City Settlement Funds Parks in LIC and Maspeth by Rebecca Henely - YourNabe.com

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David Rivel, executive director of the City Parks Foundation, discusses how settlement funds for the delays in construction of Greenpoint's Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant will be distributed in Queens and Brooklyn. Photo by Rebecca Henely

Residents of Queens and Brooklyn applauded a list of seven potential environmental and recreational projects last week aimed at improving their communities as mitigation for missed deadlines in updating the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.

These included wetlands rehabilitation, tree planting and two new parks for Queens.

“It is a first step in an important plan to bring needed recreational activities,” said Dorothy Morehead, of Community Board 2 in Queens.

The nonprofit City Parks Foundation and the state Department of Environmental Conservation presented the list to the communities, including Dutch Kills, Maspeth and Long Island City, during a meeting at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant on Greenpoint Avenue and Provost Street in Brooklyn April 20. This was the culmination of a year-long process to determine what should be done with $7 million given to City Parks Foundation for environmental projects as part of a $10 million settlement between the city and state. The city had been late in updating the wastewater plant and paid the settlement in lieu of fees.

Earlier this year residents in southern Queens and northern Brooklyn voted on which projects the $7 million should fund. The list of 22 projects was narrowed down to seven based on resident voting and a number of other factors, such as proximity to the plant, feasibility and community benefit, said Michelle Moore of the DEC.

“I just want to thank the state for the great job they did with listening to the people,” said David Rivel, executive director of City Parks Foundation.

The primary projects chosen for Queens include $2 million toward acquiring land in Dutch Kills on 47th Avenue from 27th to 29th streets for a park, $500,000 for wetland improvements along the creek in both boroughs and $500,000 for tree-planting projects within Maspeth and Long Island City.

“These are the projects we think fit the criteria best,” Moore said.

The secondary projects chosen for Queens, which will be implemented if additional monies can be found or if any of the primary projects fall through, include a $1 million study to create a pedestrian/bike area on the Pulaski Bridge, which connects the boroughs on 11th Street in Long Island City; and $1.2 million to buy the land at 57-40 58th St. in Maspeth, which once housed St. Saviour’s Church and turn it into a park.

“It’s not a question of wanting a park — it’s needing a park,” state Sen. Joe Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) said in support of the St. Saviour’s Plan.

The top priority project will be a Boathouse and Environmental Education Center in Greenpoint similar to the one in Long Island City, for which the settlement could provide $3 million.

While some of these projects have other sources of funding, such as the St. Saviour’s site, the settlement money plans to supplement them. Whatever is chosen, the projects must be implemented within two to three years, Moore said.

The foundation and state are still taking comments up until April 29, when the projects will be finalized. Comments can be sent to david.rivel@parks.nyc.gov or mmmoore@gw.dec.state.ny.us.

Ridgewood Reservoir Due for Makeover Joe Anuta - YourNabe.com

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One of many holes in the dilapidated chain link fence that surrounds Ridgewood Reservoir allows access to the patch of wilderness. Photo by Joe Anuta

Construction could begin soon on new fencing surrounding the Ridgewood Reservoir despite objections from members of the community and borough lawmakers.

The contract has been awarded to a Maspeth construction company for $6.4 million, according to the city comptroller’s database, and the work is set to be complete by the end of the year.

But several members of Community Board 5 criticized the city’s plan for the renovation, citing unnecessary spending and inadequate protection of wildlife.

“I’m trying to fight them, but the contract is already awarded and registered in the comptroller’s office,” said Steve Fiedler, chairman of CB 5’s Parks Committee. “Nobody wants to listen.”

One of Fiedler’s objections shared by the rest of the board is that the proposed fence, at 4 feet tall, is too short and would invite trespassers into the natural enclave.

“Right now there is an 8-foot fence and they can’t keep [people] out of there,” Fiedler said.

There are innumerable holes cut into the current chain link fence that surrounds the three basins of the reservoirs. Some have been patched, but many still allow unencumbered access to the basins.

Fiedler said people also dump garbage and have been known to play paint ball in the wooded areas of the reservoir.

A representative from the city Parks Department said the new fencing will allow visitors to see the basins.

“New steel bar fencing around the perimeter and fencing of historical reference near seating areas between basins will allow visitors visual access to the natural environments in the basins,” said the representative, who asked not to be identified.


Currently, the 8-foot tall fence allows park-goers to see the park only through the wires and is overgrown with vines in many places.

The city will also combat invasive species like phragmites, a reed that takes over in watery soil, which have plagued the park over the years.

