Photo by Collin Erickson

HUXTABLE LAUDS EMPIRE STATE BUILDING RENOVATION
For her latest installment in The Wall Street Journal, architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable focuses her attention on the extensive renovations of the Empire State Building and where the New York City icon fits in this “age of the superskyscraper,” in which technological innovation and “the timeless incentives of ego and profit” push our buildings to ever-higher heights. Despite its iconic status and popular appeal, by 2006 the Empire State Building was losing its value and appeal to business tenants. Facing a choice between selling the property or significantly investing in its renovation, building owner Malkin Holdings LLC decided to plunge into a restoration effort to the tune of $550 million. Mr. Malkin hired Beyer Blinder Belle, architects in charge of the restoration of Grand Central Terminal and other landmark structures, to bring the Empire State Building back to its original glory. Unfortunate additions and renovations from the 1960s were removed and a modern building even truer to its historical form emerged. Artwork in the 5th Avenue foyer was restored and recreated; unrealized chandelier drawings from the 1930s were brought to Rambusch Studios, the firm responsible for much of the original decoration, and produced. What resulted, according to Huxtable, was an all around success. Attention to historical detail coupled with a comprehensive modernization effort has finally brought the commercial success to the Empire State Building that its historical success long indicated it deserved.

Photo by Kadambari Baxi, via Places.

OWS: WHAT ARCHITECTURE CAN DO
Increasing attention is being paid to the spatial ramifications of Occupy Wall Street. This week in Places, Reinhold Martin has published an architectural call to arms. Citing the discipline’s “decades of voluminous research and activist practice in slums, emergency housing, and encampments of various sorts worldwide,” Martin maintains that architects have a responsibility to question the political structure that dictates the built environment both within the OWS movement and the general public. “Rather than be content with emergency measures, the field of architecture can take inspiration from the steadfast refusal to leave signaled by the Occupy movement, by refusing to play by the rules as written by developers and banks. And architectural thinking can contribute something invaluable to this extraordinary process by offering tangible models of possible worlds, possible forms of shelter, and possible ways of living together, to be debated in general assemblies both real and virtual.” Read Martin’s complete piece, “Occupy: What Architecture Can Do,” on Places.

ANATOMY OF A SKYSCRAPER
As a site devoted to nerding out about how cities are made and managed, it’s surprising that we’ve never talked about Kate Ascher’s The Works: Anatomy of a City, a fantastic book chock full of facts, diagrams, illustrations and stories about the systems that keep New York City running. This week, Ascher released her latest book, The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper, which explains the inner workings of our tallest buildings in similar fashion. To promote the book, Ascher spoke to Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air about how much skyscrapers sway, the soundproofing of plumbing, live loads and dead loads, and an astounding fact about how the world’s tallest building handles its sewage. Check out the interview and excerpts from the book at npr.org. For another peek at the inner workings of a skyscraper, look back at our feature “City of Systems: Skyscraper Mechanical,” posted earlier this year.

screengrab from nytimes.com

CHARTING THE NYC MARATHON COURSE
The New York Times offers two unconventional ways to look at last weekend’s New York City Marathon. The interactive desk has put together an interactive map tracking ethnic and economic shifts along the marathon route since 1976, when its course first wove through all five boroughs. Accompanied by an article and a slideshow of photographs, the piece offers a glimpse into the transformation of a city, seen through the eyes of thousands of runners. Meanwhile, for his latest installment of his Abstract Sunday column, Christoph Niemann live-illustrated the marathon, running with pad and markers and tweeting his sketches along the way. Check out his 46 sketches over 26.2 miles here.

EVENTS and TO DOs

TRANSPORTATION 2030 CONFERENCE: On November 18, Manhattan Borough President Scott String and CUNY’s John Jay College will host a conference meant to examine the contentious transportation debates and imagine ambitious solutions for the city’s transit future. Details about speakers have not yet been released, but the agenda includes conversations on financing, technology, parking reform, transportation deserts, waterways, street design, accessibility and safety. The conference is free to attend, but pre-registration is required. Find more information here, or click here to register.

ON THE WATER’S EDGE: Last month, we talked to the minds behind Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City, an initiative developed by the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park that invited artist-led teams to propose visions for the future of the Queens waterfront neighborhood. This weekend, as part of their series of public programs accompanying the exhibition now on view, the institutions are hosting a panel discussion entitled “On the Water’s Edge.” Two of the artists participating in Civic Action, George Trakas and Natalie Jeremijenko, will join landscape and urban designer Diana Balmori and community activist Katie Ellman, for a discussion of the reinvention of the area’s post-industrical urban waterfront, moderated by Carter Craft. Find more information here.

WATER, EARTH, AIR AND THE CITY: If you can’t see Diana Balmori in Long Island City on Sunday, make your way up to the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday for a conversation between her and MoMA’s Peter Reed about how deign affects urban life and landscape. Balmori (who recently listed us as one of her favorite websites — thanks Diana!) will focus on the connections between, rather than the divisions between, art, nature and the city. Find more information here.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

For architecture-, design- and urbanism-themed cinema fans in New York, the next few weeks are a treasure trove of festivals, screenings and panel discussions. This weekend, from October 15-16, is the Red Hook International FIlm and Video Festival. The Architecture & Design Film Festival runs from October 19-23, and then from November 2-10 we’ll get DOC NYC, New York City’s Documentary Festival. Though only one of the three festivals is explicitly dedicated to architecture and design, all three have lineups full of films that readers of Urban Omnibus are sure to find interesting. To help you sift through the options, we’ll be bringing you suggestions of what not to miss from each event. Stay tuned for suggestions for the A&D Film Festival and DOC NYC next week. But first up, this weekend’s Red Hook Festival.

The Red Hook International Film and Video Festival presents short films from around the country, with a particular focus on Brooklyn filmmakers, stories from New York City, and reflections on the festival’s home base, Red Hook, “an urban, industrial, waterfront community where fisherman, longshoreman, artists, small businesses and housing projects live together.” The films range from 5 to 27 minutes, and will be presented in five screenings organized around themes like “Stories from the Streets” and “Underneath the City.” The Red Hook Festival takes place at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist’s Coalition at 499 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on Saturday, October 15th (1-6pm) and Sunday, October 16 (2:30-6pm). Read on for some highlights from the event (including two Urban Omnibus-produced short films!) or click here for more information and complete listings.

