Harvest Dome, as the artists hope it will look. Photo illustration by Bronx River Crossing

Thwarted by wind and water in their effort last fall to float a huge dome built of discarded umbrellas from Hunts Point to the Harlem River and upriver to Inwood, the artists behind Harvest Dome have launched an effort to rebuilt their sculpture.

Using the Internet fund-raisng site Kickstarter, Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi are seeking to raise $7,500 by March 10 to rebuild the dome. The first dome foundered at Rikers Island in October and was destroyed by jail personnel.

The pair intended the dome, constructed of umbrellas and floated on pontoons of soda bottles, to call attention to how much debris is found in New York City’s waterways.

Because the currents in the East River off Hunts Point were so unkind to the first project, the artists are planning to build the new dome nearer its final destination in Inwood Hill Park.

Among the rewards offered to contributors are remnants of the wrecked dome.
For more information or to make a contribution, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/481224446/harvest-dome-20.

Members of Friends of Brook Park canoe on the Harlem River, but it's not easy to get to the shore. That may change.

The Harlem River was once one of the city’s great playgrounds: colorful boathouses dotted its banks; riders on horseback promenaded and raced along the Manhattan shore; the bluffs above the river were home to an amusement park, as well as the Polo Grounds, which later became the home of the New York Giants, and, of course, to Yankee Stadium.

As the river was industrialized, though New Yorkers turned their backs on the Harlem.  Now, with much of the industry gone, Bronxites hope to reclaim the river.

For years, organizations like Friends of Brook Park and the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality have looked at the Harlem and seen a necklace of green the length of the borough. A greenway would connect existing parks, like Mill Pond and Roberto Clemente, along with new parks built on unused land.  Some of them would include fishing piers, places to launch kayaks and canoes, eco-classrooms and gardens.

Pie in the sky? Not really. To see the future, just look at the Bronx River. Not so long ago, it was an open sewer and garbage dump. Today, thanks to the hard work of volunteers whose efforts led to the formation of the Bronx River Alliance and the investment of millions of federal dollars, wildlife has returned, fish thrive, ospreys soar and egrets nest. People play in new parks, stroll and bicycle on the shore and canoe in the water.

Five years ago, Harry Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park urged the formation of a Harlem River Alliance, drawing on the experience of the Bronx River Alliance. Now the federal government has given advocates’ efforts a boost.

Last month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited Roberto Clemente State Park to announce that the Harlem River would be one of a hundred projects nationwide aimed at restoring neglected rivers to the people who live near them. Rep. Jose Serrano, the chief benefactor of the Bronx River, who accompanied the secretary, pointed to the lessons of the Bronx River.

There are plenty of obstacles. Ways have to be found for a greenway to wind through or around a maze of industrial facilities. The city or state will have to seize junk yards. Thusfar, the state has not even been persuaded to designate the Harlem a sensitive area protected for recreation, turning down a request to do so from the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality in a blizzard of bureaucratic initials.

The city’s 2009 Lower Concourse rezoning, which envisions riverside promenades, has yet to attract the development that would yield them, and the boundaries of the newly-zoned area left out the southern end of Park Avenue, where Friends of Brook Park hopes to see a boat launch built.

But the pledge of federal assistance is a game-changer. The Bronx Council on Environmental Quality, which completed a comprehensive plan for a Harlem River Greenway from Highbridge to Spuyten Duyvil four years ago, has also formed a Harlem River Working Group, which has enlisted community organizations and parks groups the length of the river. Energized by Salazar’s visit, it envisions the Harlem Greenway joining the South Bronx Greenway at the bridge to Randalls Island, says its coordinator, Chauncy Young.

The effort to revive the Harlem River can bring jobs and economic development opportunities to the area, give Mott Haven residents a larger role in deciding how waterfront development will proceed once the economy improves and, above all, offer parks-starved Bronx communities a place where they can find beauty and ease at their doorstep.

