Results tagged “pollution”

While the Parks Department's solution to the city's garbage is a giant Dumpster amongst the trees, the same thing can't quite help our water. The Daily News has a report card on our beaches, and of the 13 rated in the annual "Testing the Water" guide... things aren't looking so good.

Air pollution from cars and cigarettes can lower a child's IQ. That's the finding of a new study that tracked mothers and their children living in Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx.

The bottlenose dolphins that have surrounded New York City in the past week are definitely a welcomed visitor. Not just because they are adorable and probably don't want to kill us (unlike some aquatic guests), but it means that our water could be cleaner than we thought (not to mention stocked with plenty of herring). Newsday reports that "fishermen and scientists said it has been 30 or more years since they'd seen bottlenose dolphins in the Sound in the summertime, and experts agree that the marine mammals came here following food. Experts say the real test will be next year if the dolphins return. If they do, there is a chance the Sound waters are clean enough to sustain a population of the animals." Dolphins used to be a common sight in the Sound, until the post-WWII development boom that helped pollute our waters, but maybe this is the first step in getting them back. Now, can we add some puppies to this story?

Not surprising, but still troubling: A new study from the University of Washington and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health shows that subways are the loudest forms of mass transit in the city. Some of the noise levels recorded in the subway exceeded 100 decibels, which is loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss for regular straphangers if they're exposed to it for even as little as two minutes a day. (The subway system's average decibel level was 80.4) Health expert Robyn Gershon tells NY1, "For a typical day, you should not exceed between 70 and 75 decibels across that 24 hours. Once you do, it accumulates time after time, year after year, and after a while, you will have hearing loss." The MTA says noise reduction has long been a concern, and their efforts to hush up include retro-fitting stations with noise absorbing barriers and quieting track noise with welded rail fasteners. But we'd be happy if they could just do something about the maddening train brake screeching at Union Square!

Toxic vapors are intruding into Greenpoint homes, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is having difficulty assessing the problem because many residents will not allow their homes to be tested, according to a scary report in the Times today. The vapors in question are not wafting from the famous oil plume in Greenpoint's groundwater that went undetected until 1978, but are believed to be left over from other businesses that no longer operate in the neighborhood.

Responding to pressure from Representatives Anthony Weiner and Nydia Velazquez, the E.P.A. has agreed to conduct “preliminary tests” that could lead to Newtown Creek being named a federal Superfund site, City Room reports. In 1978, the Coast Guard realized that a toxic oil plume in Greenpoint's groundwater had been seeping into the creek. A study the following year estimated the contamination at 17 million gallons and 55 acres wide, but it may actually be closer to 30 million gallons, according to a study released last year. If the E.P.A. tests qualify the site for Superfund status, the cleanup will be aided by millions in federal money, and the E.P.A. could sue Exxon Mobil and other companies for polluting the area. And last year attorney general Andrew Cuomo filed his own lawsuit.

Yesterday, the U.S. Olympic cycling team arrived at Beijing's airport and their masked visages caused a frenzy. The cyclists wore the U.S. Olympic Committee-designed and issued masks to protect them from Beijing's polluted air. One team member told the NY Times, “They told us that the Chinese were mad and that this is a politically charged issue, but we didn’t mean to offend anybody. When [the USOC] handed us these masks, they never said, ‘Here they are, but don’t wear them.’" Now the team has apologized, saying, "The wearing of protective masks upon our arrival into Beijing was strictly a precautionary measure we as athletes chose to take, and was in no way meant to serve as an environmental or political statement."

Montreal-based food writer Taras Grescoe thinks something fishy is up with the global seafood economy. From pollutants to piracy, preservatives to Patagonian toothfish, Grescoe surveys the state of our collective waterways in his new book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, which combines some literal seabed muckraking with a fascinating travelogue. Each chapter follows a specific fish down the food chain from net to dinner plate; the book is a sort of aquatic The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Grescoe emerges with a clear breakdown of the issues, and a guide for sourcing seafood with an emphasis on sustainability.