Still from Lehigh Valley 79

Lehigh Valley 79
Saturday, October 15th, 2:30pm
In 1986, Red Hook resident David Sharps bought the Lehigh Valley #79, also known as the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge, for one dollar. Since purchasing the vessel, Sharps has devoted his life to restoring the barge to its original condition — while raising his family on board. Lehigh Valley 79 will be screened as part of the program “Red Hook Block: Family and Tradition.”

Still from Urban Soil Horizon

Urban Soil Horizon, Urban Watershed and The Urban Homesteading Project
Saturday, October 15th, 4:00pm
The short films clustered assembled for the session titled “Art on the Waterfront” explore the city’s boundary between land and water. Urban Soil Horizon documents “the existence of dirt in a world of concrete and asphalt” and chronicles the the rhythms of erosion and accretion in the urban, human driven environment. Urban Watershed follows the paths of water in the city, as it travels over surfaces, into storm drains and then to groundwater systems carrying both nutrients from and detritus of the city. Urban Omnibus‘ own George Trakas at the Water’s Edge: Newtown Creek is next on the docket, followed by The Urban Homesteading Project, which highlights an installation that took discarded Christmas trees and deposited them in semi-natural formations “to mimic natural forests in industrial zones located along the Newtown Creek.” “Art on the Waterfront” concludes with the second Urban Omnibus video appearing in the festival, Archipelago, which captures a day in the life of five New York City neighborhoods: Hunts Point, Jamaica, Mariner’s Harbor, Downtown Brooklyn, and Chelsea. For a complete list of films screened during “Art on the Waterfront,” Click here for more films screened as part of “Art on the Waterfront.”

Still from Masstransiscope

Masstransiscope, Inspiring Spaces and Undercity
Sunday, October 16th, 2:30pm
The session titled “Underneath New York” focuses on the city beneath the surface. Masstransiscope is a short portrait of Bill Brand’s zoetrope installation in the abandoned Myrtle Avenue station in Brooklyn, visible from Manhattan-bound B and Q trains, from its creation in 1983 through its recent restoration. Inspiring Spaces: 25 Years of Arts for Transit profiles the history of this MTA program that brings public art to New York’s subway stations. Undercity follows urban explorer Steve Duncan to the city’s extremes, from the underground tunnels and streams to the top of the Williamsburg Bridge. Click here to see more films screened as part of “Underneath New York.”

Still from Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution

Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution and To Be Seen
Sunday, October 16th, 4:00pm
“Taking it to the Streets,” the final session of the weekend, will look at public expression and protest. Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution, a particularly timely screening, is an 8-minute glimpse into days five and six of Occupy Wall Street. And To Be Seen examines street art’s capacity for social, artistic and political expression, with a particular focus on work found on the streets of New York City. Click here to see more films screened as part of “Taking it to the Streets.”

Jessica Cronstein is a project associate at Urban Omnibus. She is a designer and writer interested in the point at which the social, cultural and physical growth of a city intersect. She has just completed her M.Arch at Rice University and lives in New York City. 

Urban Umbrella design by Young Hwan Choi, with Andrés Cortés, AIA, and Sarrah Khan, PE, of Agencie Group.

URBAN UMBRELLA
Two years ago, the NYC Department of Buildings and AIA New York sponsored a design competition to develop an innovative solution for city scaffolding. This week, the winning team unveiled the prototype of the “urban umbrella.” The UrbanSHED competition asked designers to create better “sidewalk sheds” — the ubiquitous blue plywood and metal scaffolding structures seen around town. The winning design comes from Young-Hwan Choi with architect Andrés Cortés and engineer Sarrah Khan of New York-based Agencie Group, who won $25,000 for their efforts. This prototype was constructed by Brooklyn-based architecture and fabrication firm Caliper Studio. “Urban umbrellas” feature modular metal canopies, optimized to allow natural light to reach the sidewalk and designed for cost and structural integrity, that can be custom-installed to meet site dimensions. LED lights will light up the shed at night, which will make for a far safer pedestrian overhang. See a slideshow of the prototype at Inhabitat and read more on this from The Architect’s Newspaper.

Real estate holdings of key players in higher education

CAMPUS HOLDINGS
Mitchell Moss, Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, wrote a compelling piece for The Architect’s Newspaper on recent development trends tied to hotspots of higher education in the city. Illustrated with this beautiful map, Moss points to the fact that the city’s colleges and universities are building up and out at a time when other development is in decline. He cites an incredible statistic: “There are twice as many people enrolled in degree programs in New York City than live in the entire city of Buffalo.” Using every planner’s tool in the box, from eminent domain, rezoning, leasing, trading air rights, public-private partnerships, strategic acquisitions, to contributing space for public purposes, campuses are expanding. The most notable expansions include an additional 6.8 million square feet to Columbia’s current 17-acre Manhattanville campus, an additional 396,000 square feet to CUNY’s 3 million square foot campus, and new buildings for SVA, the New School, and Cooper Union.

Parallel Networks, designed by Ali Fard and Ghazal Jafari of Canada for Water as 6th Borough Competition

PARALLEL NETWORKS
As a challenge to envision “Water as the Sixth Borough of NYC,” the annual 2011 Terreform ONE prize asked designers to develop a vision for New York City’s future waterway use and to connect this idea with the upcoming Clean Tech World Expo. Designs focused on New York’s waterways, recreational space, transportation and local industry. The grand prize winners, Ali Fard and Ghazal Jafari of Canada, titled their work “Parallel Networks,” and received $10,000 for their work. “Parallel Networks” features a flexible network of floating pods which function as islands for public space and habitat space, with renewable energy, water filtration and food production elements. The pods are easily moveable and adapt to their environment. The modular, add-on system can be grown to diverse scales or could start small, holding potential for adaptation to climate change and other factors. See the full winning design here, as well as other honorable mentions.

