I had the privilege a couple of nights ago to hear Thomas Elmqvist speak. He talked about ecosystem services and cost-benefit analysis of restoring and maintaining greenspace specifically in Urban areas. One of the areas he touched upon was Wetland Restoration. I grew up exploring the rivers and swamps and marshes of Northwestern CT. Wetlands are something incredibly dear to me, and I guess my concern would be for the identification, protection and restoration of New York City's wetland areas. I was reading the PLANYC report on wetland areas in and around the metropolitan area, and it stated that wetlands under certain amount of acreage are not protected under federal protection iniatives. According to the report, PLANYC was about to start mapping those areas in 2008 when the iniative was started. My question would be, where is this iniative now? What steps have been made to protect existing wetland areas, of all sizes? Also, work is being done to restore areas like the Fresh Kills Landfill and areas of the Meadowlands, but those are major impact areas, what about smaller, equally important areas? I'm reminded of the swampy contaminated areas around the Staten Island Container Port, what about areas like that?
AHHH, its enough to make a fella go CRAZY!
http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2009/pr050-09.pdf
http://www.harborestuary.org/pdf/HabitatSiteList.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/5120.html
http://soilandwater.bee.cornell.edu/publications/MontaltoW04.pdf
Showing posts with label Ian Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian Johnson. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Montgomery Place, Pt. 2
Montgomery Place is located in the Annandale-on-Hudson historic district. Janet Livingston Montgomery purchased the land and had the manor built in the late 1770’s. She purchased the land after her husband’s death. The manor and outbuildings were finished in the early 1800’s. The most notable aspects of the estate are the gardens and the trails. The older gardens were designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, as well as the lay out of the lawns and the trails. On the southern acreage of the estate, the oldest old growth oak forest in the Hudson River valley still stands. Downing called this land “the Wilderness” for the trees and the bluffs that lead down to the Hudson River. In the north, the grounds are bordered by the Saw Kill whose waterfalls descend nearly 70 feet into the Hudson. Janet Livingston Montgomery planted apple orchards in the front of the estate, and the orchards have been kept and expanded on. They now sport nearly 60 different kinds of apples and pears as well as vegetable gardens and are sold at a farmer’s stand on the rt. 199 and rt. 9g junction.
Over the years acreage has been added to the estate, expanding it from the 250 acres Montgomery had purchased to nearly 450 acres. There are extensive trails that provide a couple of hours of hiking all around the estate. From the back porch of the main house the Catskills can be seen bordering the Hudson on the western shore and provide a very romantic and rustic atmosphere. Some of the gardens including the herb garden and the rough garden were added in the 1920’s. The manor was redesigned with the help of Alexander Jackson Davis in the 1840s.
In the 1980’s the estate was sold to the Historic Hudson Valley and was added to the register of Historic Places. In May 2010 the house was finally opened for public tours.
Montgomery Place
The apple branches were bare beneath the early November sky. In the switch grass a coyote stalked its prey as the trees above bore the full fruit of autumn. The Taconic parkway wound its way through upstate New York, through miserable old farm towns and bustling country villages. The rural life was tired, but true. On the simple back roads, where the power lines were down, old men with chainsaws worked to clear the roads of the debris from October’s storms.
There is something mythic about the down-home country life.
Away from the chaos of the concrete, and the selfishness of the fast-paced city life, there is no hiding from the hardship and the hard work of the simple life. Maybe Thoreau was right after all; maybe it was really about simplicity. Out here, beneath the big sky, where the rivers still tumble free from culverts and asphalt, the Great Spirit can be heard whispering the ancient song.
But you have to stop and listen.
I pulled off the Taconic near Red Hook and made my way west toward the Hudson. I carried in my back pocket a stone pulled from the shores of the Atlantic, where the waves had smoothed its rough edges soft as my lover’s skin. Sometimes, when I find myself near a body of water, I can begin to feel it shiver, as if to tell me home is merely a skip away.
Annandale is the type of town that maps have forgotten. Deep in the valley, guarded by old oaks and hemlocks, she is the virgin daughter of the Hudson, veiled and pure. Her marshes were singing beneath the sharp sun, and I found myself driving slow and watching the road for Rip van Winkle and Hudson’s crew, returning to the mountains for the last of autumn’s storms.
