Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical High School is the first public school in the city with a green roof. Photo by Lisha Arino

Alfred E. Smith is first school in city topped by plantings

The new roof on Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School is for the birds. And the bees and butterflies.

The roof, delivered by truck on Oct. 16, is made up of several rows of black planters, filled with a few inches of soil from which low-growing plants sprout. The school has added a raised beds, which will be used to grow vegetables.

Environmentalists see such “green roofs” as a new tool to combat pollution and save energy. The installation on a portion of the Mott Haven high school makes Alfred E. Smith the first public school in the city to have one.

The roof was a joint project between the school and Sustainable South Bronx, the Hunts Point-based environmental organization, which installed the roof and secured the $45,000 it cost from the City Gardens Club of New York City and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

“To see it all come together, it’s just an incredible experience to everybody that has been working on it,” said Mary Linn Hernandez, a senior. She said she was glad she got to see it while she was still a student, noting that a lot of alumni had worked to bring the roof to the school but didn’t get to see it put in place.

Proponents of green roofs say they cut down a building’s heating and cooling costs; they improve air quality; they attract birds and helpful insescts; and they hold the potential to clean up streams and rivers.

The school has already begun to incorporate the roof into its curriculum. A carpentry class constructed the raised plant beds. Daniel Torres, a junior at the school who is studying plumbing, is working on creating an irrigation system, with the help of one of his teachers.

For the students who have chosen to specialize in architecture, home construction, plumbing, or heating and cooling ventilation, the roof comes just in time. Come 2014, those specializations will no longer be offered. Smith will limit its curriculum to automotive repair.

It took four years and much effort to bring the roof to Mott Haven. The saga began in 2006,  when the City Gardens Club approached Sustainable South Bronx. The club was looking for a school that would be right for a green roof, said Miquela Craytor, Sustainable South Bronx’s executive director.

Not long after, Nathaniel Wight, the school’s speech pathologist and science club director, took his students to Sustainable South Bronx’s offices for a field trip.

Craytor told him that they had funds in hand and were  looking for a school, Wright said.

According to Craytor, “It was very serendipitous. It seemed to happen at the right time.”

And Smith was the right place. Both institutions are located in the South Bronx. As a career and technical high school, the roof would provide a real-world application for its coursework.

However, getting the job done was far from easy. The School Construction Authority had to approve the project. But Sustainable South Bronx and the School faced a problem: how do you ask a government agency for permission to build something that has never been built before?

“When you confront people in the facilities office and the School Construction Authority and say ‘We’re going to do this’ they’re like, ‘No you’re not. What do you mean?’” Wight said.

Students explained how green roofs worked to construction authority engineers who visited the school, and urged them to approve the project, Melany Javier, who graduated from Smith in May, recalled.

Once the agency approved the roof, it took nine months of planning before it could be installed, said Michael Cluer, the project manager who oversaw the installation.

The roof will be maintained by Sustainable South Bronx’s job-training program, which equips adults with “green” construction skills. Students, too,  will continue to have access to it.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

An alley separating the Mott Haven Branch Library and an apartment building is used to store the library's trash.Photo by Sergey Kadinsky

Trash from other branches in the borough collects in adjacent alley

The Mott Haven Library is the oldest public library building in the Bronx, and one of the architectural gems of the Mott Haven Historic District. But the New York Public Library system uses the alley next door as a dump.

All the borough’s branch libraries–from Riverdale to Highbridge–package their trash and drive it to the alley. Whenever the branches have to dispose of a large item too big to fit in a trash can—a wooden table or chair, a microfilm machine or a bookcase, for example—it, too, winds up in a dumpster parked at the Mott Haven branch.

Library officials won’t explain why.

After numerous phone calls and emails from the Mott Haven Herald, library spokesman Herbert Scher responded only: “The Library has determined that the current location is the best one for centralized collection of bulk trash items.”

Neighbors complain that the dumpster stinks, something library officials deny, saying only certain types trash, not the smelly variety, is deposited there. In addition, residents say, the dumpster is an eyesore in a part of Mott Haven that is becoming more upscale, as homeowners and landlords renovate their buildings.

“There’s no reason why there should be a dumpster here,” said artist Linda Cunningham, who lives two buildings down from the library. “This is a residential area.”

When the National Register of Historic Places listed Alexander Avenue in 1980, it praised the “two fine civic buildings”—the 41st Precinct and the library—for “their harmonious proportions and low scale which blend into the surrounding environment.”

Financed by Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy a century ago, the library’s design was inspired by the Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, which today houses the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

The dumpster arrived in the alley almost four years ago, according to Dorothy Louise, a playwright who lives in a condominium two buildings down from the library. She considers the dumpster an eyesore in an otherwise improving neighborhood.

Louise’s home is a former textile factory and warehouse that has been divided into condominium lofts, settled largely by artists, musicians and other creative professionals. Across the street from the library, a run-down walkup is being renovated, with a new sidewalk tree, courtesy of the city.
The offending dumpster is parked in an alley separating the library from a four-story walkup.