FOOD POLICY
New York City Council enacted five bills and several resolutions this week, intending to bring more locally produced food to city residents, schools and jails. The passed initiatives were largely distilled from Speaker Christine Quinn’s “FoodWorks New York,” the proposed comprehensive food system plan for New York City. According to Quinn, New York is the second largest institutional purchaser of food in the city, after the U.S. Department of Defense, which hints at the huge potential these efforts have to influence the region’s food market. Notable measures include: amending administrative code to encourage the purchasing of food grown and processed in New York State; Intro 338-A, which aims to make it easier to construct rooftop greenhouses; and Intro 615, which requires an annual report on the food system from City administration. For more on the benefits and challenges of the City Council’s legislation, take a look at this blog on food policy and this recent piece published in Gotham Gazette by Nevin Cohen, food policy expert and Professor at the New School (who also spoke with us last year about the Five Borough Farm project).

Growing produce in milk crates at Riverpark restaurant

POP-UP FARM IN MIDTOWN?
GOOD Magazine reported this week that a food-producing pop-up farm has been constructed east of the FDR drive in Midtown. The farm sits in the middle of what should have been the Alexandria Center, a bioscience complex that has since been stalled by its developer. Instead of letting the space go,  the developer has partnered with GrowNYC to grow fresh vegetables for Chef Tom Colicchio’s Riverpark restaurant. All the vegetables have been planted in removable milk crates for the time being, considering the site will likely be built out at some point in the future. New York City has more than 600 stalled construction sites and 596 acres of vacant public land. Could milk crate farms be the future for urban ag? See more at GOOD.is.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Photo by Alicia Rouault

Until the early 20th century, New York City’s waters were teeming with oysters. Some biologists estimate that the Hudson-Raritan Estuary was once home to half of the world’s oyster population, serving as both an abundant culinary delicacy and a natural water filtration system. Oysters are considered “ecosystem engineers” that shape their environment into complex three-dimensional structures to support themselves and a host of other organisms. Estuaries — bodies of water formed where freshwater and seawater meet — offer ideal conditions for these diverse ecosystems of marine and plant life to flourish. But now, due to overfishing, the destruction of natural wetlands, poor water quality from sewage overflow and decades of contamination, biodiversity has reached a low point — and the once ubiquitous oyster, a paragon of water filtration and habitat production, has nearly disappeared.

Today, the Oyster Restoration Research Project (ORRP), a partnership led by the Hudson River Foundation, the US Army Corps of Engineers, NY/NJ Baykeeper, the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program, the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, is working to reverse that trend. The ORRP, which covers an area of the estuary reaching out 25 miles from the Statue of Liberty, is bringing together policy, science and community engagement to restore a keystone oyster species once native to New York and New Jersey waterways. The nature of the restoration project is largely misunderstood as an effort to revive oysters for food. ORRP partners tell a different story, one of equal value, that brings New Yorkers to the water and puts wildlife — wildlife that can improve water quality, facilitate nutrient cycling, enhance biodiversity and stabilize our shorelines — back into our waterways.

Monitoring oysters by Soundview Park | Photo by Alicia Rouault

The program stems from a major planning document released in 2008: the Comprehensive Restoration Plan (CRP) for the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary. The CRP, which was developed as part of a study by the US Army Corps of Engineers – New York District, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program, identifies a series of short- and long-term goals that aim to restore a “mosaic of habitats” to eight specific planning regions throughout the estuary. The ORRP project will help partners analyze the feasibility of this ambitious plan, which calls for restoring 500 acres of oyster reefs by 2015 and 5,000 acres by 2050. Six pilot reefs have been installed in and around New York Harbor, at Hastings on Hudson, Soundview Park, Governors Island, Bay Ridge Flats, Staten Island and Jamaica Bay. Each has been stocked with 50,000 oysters, which are being monitored for development, survival, growth and ecological performance.

Earlier this month, I joined Jim Lodge of the Hudson River Foundation, Katie Mosher-Smith and Kerstin Kalchmayr of NY/NJ Baykeeper, and Kate Boicourt of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program to check on some recently-planted oysters in Soundview Park in the Bronx. As we donned our waders and headed towards the water, the team offered some insight into their collaborative process, the educational aim of their program and the unique challenges of bringing oysters back to New York Harbor. –A.R.

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The Oyster Restoration Research Project (ORRP) has a uniquely collaborative model. Tell us about some of the partnerships that have helped make oyster restoration a reality.
Jim Lodge: We currently have about 28 (see full list below in Comments) different organizations on the project, and within each organization there are multiple partners. Partners range from not-for-profit groups like the Hudson River Foundation, Rocking The Boat (a Bronx River-based group) and the Bronx River Alliance; to city departments, like the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s Natural Resources Group;  to federal government agencies, such as EPA Region Two, the Harbor Estuary Program and the US Army Corps of Engineers; to student groups, including the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School — ORRP is, at its heart, a research project, so we have a lot of academic institutions and partners on the project, including Stonybrook University and University of New Hampshire — and then, of course, NY/NJ Baykeeper.

NY/NJ Baykeeper has been a pioneer in pursuing oyster restoration for New York Harbor. They have been exploring the potential for natural recruitment of oysters since 1999. Around the same time, they started the Oyster Gardening Program, which has done a lot to highlight the challenges of restoration and the importance of bringing oysters back to the harbor.

Creating an artificial oyster reef off Governors Island, October 2010 | Photo courtesy of the US Army Corps of Engineers

The Oyster Gardening project is a public program?
Kate Boicourt: Oyster gardening is a system of citizen science that’s been used up and down the east coast for a while, engaging schools, individuals and community groups in restoration work.

Jim Lodge: It’s a strange name for what it is. It’s called a “gardening program,” so people associate it with food production. But that’s clearly not the goal. The Oyster Gardening Program teaches people about restoration through raising and cultivating oysters. It’s not just high schools that are getting involved, but community groups, senior citizen centers and preschools. That’s why the model is so powerful, because you can involve the public at multiple levels and encourage a connection between the average citizen and the estuary. And it’s fun! People get to participate, they get to watch oysters grow and eventually these oysters will be used in restoration efforts.

Kerstin Kalchmayr: We want to create an oyster reef specifically for these garden oysters so that participants can feel that they’re part of the greater project of restoring the health of the urban estuary. We want gardeners to be able to wade out and monitor their own oysters.

Part of an artificial oyster reef, October 2010 | Photo courtesy of the US Army Corps of Engineers

Where are the ORRP pilot sites?
Jim Lodge: We have six experimental research sites within New York Harbor. Starting from the south, the sites are: near Great Kills Harbor in Staten Island; Bay Ridge Flats, which is a quarter mile south of Governors Island; Buttermilk Channel, on the east side of Governors Island; there’s a site out in Soundview at the mouth of the Bronx River, which is where we’re headed today; an experimental reef site in Hastings-on-Hudson; and one in Jamaica Bay at Dubos Point.