She is home to a great history.
Down an old dirt road I parked and wandered.
I found Montgomery Place as it might have been 170 years ago. The gardens, in neat array, were kept by old caretakers. I paused a moment as they raked the leaves.
“Do y’all have to rake the entire property?”
“You bet,” they said with a laugh.
“Damn, I hope their payin’ you well.”
“Well, it’s good work either way.”
I nodded and looked out across the lawn, “This is a beautiful place.”
“This is your first time here?”
“Yeah.”
“Make sure you make the hike down to the Saw Kill.”
“Yeah? What makes that so special?”
The older of the two workers smiled, “you’ll see.”
I laughed, “alright then, I’ll let you get back to work and I’ll go explore.”
“Don’t get lost,” he said with a pause, “unless that’s what you want.”
I nodded and ambled across the grounds. Past the old gardens, and down in front of the old manor house. For a moment I trespassed into history. The stone was as beautiful as it must have been when it was built. Just the thought that someone had lived there made me uneasy. It seemed too much, even for a family and its servants. The darkness inched over me as I felt subdued by the boredom of money and privilege.
It was something I just didn’t understand.
But I turned the corner around the house, and the lower lawns stretched their lazy bodies down along the banks of the Hudson, and basked beneath the smiling Catskills. The sun began to dip toward the horizon, and the shadows were growing long. There appeared a golden haze above the river and I felt that if I got to close, I might disappear and become a part of the river legend.
The darkness subsided, and the freedom replaced it.
I followed an old trail down to the banks of the Saw Kill. The river surged to meet the Hudson, and I understood the old men and their mystery. The river fell and tumbled over great stones and filled the air with boisterous song. The stone in my pocket trembled. I climbed the rocky banks and stood beside the rushing water. I looked down the falls and for a moment I thought about tomorrow. About the days left.
Was man ever meant to sit still, or were we meant to run like the river, and at the end of it all join something greater?
The return to my car was slow, intentionally slow. I paused to watch the blue jays contend for space in the canopy. Down in the marsh I heard the brotherly bark of a heron, and was soon joined by its shadow as it passed above me. Soon I turned the key and drove back down the old dirt road, and history returned to its place in the past.
I made one more stop before rejoining the Taconic and heading home. I stopped the truck at the Montgomery Place farmer’s market. The apples and squash were the last of the season, and the supply was dwindling, the herald of the coming winter. In the fridges I found what I was looking for, hard cider. I bought two mason jars full of it and two butternut squashes. The girl working the stand was beautiful, with soft blue eyes and tangled brown hair woven with sunshine.
She smiled at me.
I placed the stuff on the counter and caught her eyes.
“That’s exactly what I would have bought.”
“Is the cider any good.”
“Its delicious, but I help make it so I might be biased.”
“Oh really?” I popped the top and took a swig.
“How do you like it?” she bit her lip.
The cider was crisp and finished smooth, “Delicious.”
She sighed, “I’m glad you like it.”
She rung me up and I left her, and our story ended before it began.
On the ride home I felt warm and alive, and as I pulled into my town, the sun set behind me.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Hudson Bike Trip-Significant Places
Places of Significance
North River Wastewater Treatment Plant: This is a large wastewater treatment plant built over the Hudson greenway along the river at approx. 125th St. It handles a large amount of the human waste and from the West Side. The treated water, called effluent, is released into the Hudson, and the treated sludge is dewatered and turned into “bio-solids” and used as fertilizer. There was a heated controversy over the creation of the plant, as it was originally designed to be on the Hudson at approx. 72nd St, but the predominately white, upper-middle class, community in that region rejected the idea, and the site was moved to the much poorer West Harlem.
Hastings-on-Hudson: In 1977 the Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO) purchased an industrial site along the river previously owned by Anaconda Wire and Cable Company. ARCO did an environmental impact assessment of the site and began small remedial measures to clear the site of the old industrial buildings. The site was placed on the State Superfund list as ARCO’s tests revealed high levels of PCBs and heavy metals. ARCO has worked alongside the DEC, the Riverkeeper and the town of Hastings-on-Hudson to remediate and redesign the waterfront area. Currently it’s approx. 29 acres of concrete with a metal slurry wall in the Hudson River. Steps towards full remediation have not begun yet.