Fiedler and the board also took issue with the type of fencing.

The park currently has more than 4,000 feet of historic, wrought-iron fencing in and around the basins, Fiedler said. In fact, the fencing was so elaborately crafted that the city made a model of it to use in Central Park in Manhattan.

“You cannot get fencing like that anymore,” Fiedler said, lamenting the fact that the vintage metal will likely be thrown away or melted down.
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State Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) also had objections to the department’s plan to install new lighting.

The city plans on installing lights along the path at 15-foot intervals. There are currently dilapidated lampposts located on the outside of the path, but the city’s plan would move them to the inside and install a shade that would shield the animal and plant life from the lights at night.

“We could save money by building on the existing side,” Addabbo said. “I’m not an engineer, but ... I’d like to respectively disagree with the Parks Department.”

The contract is currently under review by city Comptroller John Liu.

In 2008, former city Comptroller William Thompson rejected a plan to turn the reservoir into sports fields.

Tax Protesters from MoveOn.org Take Aim at Bell Blvd. Citibank by Rich Bockmann - YourNabe.com

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Joe Aslaender of Richmond Hill holds a sign he created for a protest in Bayside. Photo by Christina Santucci

With federal budget talks on their minds, protesters gathered outside the Citibank branch at the corner of Bell Boulevard and 39th Avenue in Bayside Monday to draw attention to what they claimed are unfair corporate tax practices.

About 20 protesters chose to participate on Tax Day in moveon.org’s “Make Them Pay” campaign, which claims millionaires and corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes by taking advantage of tax loopholes.Moveon.org is a progressive, political action advocacy group.

“We bailed them out and then they turn around and use loopholes,” said the event’s organizer, David Yale. Yale said the specific loophole he refers to is one that allows a foreign subsidiary of a U.S. company to exempt foreign-generated earnings from U.S. corporate income tax as long as it does not bring the cash back to the U.S.

The United States imposes one of the highest corporate tax rates at 35 percent. U.S. companies do pay local corporate taxes to the country where the income is generated, and if the cash is repatriated to the United States, the company pays the difference between the foreign tax and the U.S tax. Yale, a Bayside resident, said he had not personally written his legislators about the corporate tax loophole.

Citigroup Monday reported its first-quarter earnings plummeted 32 percent from a year earlier to $2.99 billion from $4.43 billion in the January-March quarter of 2010, while revenue was down 22 percent to $19.7 billion. The banking giant announced late last month that it would resume paying a dividend after the crushing financial problems it faced before the federal bailout.

Moveon.org contends that Citigroup — along with GE, Bank of America, Google, BP, Amazon, Wells Fargo, Boeing, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Goldman Sachs and Chase — are some of the wealthiest corporations in the country doing everything in their power to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The organization’s web site frames the issue in the context of tax breaks for the wealthy at a time when the federal government is slashing public services.

“During these difficult economic times, when all Americans are being asked to sacrifice, it is simply wrong that Citigroup is shirking their American duty to pay their taxes,” said Yale. “We are protesting on Tax Day because corporate tax dodgers have a responsibility to our community and our nation to pay their fair share. We pay our taxes. Citibank should, too.”

Yale said Citigroup has 427 offshore tax havens and, if it paid its fare share of taxes, it would owe $1.5 trillion. Officials at Citibank would not comment on the group’s claim.

For about an hour protesters held up signs — with one reading, “It’s tax day! We bailed Citibank out now they must pay their share of taxes” — and handed out literature to Citibank customers and passersby.

Michael McGrath said he has been laid off from his union plumbing job for 15 months and owes New York state $2,900 in taxes since he did not have anything deducted from his unemployment check.

“How come I have to pay my taxes and they don’t? These are people who don’t need tax breaks. Their incomes are through the stratosphere,” he said.

He acknowledged that while the corporations on moveon.org’s list are taking advantage of legal tax loopholes, their participation makes them complicit in an unfair system.

McGrath also said he did not think the protest was aimed at employees of this particular branch.

“I don’t think this branch thinks it’s against them. I think they know it’s against the corporation,” he said.

Nissan of Queens is Not a Good Neighbor - Ozone Park Wall Angers Homeowner - YourNabe.com

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The following article fails to mention that the use of razor wire in New York City is Illegal and that an Environmental Control Board summons was Issued on August 12, 2010. Queens Nissan has yet to answered the summons or remedied /corrected the condition. (see slide show below for the details and particulars of summons)...