We chose geographically dispersed sites to ensure a range of environmental conditions. We go from water with almost no salinity up at Hastings to near-seawater at the Staten Island site. Food availability varies, as do levels of oxygen. We monitor survival, growth and reproduction at each site and then look at those variables to try to understand how they influence success or failure. We are also studying predation pressures. Because we don’t have any naturally existing reefs, we need to take note of different predators across locations.

Each of the sites uses the same design. A 6-inch, granite rock, rip-rap base is followed by a veneer of clam shells and a top layer of spat-on-shell. Pete Malinowski and his students at the Harbor School cultivate the spat-on-shell in aquaculture tanks on Governors Island, which allows the juvenile oysters to settle and mature on old oyster shells before installation at each reef site.

Monitoring oyster reefs by Soundview Park | Left photo by Kate Boicourt; right photo by Alicia Rouault

What unique challenges does oyster restoration present in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary?
Jim Lodge: In places like the Chesapeake Bay and South Carolina, restoration efforts focus on providing a suitable substrate — they basically just put down shell material and there are enough larvae in the water column to take hold. We don’t have a large enough natural larval pool, so we have to go through many more time-consuming, labor-intensive steps. So we’re trying to determine how to optimize those techniques and how to take advantage of any minimal natural recruitment that we may get. Soundview has some natural oysters due to its proximity to the Long Island Sound where there is a viable oyster population.

Kate Boicourt: There’s been a specific effort to look at how we maintain our shorelines and if there are ways we can try to increase complexity and create potential for habitat. There’s not a lot of habitat on a hardened shoreline, but there are options to improve conditions. For example, oyster reef balls, which are these porous, concrete structures that mimic naturally occurring reefs and provide shelter for growing oysters. Though that’s slightly different than straight oyster restoration.

Photo by Alicia Rouault

What are your metrics for success?
Jim Lodge: To be successful on a large-scale restoration effort, you want to have natural recruitment on the reefs. But this project is focused on research and information. We want to understand how and if it is feasible to restore our oyster population, to drive future restoration efforts. And the project is not limited to oysters. We will be experimenting with different bivalves. We have to look broadly at what we’re trying to accomplish and what sort of things are going to help us reach those goals.

The Comprehensive Restoration Plan is the guiding document for what we’re trying to achieve in the region, and the Harbor Estuary Program has adopted the plan as their restoration vision. The CRP calls for about 500 acres of restored reef by 2015 — which is extremely optimistic considering it’s 2011 and we have basically none — and 5,000 acres by 2050. We don’t know if that’s realistic or feasible or not.

There has been a lot of attention given to increased usage of NYC waterways based on PlaNYC and the comprehensive waterfront plan Vision 2020. Do you see that having an effect on your project?
Jim Lodge: Oyster reefs wouldn’t be in competition with other waterway uses. Even 5,000 acres is a very small footprint within the estuary. If anything, increased attention on the waterfront is amplifying interest in restoring the habitat. People want to see the water clean.

L: Photo by Alicia Rouault | R: Raising oysters at the Harbor School; photo courtesy of the US Army Corps of Engineers

Are you in communication with or involved in other local efforts to engage oyster restoration in waterfront design, such as Kate Orff of SCAPE’s Oyster-tecture, or Mara Haseltine’s New School project? Do you see their projects having any impact on your efforts?
Katie Mosher-Smith: The director of the oyster program from Baykeeper works collaboratively with Mara Haseltine and they’re doing some illustrative experiments this year in New Jersey. We do speak with Kate Orff but we’re not directly involved with any of her efforts. They engage with different audiences than we tend to attract, which is a real benefit. Any way we can expand public interest and involvement in this issue is an advantage to our efforts.

Jim Lodge: The intersection between restoration as a planning and regulatory issue (thinking again of Vision 2020 and PlaNYC) and as an interest of the architecture and design communities is fantastic. There has always been a disconnect between restoration and planning efforts and the people on the ground. Now, our broad visions are being applied in a very real sense, providing us an opportunity to think about how to optimize that work.

Soundview Park | Photos by Alicia Rouault

What do you wish people knew about oyster restoration that is often misunderstood?
Katie Mosher-Smith: A lot of people think you’re going to eat them.

Jim Lodge: When most people think of oysters, including me in my non-work life, they think of oysters on the half shell. They think of food. The main purpose of our project is to restore oysters for their habitat value. Reefs provide habitat for fish and invertebrates. We’re also looking at the potential for water quality improvements, which we think might have limited local effect. There have been other areas of the country where people are building reefs to help eroding shorelines. The word we’d like to get out is that it’s not about bringing back a lost fishery, but lost habitat value.

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In the past year, public planning sessions were held in the eight planning regions of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary to define potential sites for restoration and to incorporate citizen input into the development of public access points for shoreline restoration sites. People were, and still are, able to nominate a site for land acquisition and restoration if they can demonstrate its potential habitat value. The sites in question are documented on oasisnyc.net, a mapping site developed by Steve Romalewski previously featured on Urban Omnibus.

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Photo by Alicia Rouault

Kate Boicourt began the position of Restoration Coordinator of the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Program in September 2010. Through this position, she works to coordinate and advance restoration and public access activities throughout the harbor estuary, with a particular focus on those within the goals of the Comprehensive Restoration Plan. Prior to coming to HEP, Kate worked on climate change adaptation issues for the State of Maryland, estuarine ecology and science communication for NOAA/University of Maryland, and collaborated with the Matthew Baird team for MoMA’s Rising Currents Exhibit. Kate holds an MS from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, where she studied the success and effects of Phragmites australis removal, and a BA from Kenyon College in Biology.

Kerstin Kalchmayr is the Oyster Restoration Program Field and Project Assistant for NY/NJ Baykeeper. She is originally from South Africa and has been living in New York since November 2008. She graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in 2005, where she completed a Bachelor of Science Honours degree majoring in Zoology. After completing her studies she went abroad to Central America and lived in Costa Rica for a year. In Costa Rica she coordinated two sea turtle conservation restoration projects working predominantly with olive ridley and leatherback sea turtles both on the Pacific and the Carribean coast. It was the work with the sea turltes that inspired her to work for the conservation and restoration of marine/estuarine habitats.