Phillipsburg Manor: Frederick Phillipse was a Dutch merchant who settled in what would become Sleepy Hollow. Through his skill in business and his marriages he came to own nearly 52,000 acres of Westchester county. His manor became a center of colonial era trade, and when the British took the island of Manhattan from the Dutch he traded allegiances so he could keep doing business. His sons sided with the British crown during the Revolution, and lost the estate. It is now a center of cultural history, alongside the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, where fairs and other events tell of the history and legends of the small town.
Hudson Bike Trip-Creative
Going home was the easy part.
But then again, I suppose it always is.
The trial is set up only in the first steps, not the last ones. Whatever happens second is staged by what came first.
The trip, as I would come to call it, truly started with a shot of whiskey and a few cigarettes the night before. My roommate Eric and I traced the map while still mostly sober, before the heavy drunk of the city night filled our bellies and brought our bones the great sleep. We traced the map when immortality was still lightning in our veins.
Such is youth, fleeting and magnificent.
In the morning, before the hang over passed, I climbed out of bed. The night had become a casual college memory, and I knew there was something that I wanted to accomplish before the day ended, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was.
Then Eric opened his door.
“You feelin okay dude?”
I took a moment to answer, and replied, “eh, I could be worse.”
“You still gonna do it?”
It? I didn’t know at first what he was talking about, but when I noticed my bike leaning against the wall, I remembered.
“Hell yeah I’m still gonna do it, you having doubts?”
“I’ve been up since dawn, and I feel like shit.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well dude, ima stick around for a bit more, memorize the map and stuff, I’ll wait to see if you change your mind.”
“I’m just gonna try to sleep.”
“Alright buddy.”
He shut his door but I lingered a few seconds longer. By myself? I wasn’t so certain anymore if I could make it. The trip seemed manageable with a partner, someone to push me when I faltered, to mock me when it looked like I was wimping out. But by myself? I felt small, inadequate.
But I’m from New England, and we are a stubborn and proud sort of people, and when we say we are going to do a task one way, we are damn well going to do it that way.
So around noon, with no food yet in my belly, and only a few memorized road names, I took to the road.
The Hudson River Greenway carried me fifteen miles up the west side of Manhattan toward the Bronx. The air was salty, and the wind was crisp, heralding the coming autumn. Bikers, runners and walkers of every sort created a human traffic jam on the narrow causeways as the West Side highway thundered beside us to the pace of the city.
Soon I was crossing the Spuyten Duyvil Creek into the Bronx alongside the Henry Hudson Parkway. The waters down below swirled, there was no identifiable current, and I understood why it was named after the devil. It was not a place to be in the water.
Here I turned from the protection of the trail to the chaos of Westchester County roads, riding first through Yonkers, and then continuing north. The smell of the city clung to the subsidized housing projects and the slum neighborhoods I passed through. Down below, the Hudson sat quietly, watching the city with indifference.
It was not a place that I would stay long.
Outside of Yonkers, where the chaos of the city began to dwindle, autumn started to fill the air. The smells of decaying leaves and the cool air beneath the trees was a welcome friend as the roads turned more country.
I stopped for the first time in Hastings-on-Hudson. The town was small, and quaint. The type of place families go to raise their kids, or retire. I had lunch at a place called Mauds, I had a couple of pints and the chili. It was the way mama fixed it, right down to the cheese on the top. I tipped generously and explored the town a bit, trespassing onto an area by the water that was a few acres of concrete by what appeared an old abandoned factory.
I left when the security guard began to creep about.
I was back on the road.
Just before Tarrytown I made a wrong turn. The road wound through small towns and brought me inland where the trees were thick and the first signs of fatigue took me. After a lucky guess and muscle I didn’t know I had, I passed over the hill and back toward the Hudson. The road brought me toward Sleepy Hollow. In the air was the scent of legend and apples, and along the main road, in an old graveyard, the Dutch festival was going on. I paused to watch families and teenagers pay their way into history for a brief moment.
Sometimes homesickness finds us at the strangest times, and I wondered about my town. The apples would be ripe now, and the pumpkins almost. I could see my friends around the bonfire, in jeans, boots and sweatshirts, drinking cheap beer and playing low on the guitar as the night deepened.