NYC’s air quality has gotten substantially worse compared to other cities, according to the American Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" survey. Since last year the city jumped from 10th worst in the nation for ozone pollution (smog) to an eighth place ranking. And in the category of short-term particle pollution (soot), NYC nabbed 13th place after ranking 17th worst in the last study. (L.A., the undisputed smog heavyweight, coasted to 1st place again.)

The growing backlash against bottled water as an environmental abomination is stretching into some of NYC's premiere eating and drinking establishments. Ten years ago it was the de rigeur of fashion to be toting a bottle of water everywhere one went; now it marks you as a polluting pariah. According to the New York Post, bottled water is being banned at places like the Waverly Inn, Il Buco, Del Posto, Gemma in the Bowery Hotel, Bobo, Gusto Organics and Broadway East.

Moving can take a real toll on the environment. Think of all the cardboard boxes, the truck(s), the frequent opening of doors to climate-controlled rooms and the products and solutions you use to clean the whole place down for the next tenants because you're an awesome person bucking for canonization. Step one on reducing your impact -- the easiest step -- is recycling. And it's not too hard to find earth-friendly cleaning products. But...

Two companies are vying to be chosen to lay an electricity transmission cable from New Jersey to Manhattan and ultimately, both may wind up doing the job to feed the city's need for juice. The deadline is 2010, when the Charles Poletti Power Project in Astoria, Queens is scheduled to shut down. According to The New York Times, the EPA has identified that plant as the third-largest source of toxic pollutants in the city. Two...

Yesterday morning, surfers contacted the Coast Guard about "tar-like balls of oil washing up" on the shoreline of Lido Beach, near Jones Beach on Long Island. The surfers said they also had oil on their wet suits. The spill seems to be about 3000 feet wide and 1500 feet long. Now the Coast Guard, working with other local, state and federal agencies, are trying to figure out where the spill is coming from as they...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Seattle yesterday to give a keynote at the United States Conference of Mayors. The Mayor, aka Mr. "I'm not running for president in 2008" Bloomberg, discussed NYC's efforts to be more sustainable and how governments need to invest and innovate to encourage energy efficiency. And one of the innovations would be to introduce pollution pricing. He said:

we have to stop ignoring the laws of economics. As long as greenhouse gas pollution is free, it will be abundant. If we want to reduce it, there has to be a cost for producing it. The voluntary targets suggested by President Bush would be like voluntary speed limits - doomed to fail. If we're serious about climate change, the question is not whether we should put a value on greenhouse gas pollution, but how we should do it.

ART: Secrets of Coney Island Creek opens at the Brooklyn Public Library tonight. The exhibit of photographs by photog/author/Coney Island native Charles Denson goes back to the 1960s "when the waterway was at a low point, surrounded by industry and suffering from neglect and pollution. Since then, portions of the creek have been reclaimed, drawing both wildlife and residents to its shores. The photographs in Secrets of Coney Island Creek document those early decades and offer a fascinating and comprehensive portrait of the creek today and its relationship to the Coney Island community."

The taxi strike is over and rates are back to normal, but many people may have discovered that ride-sharing in a cab is a great way to save money. Fortunately, there are a few online services that can facilitate sharing a cab and splitting the fare to the airport or around town with fellow New Yorkers. Consider it yellow-carpooling. Last year we wrote about hitchsters.com, the online service that formalizes ride shares by matching users through its database. Hitchsters.com works by matching flight information with time, dates, and locations of passengers to make splitting a cab to the airport easier. Similarly, the recently launched SplitaCab.com also focuses on sharing rides to the three major area airports using a GoogleMaps mashup. Both services focus on rides to the airport to and from Manhattan, although hitchsters.com has a beta version that includes Brooklyn.

It's a mixed bag for Columbia today. The school was probably happy to find out that it ranked 9th in U.S News & World Report's latest top college ranking issues, but it's no fun to learn that its billion-dollar Manhattanville project was rejected by a community board committee.

We don't have the luxury of forgetting indefinitely because this is not a sustainable proposition. By the time my kids are my age, they're going to look back and say, "You did what with the last drop of fossil fuels? You pushed a watermelon from Chile to your door so that you could eat it out of season? What were you thinking?"