Jim Lodge has been a project manager with the Hudson River Foundation since 2002. Prior to joining the Hudson River Foundation, Lodge held a position as an Oceanographer with the New York District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His primary interest is integrating science and policy research into government decision making. Jim served as project coordinator and a primary author for the Target Ecosystem Characteristics (TEC) project and is currently coordinating the Oyster Restoration Research Project (ORRP) a multi-partner research project to determine the feasibility of restoring oyster to the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary. Jim holds a Masters of Science degree in Marine Environmental Management from the Marine Science Research Center at Stony Brook.

Katie Mosher-Smith manages the Oyster Restoration Program/New York for NY/NJ Baykeeper and is the Field Project Manager for the ORRP. Prior to that she served as the field manager for the Bay Ridge Flats Oyster Project and as Baykeeper’s Oyster Gardening Coordinator.

Interview conducted by Alicia Rouault, Urban Omnibus Assistant Editor.

Illustration by Christina Sun

A new computer. Summer clothes. A better desk chair. Your cup of coffee. Tonight’s dinner. How all that stuff gets from factory to front door is largely a mystery to most people – unless you happen to be stuck behind a truck on your way home.

The Port of New York and New Jersey is the gateway for over $175 billion of cargo annually. It is an interconnected web of ship terminals, highways and rail lines, all connected like a circuit board. Goods travel from port to distribution center to store to front door, carried by a giant fleet of tankers, tugs, barges, boxcars and trucks — lots and lots of trucks.

Trucking is the predominant mode of freight transport in the US, carrying 58% of commercial freight (by tonnage). In the New York metro region, it’s more like 80%. Meanwhile, federal studies consistently describe truck routes, highways, bridges and tunnels as being chronically congested (PDF). This isn’t news. We see it on the BQE, the Gowanus and Staten Island Expressways and the George Washington Bridge. And these are routes — the very long trips, the heavily congested metropolitan corridors — that the truckers themselves don’t want. Our waterways, however, are underutilized, with existing capacity waiting to be filled.

Illustration by Christina Sun

New York is a city blessed with incredible waterways. They reach into every borough, across to New Jersey and out to the Long Island Sound. To the north runs the Hudson River, up to the locks of the Champlain and 524 miles of New York State canals, leading us to the Finger Lakes region. To the west are the indomitable salt marshes, the silting arteries of the Passaic and Hackensack, the very busy Kill van Kull and Arthur Kill, and the Raritan River, which once connected us to Delaware via a canal now long gone. The East River mingles with the Bronx River and flows out into the mighty Long Island Sound and beyond, or runs inland as Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal. Out the Narrows, the waters flow through Jamaica Bay, Sandy Hook… and out to sea.

Once upon a time, the waterways were used extensively. Manhattan Island was ringed with piers. The shores were so thick with vessels that one could walk for stretches by stepping from ship to ship. Ships, tugs and barges would bring goods into the city by water, where the raw materials were manufactured into products that were then shipped or transported by barge and train back out.

Illustration of Manhattan and Brooklyn, 1884

Trucking, the least fuel-efficient means of freight transportation besides air, has relegated rail and shipping to second-class status. Spurred by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 — essentially the beginning of what has become a long history of invisible subsidies to trucking (PDF) — the proliferation of road- and air-based shipping options have led to a “warehouse on wheels” model. Cheap overseas products are aggregated in large pick-up depots. Whatever we need, we simply call in, order and have it shipped. Small neighborhood stores can’t compete. And so, as Kunstler said, we have sold out our communities to be able to buy a cheap hair dryer.

But the prices of what we consume don’t always reflect their true costs. Truck-centric shipping relies on stable bridges, clear tunnels and smooth roads. It ensures that trucks will continue to rumble into the city, burning fossil fuels in snarled traffic and beating up the infrastructure even more. All of which demands significant maintenance, not to mention environmental, costs.

Regional Highway Corridors, Scaled by Freight Volume, 2004 | via the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC)

But you never get a pothole in the water, as many shipping advocates say.

Short Sea Shipping is the use of small vessels to bring goods from central container terminals to little ports around the city. By extending the distribution reach of waterborne vessels, fewer trucks and vehicles are on our streets and they are driving shorter distances. Roughly 40% of freight in Europe moves by short sea shipping. And in Hong Kong, mid-stream operation moves even more.

Let’s take a look at a few potential shipping routes. Imagine which one you would prefer to take – if you could.

At the foot of Astoria Boulevard, your big box store sells a variety of goods at wholesale prices. Memorial Day weekend is coming, meaning outdoor gatherings, barbecues and picnics — and plenty of party supplies and foodstuffs. You have to plan for a customer rush that is going to last five days. Maybe some of your baked goods come in locally, from one of Brooklyn’s commercial bakeries, but most of your packaged foods and fresh fruits get shipped in. From distribution centers in Philadelphia, the Meadowlands or farther, your stock arrives at the Port of NY/NJ at Newark or Elizabeth. From there, a daisy chain of highway trips begins: south along the Turnpike, east over the Goethals Bridge, a drive (or crawl) along the Staten Island Expressway, over the Verrazano Bridge and another crawl up the BQE through Brooklyn until you cross over into Queens, right on the banks of the East River at a calm embayment known as Hallet’s Cove.

Illustration by Christina Sun

Or, suppose you live in a new apartment building on West 42nd Street, where a few boxes from Fresh Direct have just been delivered. Your picture-perfect peppers, beef tenderloin and ears of corn were packed on the banks of Newtown Creek. They were then loaded into one of a legion of box trucks, which motored down the LIE into the maw of the Midtown tunnel. Once out at 2nd Avenue, they threaded their way across town, passing through, or avoiding, busy hubs like Grand Central or Penn Station, until finally it arrived in your delivery dock — just a baseball’s toss from the Hudson River.

Imagine you’re a restaurant manager in the Meatpacking District. There is a good chance you get your paper towels, soap and cleaning supplies from Burke, a major distributor in Manhattan for paper, bathroom and kitchen cleaning supplies. Burke’s trucks all head out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, along Kent or Flushing Avenues at the edge of Williamsburg or Vinegar Hill, then over the East River bridges. Once in Manhattan, they make way across Delancey, Canal, 34th or 57th Streets to any of the thousands of restaurants in Manhattan.

