Bees in the City? New York May Let the Hives Come Out of Hiding

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s board will take up the issue of amending the health code to allow residents to keep hives of Apis mellifera, the common, nonaggressive honeybee. Health department officials said the change was being considered after research showed that the reports of bee stings in the city were minimal and that honeybees did not pose a public health threat.

The officials were also prodded by beekeepers who, in a petition and at a public hearing last month, argued that their hives promoted sustainable agriculture in the city. from the NY Times..

for the rest of article click here

LIC Boathouse Fundraiser Tomorrow, 3.11.2010

initially posted on my own blog - thought I'd put it here, too.

D'OH! I had meant to post about this MUCH sooner! The Long Island City Boathouse is having their annual benefit on Thursday, March 11th (tomorrow night, at the time I'm writing this) at the Foundry, half a block south of the Long Island City end of the Queensboro Bridge. Full info is available on licboathouse.org.

This event is personally & enthusiastically endorsed by Sebago clubmate Walter. He's one of the founding members & grand Poo-Bahs of the Sebago Cruising Committee & believe me, the Sebago Cruising Committee knows a thing or twenty-seven about having fun. If Walter says it's a good party, it's a good party!

DEP opens microbiology lab at Newtown Creek plant

City officials today announced the opening of a new $2.3 million microbiology laboratory that will improve operational efficiency and enhance monitoring of local waterways.

The new lab, located at Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, will consolidate bacteriological analyses for all 14 city wastewater treatment plants, increase DEP’s ability to compare test results across its facilities, and help achieve the highest levels of pollutant removal and disinfection from the 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater that New Yorkers produce every day, according to a press release.

“This new microbiology lab will substantially increase our monitoring and testing capacity, giving us the vital information we need to meet and exceed treatment standards, and continue the resurgence of New York City’s waterways that is central to Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC vision.” said Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Cas Holloway.

The new 2,000 square-foot lab will also allow for a significant increase in the number of water samples that can be analyzed with existing staff.

Dolphin spotted in Brooklyn's polluted Newtown Creek

A dolphin was spotted Wednesday in Brooklyn's notoriously polluted Newtown Creek.

"We were just amazed," said Roy Arezzo, one of two teachers from the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School who saw the 7-foot dolphin swimming deeper into the filthy water.

Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn Is Given Superfund Status

From the New York Times: The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it was designating the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn a contaminated Superfund site, paving the way for a cleanup of the decades of pollution there.
The decision comes as a blow to the Bloomberg administration, which had proposed a cleanup that would avoid such a designation. The city argued that the designation could set off legal battles with polluters, defer completion of a cleanup and torpedo construction by developers deterred by the stigma of a Superfund label.

The E.P.A. estimated that the federal cleanup would last 10 to 12 years and cost $300 million to $500 million. Read the rest of this click here

Another Winter Paddle

A couple weeks ago Pete, Phil and I(stevie) paddled out to the Warf for lunch.
We spotted a lone seal near Ruffle Bar, probably the same one we saw a couple weeks ago. It was too far away to get a decent picture.
The wind picked up and we had a real workout returning into a strong headwind.

Here's some videos of Phil and Pete testing out the new dock:

Elders Point Mitigation and Restoration - Jamaica Bay, NY

This challenging, $15 million project was declared “nearly impossible” by one regional construction company who declined to bid on the job due to its complexity and its rigid time constraints. GBI was the only contractor to bid on this daunting job, and completed the project within the stringent schedule specified. The project required the cooperation of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Port Authority of NY and NJ, the NYS DEC, and the National Park Service.

The project began with GBI moving 162,000 cubic yards of sand from a stockpile at Floyd Bennet Airfield through more than 3 miles of pipeline using two booster pumps. The sand was moved to Elders Point East Island in the middle of Jamaica Bay, where it was retained by a system of coir log structures which surround the island. The sand was then graded using a GPS-guided bulldozer, which graded the sand to within a half-inch of the specified grade. Following this task, 400,000 plants were installed within a 3-month accelerated time frame to ensure that the plants would thrive before the end of planting system.click here

$13-Million Elder's Island Project Helps Stem Jamaica Bay Salt Marsh Loss

"Working with our partners, this project is the first step towards the long and complex journey of addressing the salt marsh loss within Jamaica Bay. During the first phase, more than $13 million of construction activity to restore the environment at this site will provide 70 acres of wetlands for our harbor estuary," said Col. Richard J. Polo, Jr., New York district engineer. "This will be the first large scale marsh island restored, building on the Big Egg pilot, under the District's Jamaica Bay Marsh Islands Ecosystem Restoration Program." for more info, click here

HARS--Learn all about dredging, and what it means to us..

What is HARS?(Historic Area Remediation Site)

Dredging navigation channels, berthing piers and anchorage areas in the Port of New York and New Jersey is necessary to maintain our harbor and it's water dependent facilities (Figure 1). The harbor requires dredging because fine-grained sediments, transported by rivers and within estuaries, settle and accumulate on the sea floor, causing shoaling which interferes with safe navigation. Learn more about dredging, click here

Jamaica Bay Bullet Points

Specifically, the agreement-in-principle announced today includes commitments from the city to:

• Upgrade four sewage treatment plants to drastically reduce nitrogen discharges to the bay, on a schedule running through 2020
• Spend at least $15 million on marsh restoration over the next five years, which could leverage nearly $30 million in additional federal funding through the Corps of Engineers
• Resolve a long-running dispute over the city's Clean Water Act permits by agreeing to new, stricter permit terms that will lock in the treatment plant upgrades, and the resulting water quality improvements, into the future
• Improve water quality monitoring in the bay, which may include using new equipment to provide continuous, real-time information on conditions in the bay.
• Nitrogen discharges from the sewage treatment plants are the biggest cause of the severe water quality problems in Jamaica Bay. The plants discharge nearly 40,000 pounds of nitrogen into the bay daily, which cause harmful algae blooms that frequently render portions of the bay inhospitable to marine life and unusable for people. There is also mounting evidence that elevated nitrogen levels contribute to the rapid and accelerating loss of the bay's signature marshlands, which provide not only invaluable wildlife habitat but also shoreline erosion control and a protective flood barrier to the neighborhoods ringing the bay.