take place in the spring of 2019.
There are open houses on both sides of the Manhattan Bridge. The East Side session takes place Wed., Jan. 31 from 5-8 p.m. at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th St.“
Questions regarding the Shut Down of the L Train impact on the SDR Park community
The plan to mitigate the transportation needs during the shut down of the L train would entail 70 Diesel buses an hour coming through our community across Delancey Street (and returning down Chrystie Street). This will increase pollution, bring unprecedented traffic down Chrystie/Delancey Streets alongside and through the park in a high-density area with children, seniors, deaf residents, blind gardeners, students, ball players, bikers, families, small businesses and workers.
We understand that this is a massive, unplanned and necessary shut down to fix the Sandy -damaged tunnel.
Here are our questions/concerns:
Street Congestion
Health Affects of 70 Diesel Buses Per Hour on Adjacent/Nearby Corridors
Vulnerable Populations/Pedestrian & Bike Safety:
The L train/Williamsburg Bridge Service Area
Other Websites with information
The contribution of motor vehicle emissions to ambient fine particulate matter public health impacts in New York City: a health burden assessment
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0172-6
Asthma facts NYC:
http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/asthma/facts.pdf
The Public Health impacts of PM2.5 from traffic air pollution
http://a816-dohbesp.nyc.gov/IndicatorPublic/traffic/index.html
Emissions Inventory System (EIS) Gateway
https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/emissions-inventory-system-eis-gateway
Mayor de Blasio’s take on NYC:
Where You Live Determines The Cleanliness Of The Air You Breathe.
“In New York City, we are fighting the climate crisis as though our lives depend on it, and we are fighting inequality with the same sense of urgency. We have to do both at the same time. In fact, the very process of addressing our environmental challenges is part of how we are making New York City the fairest big city in America.”
Global Pollution Struggle:
92% of people globally live in places with dangerous levels of air pollution.
Every year, millions of people die as a result of air pollution-related illnesses. According to the World Health Organization, 11.6 percent of all deaths worldwide are associated with air pollution, making it almost as deadly as tobacco.
Watery eyes, wheezing and difficulty breathing are acute and common reactions. But air pollution has other, less perceptible but insidious effects — and it can harm you even before you take your first breath. Exposure to high levels of air pollution during pregnancy has been linked to miscarriages and premature births, as well as autism spectrum disorder and asthma in children
In a comprehensive study [Air Pollution and Mortality in the Medicare Population of the effects of air pollution in the United States, scientists at Harvard University found air pollution is especially dangerous for men, the poor and African-Americans, who are about three times as likely to die from exposure to the tiny pollutants.
HuffPost takes a look at what the WHO has declared a public health emergency.
As FEMA revises the maps to account for climate change, deciding who is in the flood zone will be a battle with millions of dollars at stake.
”
With its 520 miles of coastline and thousands of acres of waterfront development, New York has more residents living in high-risk flood zones than any other city in the country. Hurricane Sandy, the devastating October 2012 storm, did $19 billion in damage to the city, and the pace of development along the water has only increased.
Now, after a year in which hurricanes ravaged Houston and the Caribbean, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is substantially redrawing New York’s flood maps for the first time in three decades. It is a painstaking process that will affect tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, determining how and where buildings can be constructed and the cost of flood insurance on everything from modest bungalows to luxury skyscrapers.”
From NYTimes
There is now a Facebook page for the BirdLink Project
Please “Like” the Page to help the artist continue to raise awareness and funds for the project!
For more information see our past posting here.
From The Lo-Down:
“…CB3 member Lisa Kaplan said, “We got word day before yesterday that a project that had been promised to us on Pike Street, that the affordable units were now part of (the Norfolk Street project). It looks to me like you were already planning to do senior housing and the project that we were promised on Pike Street just went up in smoke. Tell me that I’m wrong, and why I’m wrong.”
Kelly, Gotham’s executive vice president for development, responded, “I can’t speak to that (Pike Street) development because it’s out of Gotham’s purview, but what I can say is that CPC and Gotham have always talked about the idea of (possibly) including senior affordable housing in our development.”
But Alan Gerson, CPC’s attorney, told board members that Rivington House was never brought up by anyone in the administration. “From the very beginning,” said Gerson, “before we selected Gotham, CPC expressed in the Request for Proposals a clear interest and preference in maximizing affordability, including affordability for senior housing.” He added, “We didn’t learn about the change of the Pike Street project until just about when you learned about it. Our negotiation with the city was for maximum support, period. the end.”