GrowNYC representative Ermin Siljokovic had attendees play the “recycling game” to show them how to separate materials. Photo by Elizabeth Chen

They say they have to because officials aren’t following through

Mott Haven Houses’ resident Brigitte Vincenty doesn’t want to go all the way into Manhattan to make sure her trash gets recycled. So she and her neighbors are taking on the challenge of recycling their community’s trash, which they say the New York City Housing Authority fails to do.

“NYCHA talks a lot about green roofs and retrofitting, things that haven’t been made into law yet,” said Vincenty, organizer for Mott Haven Houses’ Resident Green Committee. “But recycling is the law and they’re not even doing that.”

NYCHA officials did not return calls for comment.

Out of the five boroughs, the Bronx lags behind on recycling, according to a Department of Sanitation’s annual report. The Bronx recycles at a rate of 10.3 percent compared to Manhattan’s 19 percent. Community District 1, where Vincenty lives, has the poorest recycling rate in the Bronx―only 4.8 percent of the total trash in that neighborhood has been diverted for recycling.

The Natural Resources Defense Council observed an 0.6 percent increase in trash collection in the Bronx in the past year, despite a 1.4 percent decrease city-wide, according to a Daily News article in October.

Vincenty and members of her initiative, named the InnerCity Green Team, plan to go door-to-door to collect recyclable materials. They also held an event on November 17 to educate residents about recycling and saving energy at the Mott Haven Community Center.

“This is a little helpful,” said Alfonso Dingwall, a 45-year-old resident. “We could be doing better with recycling.”

They hope their efforts will encourage NYCHA to hire public housing residents to work in maintenance, which they believe will help bring down their community’s high levels of unemployment.

But a week earlier, NYCHA representatives held a closed meeting with the residents  to hear details of their recycling program.

“They were very skeptical,” said Erica Ramos, a Resident Green Committee member. “They sounded like they wanted to help, but you could tell they were really hesitant because of they were worried about costs.”

A statement from NYCHA said that they support the efforts of the Resident Green Committees, which are groups of concerned public housing residents who work on NYCHA’s “Green Agenda” program. However, they refused to comment about the residents’ allegations about recycling in their facilities or about the closed meeting.

GrowNYC, Mothers On the Move and the state’s Public Service Commission also attended the committee’s green awareness event. These organizations distributed compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycling collection bags that colorfully explained how to separate plastic and paper materials.

“NYCHA’s green efforts mostly focus on gardening and planting trees,” said Nova Strachan of Mothers On the Move. “That’s important, but NYCHA also really needs to work on recycling.”

Now, Vincenty’s volunteers look forward to the daunting task ahead of them. Rachel Osorio, a volunteer, felt empowered by the information given at the event.

“Especially in the Bronx, we get forgotten about,” said Osorio. “This is a lot of info I didn’t know before. It makes me want to know more about how I can improve my community.”

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence brought a giant puppet to the 40th Precinct, where they joined with Occupy the Bronx to protest the arrests at Morning Glory Garden. Photo by Elizabeth Chen

Five arrested at Morning Glory Community Garden site

Police arrested five people at the Occupy the Bronx general assembly in Mott Haven Saturday, preempting the organization’s plans to hold a rally and “festival” in a community garden fenced-off by the city in mid-November.

“Of the general assemblies I’ve attended, this is the first that I’ve seen this kind of police presence,” said Carl Lundgren, a member of Bronx Greens, a local environmental advocacy group.

The group had publicized plans for a “day of festivities” at Morning Glory Garden a vacant lot on Southern Boulevard and East 147th Street, where gardeners, many of whom are also among the most active people in Occupy the Bronx, had grown flowers and vegetable for the last two years.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development kicked the community group out out and tore up the garden, where it plans to build housing.

In protest, participants in Occupy the Bronx had briefly occupied the offices of Community Board 1, demanding that the board support its efforts to meet with the city housing department.