Mary Jane Maggio stands in her driveway in front of an illegal wall built by a neighboring car dealership. Photo by Joe Anuta

An Ozone Park woman is furious after a neighboring car dealership erected a cinder block wall topped with coils of barbed wire next to her backyard without permission from the city.

“It looks terrible and it makes the neighborhood look terrible,” said Mary Jane Maggio, whose garage and yard share a border with Nissan of Queens, at 93-19 Rockaway Blvd. “I don’t want to have to look at that all the time.”

But the approximately 10-foot tall wall and 4 feet of barbed wire are hard to miss.

“It looks like a prison,” she said.

Click here to view these pictures larger

The dealership did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

According to Maggio, the wall went up last summer, and aside from its looks, she said the barbed wire endangers wildlife.

“The birds are flying through and getting cut, and a cat went through, got caught and then died,” she said just as a cat leapt through one of the coils and latched itself onto a nearby telephone pole before scaling down and scampering away.

According to the city, the construction of the wall was not legal since the dealership never had it inspected.

Any brick wall more than 8 feet must be inspected by the city to ensure it meets safety requirements, according to the city Department of Buildings, and the dealership did not get it inspected.

As of press time, the department had not issued a violation for the wall.

Once the wall is inspected, it would be legal, since the stack of cinder blocks is allowed by zoning laws.

So the wall that abuts Maggio’s yard may be illegal now, the dealership must simply get it inspected by the city and pay a fine to bring the structure into compliance, a prospect that does not please Maggio.

“I’ve been here most of my life. We never had any other companies like this,” she said. “I’m sure if they lived here, they wouldn’t like looking at that either.”

Going Green in Queens Educates Earth's Caretakers by Howard Koplowitz > YourNabe.com

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Yilmael Diaz (r.) shows the art of correct planting during the Going Green in Queens conference. Photo by Steven Malecki

From making their own compost to Tree Pruning 101, Queens residents learned what they can do to help the environment during Going Green in Queens at the Al Oerter Recreational Center in Flushing.

Fred Kress, the main organizer of the event, said more than 500 people attended the Saturday event.

“Last year the turnout was lower,”he said. “This year was better.”

Mark and Elizabeth Kurtz of Middle Village said they came to the event to learn more about helping the environment.

The couple said they went to the event, where TimesLedger Newspapers was the media sponsor, to learn more about composting and conserving energy.

They said they had tried making their own compost before, but the worms “got so hot [they] ended up dying. We need some tips on how to keep them alive.”

Gina Baldwin, project manager of the New York City Compost Project in Queens, which works with the Queens Botanical Garden, led a workshop on making compost, or decomposed organic matter.

The compost is rich in nutrients that is used to complement soil.

Besides helping plants grow, Baldwin said compost also helps reduce food waste — such as egg shells, food scraps and fruit peels — from going into the garbage stream.

“Compost is like nature’s recycling,” she said.


Baldwin said more than a dozen items can be used to create compost, including hedge clippings, leaves, feathers, corn cobs, hair and nails.

She said the best compost strikes a balance between green materials, such as hedge clippings, and brown materials like coffee grinds and tea bags.

Worms are added to the compost supplies so they can eat the scraps and make the waste that creates compost.

“Fortunately, the worm poop is what we want,” she said, because the waste is high in nutrients.

The event also featured more than 50 informational tables, including companies promoting wind and solar energy and a group of St. Francis Prep students who conducted a project on the ecosystem around the Fresh Meadows school.

“We kind of wanted to take the idea of answering the question, ‘What’s in your backyard?’” said senior Kevin Tong. “What many people don’t know is within the soil are little organisms like bacteria that make the soil have more nutrients.”

“We found a lot of bugs,” said senior Kara Hammond. “You never think about how much is actually around.”

Hammond said the project “was interesting because there’s a lot more than you think is there, but it’s hidden.”

Harlem resident and Oregon native Melody Ross said she went to Going Green in Queens because she is running green volunteer projects for TimeBanks NYC and wanted to network with more green partners.

Ross said she used to do composting in her backyard in Oregon and wants to find other ways to help the environment in the city.

“We’re pretty much green hippies in the northwest so I’ve tried to find green things to do in the city,” she said.

Schumer, Gillibrand Scure $13K for Kennedy Taxiways by Phillip Newman - YourNabe.com

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The federal government has awarded nearly $13 million for construction and rehabilitation of taxiways at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) jointly announced the federal grant, which they said would cut flight delays and improve travel for millions of people passing through JFK, one of the nation’s busiest airports.