On the ground floor, Stephanie Meza, 19, has a bedroom window facing the alley and the dumpster. “My mother has to put on the fire to get out the smell,” said Meza. “We’ve called 311 because of the foul smell. The trash is over the top.”

Meza also said that noisy garbage trucks empty the dumpster as early as 6:30 in the morning.

“The trucks wake me up,” said Meza. “And the workers are loud and rude.”

“I’ve spoken with the library staff,” said Louise. “And they don’t want it here, either.”
Throughout the week, janitors from the various branches drive the trash to the dumpster. The Sanitation Department collects it from the alleyway.

“The Sanitation Department won’t pick up individual bulk items from a library,” said Scher initially. “They have to pick them up at one location in a dumpster.”

Not so, says the Sanitation Department. “The Sanitation Department does not require the New York Public Library to bring their bulk items to the Mott Haven branch,” said spokesman Matthew Lipani in an email response.

In Queens, whose public libraries are not part of the New York Public Library system, “each location has its trash collected individually,” says Queens Library spokeswoman Joanne King.

While the alley behind the Mott Haven branch is used to store trash, other nearby branches have better uses for their outdoor space. The Morrisania branch has park-like landscaping around its building, while the Hunts Point branch has an unused alley behind it.

Lipani, the Sanitation Department spokesman, defended the way the library maintains the dumpster saying, “the area where the container is stored is clear of debris and does not constitute an ‘eyesore.’”

Neighbors disagree.

“There are a lot of cats here,” said Meza. “And people throwing trash over the fence.”
In response to those complaints and an inquiry from the Mott Haven Herald, the library installed a mesh fence and tarp in early November to cover the alley from public view, which further offended the neighbors.

“That masks it, but we still have garbage out here,” said Tyko Kilhstedt, a painter, pointing at a garbage bag outside the fence. Kihlstedt’s wife Andrea, has also spoken with library staff, and says they share her dislike of the tarp.

The Public Library administration insists the dumpster is necessary and unavoidable. “We do not have an alternative site, and this will be used for the foreseeable future,” said Scher.

“It will still smell,” said Kilhstedt. “It could be a nice small park, but at the moment it’s just an eyesore.”

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of The Mott Haven Herald.

Windmills help generate electricity for the the Eltona, an affordable housing complex in Melrose.

If wind huffs and puffs it will blow electric bill down

From blocks away, you can spot 10 white windmills whirling atop the five-story brick building on East 156^th Street. The wind-powered turbines help generate clean electricity for the 63 rental apartments inside.

This is the new, green, look of affordable housing, and Melrose is leading the way.

Called the Eltona, the building is the latest addition to housing for low-income families in the neighborhood. Its state-of-the art, energy efficient features are what you might expect to find in the trendy apartments of Williamsburg or SoHo.

“When you speak of green roofs, when you speak of sustainability, when you speak of green structures, we’re number one,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., boasted at the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony on Oct. 27.

The Eltona is the first affordable housing development in New York City to qualify for the highest rating a green building can get, called LEED Platinum. The Bronx itself is home to 86 percent of the LEED certified-for-home units in the state, according to Les Bluestone, president of Blue Sea Development, the Eltona’s developer.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certification system developed by the United States Green Building Council to rate how environmentally friendly a building is. Platinum is the highest a building can achieve, followed by gold, silver, and just plain LEED-certified.

The Eltona offers one-, two- and three-bedroom rental units for $782, $943 and $1,089 a month, respectively. Eligibility is determined by family size and income. A family of four must earn no more than $46,080.

Blue Sea has received more than 2,400 applications, according to Bluestone, and about 20 leases have been signed so far.

Twenty-three-year-old Tia Smith and her two-year-old daughter were among the first residents to settle into the Eltona. Smith was on the verge of eviction a few months ago after the rent in her last apartment was raised to $1,300 a month.

The Eltona is one of several environmentally friendly, affordable buildings in Melrose Commons.

“I didn’t know where I was going four months ago, where I was going to live,” Smith said. “Now I know I have a place to come home to.”

Smith and other Eltona residents will also serve as the subjects of an environmental study by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. The study will monitor the effects of living in a green building on health.

In addition, no smoking is permitted anywhere in the building, and health authorities hope that will have an impact on asthma symptoms in a neighborhood where asthma is epidemic.

The Eltona isn’t the only or first building in the neighborhood to go green. Melrose Commons, as this area of redeveloped housing units is known, is also home to Sunflower Way on East 158^th St between Melrose and Elton Avenues. Completed in 2002, the 30 three-family homes were the first affordable housing to qualify for an Energy Star label through the use of energy efficient appliances, heating and water systems.

In 2007, Blue Sea Development built the nearby Morrisania Homes, the first affordable housing units in the state to receive any kind of LEED certification.

Construction of a LEED Silver building is nearing completion on East 158^th Street. The Jardin de Selene, as the building is called, stands 12-stories high, one of the tallest structures in Melrose Commons.

The building used recycled materials during construction, has bamboo floors and counter tops and solar cells on its roof that will generate about three percent of the building’s annual electricity needs.