The alternative energy company that has plans to install hundreds of turbines in the East River to harness tidal energy and generate zero-emission electrical power is running into trouble due to the massive amount of energy they are dealing with. The small number of turbines already placed in the East River by Verdant Power have been temporarily removed as the strong currents continue to overwhelm the physical construction of the underwater "windmills." The six turbines that were placed in the water last December and were capable of supplying 1,000 daily kilowatt hours of power and serving the Gristedes supermarket on Roosevelt Island could not withstand currents.

Looks like New York State beaches have become just as dirty as the thoughts you have while lying there sunning yourselves (and we're not just talking about hypodermic needles). A new report from the NRDC says there's been a serious rise in the number of health-related advisories and beach closings thanks to pollution. New York beaches experienced over 1200 days of closings and advisories last year (that's up from about 830 in 2005). You can read the report here.

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a picture displaying the woes of cruising in a tacky limo on the streets of San Francisco.

State attorney general Andrew Cuomo filed suit against oil giant Exxon Mobil to clean up an oil spill along Newtown Creek that is estimated to be twice as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. The suit also names BP, Chevron, KeySpan and Phelps Dodge and is seeking action and fines against the companies that spilled approximately 20 million gallons of fuel into the ground and water of industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The New York Times reports that environmental group Riverkeeper filed its own suit against Exxon Mobil in 2004 after it found the ground in Greenpoint heavily contaminated and benzene fumes were even emanating into the air.

The Daily News has an exclusive with Jan Gehl, the Danish architect the Department of Transportation would like to hire to help reduce congestion in the city. It's a nice introduction to Gehl, who has worked on congestion-reducing projects in London and Copenhagen, but it also seems like the perfect article to fire up passions. Gehl said, "...we can do is to reduce the number of parking spots. I would raise the price for parking right away." Street parkers, commence the freaking out! Some more Gehl quotes:

"There are so many places in this city where people are treated very badly on the sidewalk, where the congestion is unpleasant. ... The balance is not very good here....

Continue reading "Uncertainty About Congestion Pricing's Fate"

A new noise code will go into effect tonight/tomorrow morning when the clock strikes midnight, and that clock better have muffled bells. It's the first comprehensive overhaul of noise ordinances in about 30 years and was proposed by Mayor Bloomberg three and a half years ago. It's mostly oriented towards bars and clubs, where a growing nightlife presence in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side has left many residents sleepless. The New York Times notes that noisy cars and motorcycles will be completely banned from the city, there will be a limit on how long dogs can bark continuously, garbage trucks will be required to stay at least 50 feet from residential buildings between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., construction noise must be mitigated (Adrienne Shelley was killed for complaining about construction noise), and ice cream trucks will have to go quiet when parked curbside. We wonder if this will have any effect on the creative siren-DJ stylings emanating from police cars. Either way, enforcement of the new code may be spotty because the Dept. of Environmental Protection only has 26 noise meters. The police have 80.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg got some more political support for his congestion pricing plan. Joseph Crowley, a representative for parts of Queens and the Bronx and head of the Queens Democratic party, appeared with Bloomberg at Grand Central Terminal's subway station together. They announced that major mass transit improvements could be made in the Bronx and Queens with funding from congestion pricing. Two Metro-North stations would be opened in the Bronx (Parkchester and Co-op City) while two shuttered LIRR stations in Queens (Elmhurst and Corona) would re-open.

The new commissioner of the Department of Transportation won the hearts of not just bicyclists but other people who love Central Park the other day: Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told Streetsblog that she was considering a car-free Central Park trial this summer. (It sounds like transverse traffic will remain.)

New York magazine has a great examination of the Greenpoint pollution problem lurking beneath the neighborhood's surface, and floating along the surface of Newtown Creek. It describes a ten million gallon reservoir of industrial pollution that includes, fuel oil, naptha, gasoline, parrafin wax and likely many more materials that were used along the industrial area of the waterway that separates Brooklyn and Queens.

Mayor Bloomberg spent Memorial Day at a number of different events in Queens and spoke about a number of issues:

We were glad to see The New York Times giving front-page treatment (of the Metro section anyway) to a group of city employees who probably don't get as much recognition as they deserve. The Times' Ellen Barry was on hand for the 20th Annual Operators' Challenge yesterday, where six teams competed to determine who was the best of the best among city sewer workers.