According to Elliott Liu, both a gardener and a member of the Occupy the Bronx facilitation working group, police ordered the protesters to “keep moving,” saying their meeting was blocking the sidewalk. Although the group did move, Liu said, the police arbitrarily singled-out people to be arrested.

According to NYPD spokesman Mike Wysokowski, the five people were arrested for “blocking pedestrian traffic.”

A video taken by a member of the organization seems to confirm the protesters’ claim that they did not block the sidewalks. It shows the general assembly moving to the fence around the garden, leaving ample room for others—including police officers—to walk by.

In the video police are shown interrogating a News 12 reporter and arresting a freelance journalist, Carla Murphy.

In weekly meetings since mid-October, including one at the Hub on Nov. 17, police stood by while the group held its general assembly, and even provided free entrance to the subway on Oct. 15, when protesters marched from Fordham Plaza to head downtown to Zuccotti Park, headquarters of Occupy Wall Street.

“I’ve been doing this type of work for 15 years and this was the most quiet, peaceful convening I’d ever seen,” said Lisa Ortega, a mainstay of Occupy the Bronx and a leader of the Hunts Point-based organization Rights For Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities. Ortega’s husband, Carlos Sabater, was one of those arrested. “NYPD was already very hostile and aggressive when we got there,” she said.

After the arrests, the general assembly, swelled by marchers from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence who had been protesting violence in the community and by others made aware of the arrests via messages on Facebook, moved to a street corner directly across from the 40th Precinct on Alexander Avenue and demanded the release of those arrested.

“Let them go!” the crowd chanted at the precinct, while holding up a giant, dancing Statue of Liberty puppet draped in the Puerto Rican flag.

The protesters were released from the precinct’s holding cell in the afternoon after being detained for about three hours. They were given summonses to appear in court.

Alex Kahn, a 25-year-old software developer was among those arrested . This was his first time attending an Occupy the Bronx general assembly.

“It was a little scary, but I was with people who I felt safe with,” said Kahn. “It’s the kind of experience that makes it clear that what the role of the police is in society. If their job was to protect the community, they wouldn’t be arresting people for having a meeting.”

After celebrating the release of their comrades, the general assembly joined the anti-violence march.

Occupy the Bronx members say they plan to continue to defy orders to stay away from Morning Glory Garden. Next Saturday, they say, they will meet at the corner of 149th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven to rally again.

They are also asking supporters to attend the 40th Precinct Community Council meeting on Wednesday, where they plan to interrogate officials about the arrests of their members.

“We’re community residents who’ve been oppressed for a long time and we don’t intend to back down by any means,” said Ortega. “And if it means that tons of us will continue to be arrested, we’re willing to do so. We’re not afraid.”

Activists invaded Community Board 1’s office on Monday, using Occupy Wall Street tactics to protest the city’s eviction of the Morning Glory Community Garden at Southern Boulevard and Union Avenue.

They demanded to speak to District Manager Cedric Loftin, and when they were told he wasn’t there refused to leave. Instead, they recited their grievances and telephoned board members, producing the video that accompanies this story as the office receptionist Annie Rojas ordered them to stop.

The demonstrators, who have been active in Occupy the Bronx, say the community board has failed to listen to them. It took the part of the city’s Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development, which destroyed the garden, and canceled the November meeting at which they had signed up to speak.

When board member Freddy Perez showed up, they repeated their demand that the board set up a meeting with HPD before the city agency filed plans to develop the lot.

When they finally left, they chanted, “We’ll be back.”

Elliott Liu, one of Morning Glory’s founders, said the group doesn’t have definite plans to revisit Board 1’s office but will keep asking for support.

“Our understanding is that the Board won’t pay attention to you unless you’re a local business or someone with a lot of connections in government,” said Liu.

“They’re more focused on serving developers’ interests than serving as a forum for the community.”

District Manager Loftin did not respond to requests for comment on the protest.

Photo by Elizabeth Chen. Elliott Liu and Rafael Mutis removed plants from the lot the city plans to build on at Union Ave. and Southern Boulevard.