But no other housing is quite like the Eltona. Its residents will also be eligible to receive on-site job training from Wildcat Service Corporation, a New York nonprofit.

And then there are those rooftop windmills.

The windmills are an experiment, Bluestone says. Blue Sea is still trying to determine whether or not the turbines are worthwhile, since their efficiency depends on how strong the winds are in a given day and location. (The Eltona also has an electricity source in the building’s basement that works with the turbines.)

“Between the two of them, if it happens to be a windy day, then we could be providing about 90 percent of the building’s electricity,” Bluestone said, “but the wind would have to be steady.

“The jury is still out on whether it’s practical in that location,” he continued.

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

Pablo Rivera reaches down to check on vegetables in the Bronx Community and Cultural Garden (Click on image to see more)

Urban farmers won’t rest when the last crop is picked

On a warm weekday morning in September, Valeria Cantero arrives at Brook Park, on Brook Avenue between 140th and 141st streets. She opens the gate with a key and locks up behind herself. After leaving her things in the center of the garden, Cantero ducks into the back of the lot, emerging with an armful of sticks to light a cooking fire.

One of 20 people who maintain plots of vegetables in Brook Park, Cantero grows tomatoes, beans, peppers and cilantro for her family. She is in the park almost daily, often working alongside her daughter Esperanza, who tends to her own neighboring plot.

Even as the last vegetables are harvested in Mott Haven’s gardens, the work won’t stop. For Cantero and the others who maintain the gardens and the organizations that support them, the colder months are a time to build, plan and finish projects so that next summer’s crop will be even more bountiful than this year’s.

If the off-season, Raymond Figueroa, the Youth Farm Coordinator of Brook Park, who organizes programs and partnerships for young people, will continue to work with students from the International Community High School on Brook Avenue.

This summer they dug up an area of asphalt right in the center of the garden. This fall a hoop house–a simple greenhouse that uses the sun to heat a protected room–will go up, making it possible to grow early vegetables as well as delicate seedlings that will be planted in the spring and become part of next year’s crop.

Another project in the works for next season will be the expansion of the park’s composting system. Composting is a way to treat waste from the kitchen so that when it decays it enriches the soil. Brook Park currently composts its own waste and accepts food waste (but no meat) from homes in the neighborhood. With more space to treat compost the operation will grow, helping the park’s urban farmers to produce higher quality food.

Encouraging this cycle of planting, growing, eating and composting is all a way for the Mott Haven community to become healthier in the long run, according to Figueroa. “I’m looking at this from a real community development vantage point,” he says. “You have to engage young people.”

Mott Haven and Hunts Point have New York City’s highest adult rates of diabetes, a disease that is linked to obesity and a lack of available healthy food choices. Residents can’t count on finding affordable, fresh foods nearby, Figueroa points out. That is why, he says, it is so important that local gardens teach young people to farm, and why the Brook Park garden donates much of the food it produces to local churches and soup kitchens.

A few blocks away in the Bronx Community and Cultural Garden, at 143rd Street and Willis Avenue, there is an entirely different “to-do” list. For starters, says Liz Gonzales, an active gardener there, “Animals have to eat!” She points to the chicken coop where a number of shiny brown hens are marching around, and to the cage that houses a few floppy-eared rabbits.

Under plenty of flapping Puerto Rican flags, the Community and Cultural Garden produces peppers, squash, tomatoes, eggplant, corn, tomatillos, basil, cilantro, pumpkins, cabbage, and even a small patch of aloe.

After the harvest, a crop of winter rye will be planted to enrich next year’s soil, says Simon Skinner of the New York Restoration Project, the group that owns the land and supports the garden’s programs. Grass will be reseeded where dancing has flattened it over the summer, and members are looking into building a raised deck next to their covered stage.

Major mulching and tree-trimming projects will also happen over the winter in “one of the few gardens where,” Skinner says, “people will sit outside all year.”

In the Community and Cultural Garden, as in Brook Park, schoolteachers are meeting with gardeners about working together this fall to use the garden as a teaching tool for the neighborhood’s children.

Back in Brook Park, Cantero has started a small fire underneath a huge black pot filled with water and ears of corn from the local bodega. She makes a lid out of a large checkered cloth and stands watch over her cooking under an old Willow tree.

Another woman strolls in and asks if she can pick a few sunflowers. Meanwhile, a fourth-grade class from PS 369 has entered the park. They gather in the corner with Figueroa to check out the student farm.

Over in the tool-shed last year’s garlic is hanging to dry. This year’s crop of garlic won’t be planted until after the first frost, sometime in November–one of the many tasks still to come in Brook Park.

The gardeners won’t just be planting the ingredients of future meals, Figueroa says. They’ll be “planting social responsibility while planting seeds.”

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

Betances Houses residents are tired of sharing their building with live --and dead-- rats.

Tenants complain that they live in ‘The stinkiest building in New York” and say the Housing Authority makes things worse

By Lindsay Lazarski
lindsay.lazarski@motthavenherald.com