Or, we could use our waterways to better link the Port with the big box stores, the Newtown Creek-based food distributors with Manhattan’s households, the Navy Yard with our central business districts. The scores of parking tickets, the hundreds of hours of driver time spent in traffic, the thousands of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), just to get across the water before a single delivery has been made — all of these problems could be mitigated if New York City moved towards short sea shipping.

It’s slowly starting to happen. A few days a week, tugs pull barges of containers from the Port of NY/NJ up the East River to Bridgeport, carrying goods that would otherwise be trucked across Manhattan and up the Cross Bronx or the Bruckner on their way to and through Connecticut. Further south, New York New Jersey Rail (formerly the New York Cross Harbor Railroad) uses New York Harbor to transport boxes and boxcars between New York and New Jersey, from Bush Terminal to Greenville Yards, in the last remaining car float operation in the Port.

Last year, the Port Authority bought Greenville Yards to allow more goods, in this case New York City’s municipal solid waste, to move off the land-based network and onto the water network. And ferries are mounting a comeback, with publicly subsidized commuter ferries returning to the East River for the first time in more than 50 years starting this June. (Though a ferry linking Rockaway to Lower Manhattan was tried recently, but failed.) Freight ferries — a very local form of short sea shipping — may not be that far down the road.

Illustration by Christina Sun

Expansion of water-based intermodal shipping is a challenge and test projects haven’t always succeeded. The Albany Express Barge service, a 2003 pilot program to carry containers from NY/NJ to Albany operated by the private tug-and-barge firm Columbia Coastal, was terminated when cargo volumes didn’t meet expectations and their EPA funding ran out. Public perception still sees truck freight, erroneously, as a cheaper and faster option, either ignoring or unaware of the incredible inefficiencies of road-based transport, the costs of infrastructure wear-and-tear, the resulting air pollution and the hidden subsidies that pay for road maintenance and repair. The labor structure of who gets to work on the waterfront is very complicated. And of course New York City has lost most of its working piers and usable docks. But what we do have here in the heart of the harbor are the right conditions (traffic, congestion and a constant flow of goods), a revived appreciation for the potential of our network of waterways and a creative community of designers who can imagine new ways to re-activate its freight potential.

Potential economic benefit exists for both shipper and consumer. Hundreds of hours of driving time would be saved, as truck drivers could come to work via mass transit, meeting the incoming barge at East 35th Street or Downtown to start their day. Wear and tear on roads and river crossings would be reduced, as would traffic. Job opportunities would increase as tug companies need more captains, deckhands, cargo handlers, longshoremen, stevedores and cargo facility workers.

The environmental implications are also significant — and crucial to bear in mind. Less traffic means less congestion, which means better air quality for everyone. 73% fewer air emissions are released with every ton of cargo moved by barge rather than by truck. An increase in sea shipping also means fewer gas-guzzling trucks on our roads, an important shift in the face of maxed-out global oil production and the increasingly risky and destructive practices we are employing to get at what’s left.

National Highway Freight Network, 2004 | Reebie Associates and FHWA Freight Analysis Framework Project, via NYMTC

No picture is simple, no matter how it’s painted. Our nearly 100-year-old national highway system and its financial underpinnings are, for better or worse, ingrained in our transportation policy, our tax structure and our infrastructure. But looking ahead, we aren’t going to see a plentiful purse for the public sector for a generation or more and we need to use what we have to its fullest potential. The US Department of Transportation is taking notice. Last year, the USDOT launched the America’s Marine Highways Program, an initiative to develop marine transportation corridors in response to the same congestion, pollution and economic challenges we have been discussing here.

Just as the East River ferry plans will improve mobility for many individuals, so can the marine highway for the movement of goods. Making our waterways a more integral and reliable component of our transportation system provides an opportunity for us to improve the urban environment on land.

New York Harbor, 1951 | image by Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. via the New York State Archives

Carter Craft is principal of Outside New York, a small consulting firm that provides a broad range of services including project management, program development, waterfront planning, communications, and fundraising. Current clients include the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, NYC Swim, and Ver Nautica/ The Ferry Lab. Previous clients included the Red Bull Air Race – New York / NJ (2010) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ “Holland on the Hudson” Celebration (2009). Carter is a licensed Captain, and serves as a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, Adjunct Professor at Fordham University, and co-Chair of the Harbor Education Subcommittee of the full Harbor Operations Committee of the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Christina Sun is an illustrator and a part-time deckhand. She writes and illustrates Bowsprite, a blog on New York Harbor.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Floating Pavillion, Rotterdam, NL, 2011 | Photo by Flickr user William Veerbeek

CLEAN TECH ROTTERDAM / GREEN TECH BROOKLYN
Bonnie Harken, the president of consulting group Nautilus International, gave a talk with Piet Dircke of the Rotterdam-based design/consultancy/engineering firm Arcadis and Christopher Zeppie of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on the Brooklyn-Rotterdam Waterfront Exchange vision for Sunset Park and Red Hook, a new program set to share knowledge about and strategies for economic development and environmentally sustainable industry in port areas. The City of Rotterdam has embarked on an ambitious climate change adaptation program that gave rise to some compelling and pseudo-radical ideas for water-based development, some of which are now being applied internationally.

One of the most inventive waterfront development ideas discussed was the potential use of barge-based structures, which are already being tested in Rotterdam and are being considered for inclusion in the Sunset Park and Red Hook visioning plans. Dircke discussed Rotterdam’s already implemented series of hydrofoil ferries, floating learning labs (transparent geodesic domes on the water) and luxury residential structures that support the city’s new Research, Design and Manufacturing (RDM) Center. This concept can inform plans for other uses as well. For example, Dircke suggested barge-based sports fields and stadiums for future Olympic Games as a solution to the wasteful creation of structures that so often lie unused in cities once the games are over.

TECHNOLOGY & PLANNING
There was a lot of buzz on the growing nexus between planning, technology and social media tools — especially the role open-source sites may play in the future of advocacy, government transparency and the sharing of best practices in planning. Judith Layzer led a great panel on the current work of MIT’s Urban Sustainability Project to develop an open-source, wiki-like resource for monitoring municipal sustainability programs nationally. Although the project is still a work in progress, the team has working papers for feedback and collaboration and is looking for research partners, and is definitely something to keep an eye on.