The grassy lot at the corner of Southern Blvd and Union Ave has been a green oasis for some local residents, but as they recently found out, the city has other plans.

For the past two years, residents have planted vegetables and held social gatherings in the lot, referring to  it as the Morning Glory Community Garden. They say the space was abandoned until people like Elliot Liu cleaned it and furnished it with tables and chairs. Teenagers have worked on the impromptu garden, mainly students from nearby Samuel J. Gompers High School.“This should be a public space,” said Aazam Otero, a Gompers graduate.

Earlier in the fall, they planned to expand the garden to provide fresh produce for the neighborhood. But city contractors turned their garden beds into piles of wood in early November.

In response, Liu, 29, and a handful of other gardeners blocked the gate to keep the city out, while holding protest signs.

“The first notice we got was when there was suddenly a gate with a lock on it and ‘no trespassing” signs up,” said Liu. “It wasn’t like we were hard to contact. We had a bulletin board with contact information. And we’re in there many days of the week working so we’re very approachable.”

Contractors arrived and tore down part of the fence to gain entrance and clear the lot, despite the presence of a few protesters. A representative for the city’s department of Housing Preservation  and Development told Liu that if he or the others trespassed they would be arrested.

HPD spokesman Eric Bederman said in an email that had the gardeners been registered with the city’s GreenThumb program, as community garden users are urged to do, they would have had access to information that the the city plans to build approximately 430 apartments for low- to- moderate- income tenants and a school for disabled children on the lot.

“The people who recently unlawfully entered this City-owned site did not seek permission to through the City’s GreenThumb Program,” Bederman wrote in his e-mail, “nor did they inquire whether it was slated for development.”

The gardeners are petitioning for support from Community Board 1, but district manager Cedric Loftin said the residents who have congregated and grown vegetables on it have done so improperly.

“It’s not a community garden because it’s not a GreenThumb garden,” said Loftin, adding that the residents “went somewhere where they have no right to be.”

Residents who have used the space say their battle with the city to create more green areas is not over.

“This neighborhood needs more community gardens,” said Isidro Campus, a superintendent from across the street. “We need to attack these developers.”

Photo by Lily Kesselman Mott Haven's newest resident gets a big hello.

This Illustration courtesy of wunderground.com shows projected rainfall along the east coast through next Wednesday morning.

With Hurricane Irene barreling up the east coast on a slow but seemingly sure collision course with New York City this weekend, some residents in low-lying areas like Coney Island and the Rockaways are being urged to seek higher ground.

Below is a listing of Bronx hurricane shelters where anyone living in an area at risk of flooding may want to consider riding out the storm. The shelters will be open to the public as of 4 p.m. Friday, according to the Borough President’s office.

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Shelters and evacuation centers in the immediate area:

PS 5 564 Jackson Ave

I.S. 201 730 Bryant Ave

I.S. 145 1000 Teller Ave

Other Bronx locations that will serve as evacuation centers and shelters during the storm:

P.S. 306 40 West Tremont Ave

William H. Taft HS 240 E. 172 St.

Dewitt Clinton HS, 100 W. Mosholu Prkwy W

Bronx Community College, 80 W 181st St.

I.S. 98 1619 Boston Rd.

P.S. 102 1827 Archer St.

M.S./H.S. 141 660 West 237 St.

Lehman College, 250 Bedford Park Blvd W

P.S. 211 1919 Prospect Ave

Evander Childs HS 800 East Gun Hill Rd

Harry S. Truman HS 750 Baychester Ave

Hurricane watchers are predicting effects of the storm will start being felt in the city by mid-day Saturday, with heavy winds and rain. The storm is expected to pick up force Saturday evening and continue to belt the city through Sunday, with localized flooding and wind damage possible.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has warned the MTA may be shut down for the first time in its hundred-plus year history as a result of the storm surge.