My body felt very tired for a moment, there was still a lot of road left.
The next few hills I would climb tested me beyond what I would have expected. And after a brief stop at a firehouse for some water and friendly faces, and after a friendly truck driver gave me a lift, I was passing through Ossining, and nearing the trail that would take me to Croton Point. The sun was falling, and the light on the water of Croton Bay brought peace to my bones.
The gold danced and shivered on the small wave crests as the reeds on the banks whispered of where the river came from. The whir of the highway behind me faded as I stood alone with the water and the sun and everything was right in the world for one moment.
I took my time for the last couple of miles, and as I entered the park I felt accomplished. I didn’t think about the trip, and I didn’t think about the next day, I only thought about the trees, and the grasses and how it would feel to sleep beneath the stars for the first time in weeks.
And resting that night, life was good.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Long Island Sound
It was early. The sun had yet to shape the eastern sky, but night was casually receding from the heavens. A pale blue light began to fill up the empty spaces. The whiskey and coffee in my gut kept me awake. Justin sat staring listlessly out the window, his eyes focused on the indistinct horizon.
“Where did you say we were headed?”
“Sachem’s head.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Its just below Guilford, along the sound.”
“Ahhh, sounds good.”
We retained the silence until I began navigating the narrow coastal roads that provided the local neighborhoods with their “beach” access. We rolled our windows down, and the smell of low tide slipped into the truck cab. Private roads slid along the intertidal flats, and were walled off by ramshackle chain-link fences. No trespassing signs decorated the walls that divided the casual observer and the homeowner.
We came to a boat launch and I pulled the truck down to the tide line. In the east the sun had begun to pour gold onto everything. I shivered; it was colder than I had imagined it would be.
“Hey Justin, wanna swim?”
“Hell no dude, this water looks gross.”
I looked out across the water and took in the surround. What made this place gross? Was it our own preconceptions that the Sound was still a fetid pool of pollution? Or was it that it was an injured organism trying to survive, and we would be swimming in the wound?
Switchgrass danced along the shore in the morning wind, providing the steep, clay, banks that ran up to the road with some degree of stability. Erosion was occurring beneath the roots, but someone had brought gravel and stone blocks in to support the asphalt roads. This stunted the growth of the shore grasses and shrubs, and provided an unusual habitat where brackish wetlands would have once dominated the small estuaries that poked their fingers into the Sound.
Out on the flats, the water shimmered with mineral and petroleum waste, little man made rainbows. Small periwinkles filled the puddles. An invasive species, they feed exclusively on algae. The abundance of snails meant the algae level had to be high in the region.
“Is this still as polluted as it once was?”
“Not as much anymore…but it still struggles.”
I looked out into the water and imagined what it would have looked like in the summer of 1987, when oxygen levels dropped to record lows all over the western part of the sound. I pictured the algae bloom that covered they area from Rye, NY to Bridgeport, CT. It all decomposed at once and created the largest recorded area of hypoxia in United States history.
No oxygen in the water meant that everything died, almost instantly.
And here, on the Sound this morning I watched as gulls descended on the once dead water, and pulled out mussels and periwinkles. I looked over at Justin.
“The Sound is rebuilding itself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, we just have to give it time.”
**Most of the info from this piece was pulled from first hand observation and from reading; This Fine Piece of Water, by Tom Anderson. Tom Anderson is a journalist and environmental activist. His book has provided us with a historical and ecological look at what man has done to the Sound, and the steps we are now following to fix our errors. In 1987, Barbara Welsh was the lead scientist on a research vessel that was doing routine tests on saltiness, water clarity and oxygen levels. In July she discovered a band of algae that covered nearly the entire western third of the Sound. On July 28th the algae died, and began to decompose rapidly. In the center of the band, oxygen levels dropped to 0.000 milligrams of oxygen per liter. This created a mass execution of almost all the living organisms within the band. Lobsters died in the pots, fish in the nets, and the smell was horrifying. Over the past 24 years, through policy making, and renewed confidence in the Sound, man has let the Sound rebuild itself. People have begun viewing it as a place where they can swim and fish again, but with this new mentality comes a new responsibility, we can never take for granted the very ecosystem we are a part of.
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