The entire weekend tapped into the growing bubble of “tech-ish minded” (young) planning professionals who seek to capitalize on the potential technology has for planning, and the skills of what Frank Hebbert of OpenPlans dubs IMMBYs (I Mapped My Back Yard) or “data and tech savvy non-planners, better informed, more technically capable and more agile than the ‘pros’.”

Plannovation’s graphic on most often used words in tweets at the conference using Wordle

SOCIAL MEDIA
A few workshops were dedicated solely to the usefulness of social media tools, like FourSquare, Twitter and Facebook, and real-time blogging in the planning world. New methods of technological communication are being seen as catalysts to participatory planning and valuable tools for public interaction with people who can’t or don’t attend public meetings. Twitter was being promoted full-scale this weekend with a whole APA booth dedicated to setting up planners with new Twitter accounts. The #apa2011 hashtag was full of good information over the weekend and was used for conference-goers to reflect and gather more information than was possible by simply attending a handful of panels. Kristen Carney (@cubitplanning) published a summary of all the Twitter activity at the conference on her blog Plannovation, with an in-depth look at the weekend’s Twitter trends and a slideshow documenting a complete Twitter transcript from the event.

Jennifer Evans Cowley of Ohio State University shared her take on the role digital micro-participation plays in Austin, Texas on transportation planning methodology. Another popular panel, with speakers from PlaceVision, SeeClickFix and Urban Interactive Studio, asked “What’s New for Planning Technology” and discussed the use of crowdsourcing, social media, interactive data and other digital tools in planning today.

ArcGIS | via esri.com

Some of the most well-attended sessions were offered by Esri, the makers of ArcGIS, to present their developments in mapping and data visualization. Highlights included a workshop on GeoDesign (ArcMap’s software tool combining urban design and mapping) and one the growing use of GIS as a public participation tool. The use of GIS in public participation has already taken off in NYC, one example being the Municipal Art Society’s CitiYouth program, in which local high school youth attend community board meetings to facilitate public discussion using GIS.

DIGITAL TOOLS FOR PLANNING
Harvard’s political philosopher Michael Sandel kicked off the weekend with a keynote calling the field of planning “a noble profession,” responsible for undoing the erosion of civic-mindedness in America today. As technology increasingly intersects with most aspects of daily life, it was heartwarming to see so many planners excited about the age of digitally-aided advocacy, communication and participatory planning and prepared to use these tools to further that noble ideal.

…

For more on the conference’s other topics, check out APA’s coverage and Marisol Pierce-Quinonez’s recap on SustainableCitiesCollective.com. Then explore for yourself some of the many planning tools that were discussed at APA2011:

Cityscape & Mapping:
OpenTripPlanner
By the City/For the City, a new initiative by the Institute for Urban Design and PPS
Urban EcoMap
City Forward
Grown in the City’s Interactive Urban Agriculture Map

Citizen Complaints:
Open311
SeeClickFix

Fundraising:
How to Raise Money for New Urban Planning Technology

ArcGIS extensions:
CommunityViz
Marine Map
I-Tree
CITYgreen

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Alicia Rouault is a Project Associate for Urban Omnibus, a Fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development, and Masters candidate at the City and Regional Planning Department at Pratt Institute’s Program for Sustainable Planning and Development in Brooklyn, New York.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

New York’s waterways are a hot topic these days: from architectural responses to sea level rise in the Museum of Modern Art’s provocative Rising Currents exhibition to the recent release of Vision 2020, a far-reaching “framework for the future of our waterfront, waterways and water.” The fact that this ambitious plan articulates strategies for all three broadens the traditional urban planning focus on the coastline by viewing “the waterfront and waterways as a single interconnected network” whose uses can be optimized for goals that include, among others, expanding public access to recreation and transportation, supporting the working waterfront and increasing climate resilience.

Given this emphasis on increasing the use of New York City’s water, who makes sure everything is working the way it should? Mike Marrella, Project Director of the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan of the Department of City Planning, commented last Friday at a Pratt Institute lecture on the sustainable waterfront that most New Yorkers might not even be aware of the role the Coast Guard plays in our urban waterways. Marrella conveyed that the Coast Guard was an important partner in the development of the waterfront plan and that service demands on the Coast Guard will multiply as recreational and other water-based use expands in the New York area — growth that will be challenged by recent budgetary constraints.

Sector New York’s waterway responsibility includes the New York Harbor and extends north up the Hudson to Troy, NY. The sector manages all the traffic of the Port of New York and New Jersey (the third largest US port), where servicewomen and men monitor the movement of sensitive materials and petroleum product in the nation, and plays an instrumental role in monitoring water pollution, such as the 1978 discovery of the massive Exxon oil spill in Newtown Creek. Just over one percent of the US Coast Guard works in Sector New York, making it the the nation’s largest operational command.

To find out more, we spoke with Commander Linda Sturgis, Chief of the Prevention Department (and one of the station’s most senior officers), and Lieutenant Commander Ed Munoz, Chief of Waterways Management, to talk about the Coast Guard’s role in the day-to-day life of New York. As it turns out, they do a lot. The Coast Guard’s job is to “protect the maritime economy and the environment, defend our maritime borders, and save those in peril.” At first, this may not strike us as a particularly urban set of duties. But in a city of islands and water such as ours, the Coast Guard stewards of one of our most important urban assets. Thus, hearing directly from some of the men and women who make the waterways safe, secure and working — for all users — is an important part of our ongoing efforts to shine a light on the individuals and agencies working to maintain and improve urban life and landscape.

Enforcing the security zones around the Staten Island Ferry in New York Harbor | USCG photo by PA3 Barbara L. Patton.

What is the Coast Guard Sector New York and what is your mission?
Cdr. Linda Sturgis: Coast Guard Sector New York oversees all Coast Guard activities in the New York and New Jersey Port area, including the Hudson River. We have about 1,000 personnel, nine Coast Guard cutters, three small boat stations and two Aids-to-Navigation teams. Coast Guard Sector New York covers a wide area — the approach to New York Harbor, the New York / New Jersey Port area, the Hudson River up to Albany and the Port of Albany up to Troy.