Now a multinational company owned by some of the wealthiest investment houses on Wall Street wants millions in taxpayer subsidies so it can build new incinerators. If the company succeeds, you can be certain that its smokestack will tower over a poor community, and the South Bronx will be in the bullseye.

Will an incinerator like this on in Hempstead rise in the South Bronx?

But an incinerator is not a solar panel. Burning at high temperatures concentrates toxic substances, including cancer-causing dioxins, lead, arsenic and mercury. Some of this rises in minute particles from the smokestack, and later lodges in the lungs.

Despite the claims of the industry that filtering systems minimize the impact of burning on air quality, sulfur from incinerators contributes to acid rain, and nitrogen oxides cause breathing problems and trigger asthma attacks.

The more efficient the filters, the more toxic the ash left after burning, which must be transported to landfills, where its poison may leach into the water supply.

Moreover, to be profitable, incinerators need a large and continuous supply of garbage, so they become competitors for the metal, glass, paper, wood and plastic targeted by recycling programs. Since recycling holds the promise of green jobs for residents of communities like ours, inflicting an incinerator on our neighborhoods would do double injury.

When millions of dollars in government subsidies and contracts are at stake, political payoffs are inevitable. The Hempstead incinerator that Covanta points to as a model of what it hopes to build in the city was born in cronyism, its path to approval greased by Senator Alfonse D’Amato and his Republican machine after the developer hired the senator’s brother Armand as a lobbyist.

So it’s important to let elected officials and regulatory agencies know that we’re watching them, and we expect them to safeguard us, not the profits of Sam Zell, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and the other big stockholders in Covanta.

The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, an umbrella organization that includes Nos Quedamos, The Point Community Development Corp., and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, has already spoken out. Its efforts deserve widespread support.

The lesson of the South Bronx incinerator is that when ordinary residents come together and stick together, they can change things. But the work is hard and long. So it would be best to start now.

The complex at Concourse Village that houses four schools will be more carefully monitored for contaminants.

Parents and community leaders have won a victory in a long-running debate over environmental hazards in the Mott Haven school campus at Concourse Village near E. 153 Street.

The court ordered the School Construction Authority to conduct a new environmental review of plans to monitor the four new schools in the Mott Haven school campus to insure that toxic chemicals covered up in building the schools and its athletic field will not poison future generations of students. Those plans must be open to public scrutiny.

In the July 7 decision, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court sided unanimously with a lower court’s 2008 decision that found the city had violated state environmental law by building the Mott Haven complex without including the long-term monitoring plan in its environmental impact statement.

The schools were built on a former rail yard, contaminated with mercury, lead, benzene and tetrachloroethylene, a chemical used to clean metal. Former industrial sites are called “brownfields,” and are cleaned up under a state program, so the city contended that it had followed state guidelines.

A group of parents and local residents comprising the Bronx Committee for Toxic Free Schools filed the lawsuit against the city in 2007 to stop construction of the complex. They argued the cleanup should have been more carefully evaluated. Later that year the City Council unanimously approved the plan to build, but on the condition that a more thorough evaluation be conducted.

While they failed to stop the schools from being built, they hailed the court ruling for establishing a precedent that the city will have to follow in the future.

We are thrilled by this decision,” said Jane Maisel, a public school teacher and member of the committee for toxic free schools, in a statement released by New York Lawyers For The Public Interest, which brought the suit along with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

The Department of Education simply cannot approve a contaminated school site without a comprehensive plan to protect children from the contamination,” Maisel continued.

But although parents may be elated that the courts have ruled in their favor for the second time in three years, the city may still decide to appeal the ruling to the state’s highest court.

In an emailed statement, Carrie Noteboom, senior counsel for the city’s law department, said the city will go ahead with the court’s recommendations.

The School Construction Authority “has already completed a thorough cleanup and implemented a state approved monitoring plan,” Noteboom said. “The Court decided that this plan should undergo additional public review, and SCA is prepared to do that.”