Our mission is to ensure the safety and security of life and property at sea in managing all eleven Coast Guard missions, which encompass various facets of waterborne safety and waterborne security. Our missions include search and rescue, port and waterway security, waterfront facilities security, commercial vessel inspections, maritime accident investigations and waterways management to ensure the health of the marine transportation system.

We work with many stakeholders, including the City of New York, the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, to analyze and protect the waterways for all users, commercial and recreational. We aren’t partial to one side or the other – we side with the safety and security of the waterway.

How do you go about managing the waterways?
Lt. Cdr. Ed Munoz: Waterways management’s mission is to ensure the effective movement of goods throughout the port with safety and security in mind. Its an all-encompassing mission, so we deal with marine events, icebreaking, maintaining navigation systems which help the vessels come in and out of the port, construction, marinas, and managing places where vessels can anchor.

LS: We also have two Aids to Navigation teams that report to our office, to make sure all the aids to navigation that line the channels of the New York Harbor, the Hudson River and the approaches are in the right location to ensure proper traffic patterns for shipping are being followed.

Rescue boats moored at Coast Guard Station New York on Staten Island | USCG photo by PA3 Annie R. Berlin

What’s a typical day like at Coast Guard Sector New York?
LS: We are located on Staten Island, and have a very vibrant command duty watch, command center and vessel traffic center. Our offices are located in historic Fort Wadsworth, strategically located at essentially the entrance of New York Harbor. On any given day, we will respond to search and rescue calls — we have three small boat stations that will respond to persons in distress. We do maritime law enforcement boarding for drug interdiction and undocumented migrant interdiction, and we do commercial ship inspections on both foreign and US-flag ships to verify safety and that critical lifesaving measures are in place.

Is that something you do for every ship?
LS: Yes, if it’s a US flag vessel that carries cargo or passengers-for-hire, we inspect at least annually. Foreign flag ships also are examined at least annually by the US Coast Guard. We do what we call ‘port waterway coastal security boardings,’ where we patrol critical infrastructure here in the Port of New York and New Jersey for security, and we board deep-draft vessels (those large ships, like bulk carriers, big container ships and oil tankers you see anchored off of New York Harbor) out at sea before coming into port.

From a security perspective, we do security zone enforcement — there’s a permanent security zone around the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and we enforce any breach of that zone. We also enforce waterway security zones around planned national security events. We manage approximately 700 marine events and large activities, including waterfront security for the UN General Assembly (when we have over 130 heads of state and the President of the United States come to New York right along the river at the UN).

We also do commercial waterfront facility inspections to ensure that they’re in compliance with safety and security regulations and pollution prevention.

Is that any facility along the waterfront?
LS: Only if the facility has a commercial vessel that comes to it, such as the oil terminals or the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. We have 180 waterfront facilities in our area and we’re ready 24/7 to respond to pollution or threats of pollution.

We also do icebreaking, so in the winter months, when the Hudson River is frozen, we have Coast Guard cutters that will break up ice to free up shipping lanes for commercial vessels to transport home heating fuel to Upstate New York and New England.

The Jill Reinauer, an icebreaking tug homeported in Staten Island, N.Y., is beset in ice after attempting to transit near West Point, N.Y. | USCG photo by Seaman Matt Fountain

What was your role in Vision 2020?
EM: We were invited by the City, as they developed the plan, to be one of the advisory agencies. We attended several of the public meetings and inter-agency meetings that went through the development of goals. Different drafts were distributed to all the ports. We commented on the document, added our take, and suggested certain things to be included in the plan.

Do the City agencies involved in the plan have an appreciation for what the Coast Guard Sector New York does?
EM: I think by the end of the process they did. They even went aboard some commercial tugs and barges operating in the Port of New York to see the land-side from the water to better understand some issues.

What is your role in emergency preparedness?
LS: We’re not the only agency involved in emergency preparedness. We use an integrated approach to manage on-water emergencies and work closely with every agency that has some tie to the water, such as the Office of Emergency Management and the Police and Fire Departments.

If there is a mass evacuation, we would closely coordinate our response. If there’s a physical obstruction in the federal waterway, the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers are the lead federal agencies in charge of restoring the marine transportation system.

The first time the city prepared a long-range vision for the city’s entire shoreline was in 1992, which rethought the water’s edge as a place not just for commerce and industry but also as a place for people to live and play. Did that change in priorities affect the ways the Coast Guard protects and serves the waterfront and the waterways at all?
LS: I am not familiar with the specific details of the plan from 1992. Even before 1992, the Coast Guard’s mission has been to ensure that the marine transportation system remains viable and safe for all users.

Vision 2020 is such an ambitious document expanding multiple uses. How does the Coast Guard go about managing this balance? Do you welcome the diversification of use or do you feel it gets in the way?
LS: Working with all stakeholders, the Coast Guard must analyze any proposed change to current traffic patterns and waterway use to minimize navigation hazards and exposure of both commercial and recreational vessels to increased risk as a result of increased user volume.

Our main goal, as with any proposed plan to increase the volume of the use of the waterway (be it commercial or recreational traffic), is to work as a key agency with all stakeholders — be it the recreational boating community, the kayaking community, the tug and barge community, the deep-trap vessel community. We work in direct partnership with the US Army Corps of Engineers and other key stakeholders to ensure that the waterways remain safe and secure for everyone’s use. We consider all traffic patterns, all usage areas, commercial vessel users and recreational users.

The Vessel Traffic Center at Coast Guard Activities New York, Staten Island, N.Y. monitors vessel traffic in the New York Harbor. | USCG photo PA2 Mike Hvozda

Additional reporting and graphics by Alicia Rouault.

Commander Linda A. Sturgis is a marine safety expert and Chief of the Prevention Department at Coast Guard Sector New York. She joined the Coast Guard in 1993 and served as a Deck Watch Officer on the Coast Guard Cutter Mellon and served at several marine safety offices throughout the country, including Miami, Seattle and Cleveland.

Lieutenant Commander Ed Munoz, USCG, is Chief of Waterways Management Division at Coast Guard Sector New York. Prior posts include Assistant Chief of Waterways Management and Senior Investigating Officer at Coast Guard Sector Boston and Assistant Chief of Contingency and Preparedness at MSO Boston. He also holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.