The Federal Aviation Administration has made available to JFK two grants totaling $12,912,749 toward taxiway repair and improvement. A $10.9 million grant will help build a new taxiway and another worth $2,012,749 will rehabilitate an existing taxiway.

“By expanding and improving our existing infrastructure at JFK, we can reduce flight delays and improve travel for the millions of passengers who travel through JFK each year,” Schumer said. “As one of America’s busiest airports, JFK needs infrastructure projects like this one in order to ease gridlock and air traffic.”

More commodious taxiways will reduce waiting among arriving jetliners heading for passenger gate areas as well as departing flights.

JFK handled more than 45 million passengers and 1.1 million tons of freight in 2009 alone.

By building an extra taxiway and refurbishing an existing runway, the U.S. Department of Transportation funds will enable JFK to increase its capacity and prepare for an even larger number of passengers in the future. JFK has long been, along with LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International airports among the bottom of the nation’s airports in flight delays.

JFK contributes about $30 billion in economic activity to the New York City area, generates around $9.8 billion in wages and salaries and employees about 35,000 people.

The Bay runway at JFK was widened and rehabilitated last year in a $376 million project carried out while the strip was shut down. The runway, designated 13R/31L, is known as Bay runway because it runs along Jamaica Bay. At 14,575 feet, it is among the world’s longest runways.

DEP Declogs Sewers, Helps Jamaica Bay by Ivan Pereira - YourNabe.com

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The city Department of Environmental Protection started its spring cleaning a little early and said it will not only result in less flooding in Springfield Gardens but also improve the Jamaica Bay ecosystem.

The agency announced Monday that it completed its work on the 12.2 miles of sewers under Linden and Springfield boulevards, where there have been several reports of flooding due to clogged storm drains.

For its initiative, DEP crews used Vactor trucks that suck the debris and garbage out of the sewers and transport the rubbish to a waste treatment plant in Manhattan before being shipped to a landfill. DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway said southeast Queens was chosen as the first location for the removal not only because of the complaints from homeowners who had to deal with the flooded streets, but also because of the area’s proximity to Jamaica Bay, where wastewater is discharged.

“We started this effort in Jamaica because we know that localized flooding is a problem for some residents and to protect Jamaica Bay — one of the ecological gems of New York City,” he said in a statement.

The trucks removed more than 1,500 tons of debris from the sewers that were clogging 20 percent of its pipe volume, according to the city agency. Some of the trash included tires, construction materials, large rocks and a 15-foot ladder, the agency said.

In 2001, the DEP installed an 8-foot-by-17-foot storm sewer in Springfield Gardens to deal with heavy floods in the area, but on several occasions, most recently in August, the neighborhood still experienced flooding during severe rain storms due to clogged drains.

Special sonar technology and closed-circuit cameras were used to pinpoint the exact locations of the debris in southeast Queens, the agency said.

The two $450,000 trucks contain a 30-foot hose that is inserted into the sewer through a manhole cover and sucks in the debris after the pipes are flushed by a separate water jet, according to the DEP.

The agency estimates that the cleanup reduced combined sewer overflow, which contains both wastewater and storm water, that goes into Jamaica Bay by 25 percent and will help improve the water quality in the ecosystem.

The bay has lost huge portions of its saltwater marshland due to a high concentration of nitrogen in the water. Four DEP wastewater facilities have been discharging the nitrogen into the bay and the agency has been working to fix the problem through several multimillion-dollar initiatives.


The DEP commissioner said the truck would be cleaning sewers in other parts of the city in the near future.

“Optimizing our existing sewer network is a key part of the NYC Green Infrastructure Plan, which will save New Yorkers more than $2 billion when fully implemented, and will dramatically reduce CSOs,” Holloway said.

Queens Center Mall Owner Buys Atlas Park by Joe Anuta -YourNabe.com

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Macerich, the company that owns Queen Center Mall, will take over The Shops at Atlas Park Feb. 28

Macerich, the company that owns Queen Center Mall, will take over The Shops at Atlas Park Feb. 28, emerging as the winning bidder after a Chicago-based developer representing the shopping center giant offered $53.75 million at a foreclosure auction.

“Once they fully close on the purchase, we can finally move forward with developing Glendale’s own shopping center,” City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) said in a statement.

She will meet with the California-based Macerich this week to discuss the troubled Cooper Street mall’s future.

Crowley said she was hopeful the mall would be a boon to the community.

“The community welcomes the new leadership with open arms and is eager to help Atlas become an engine for economic growth,” she said.

Macerich did not show up at the Jan. 28 foreclosure auction, and the company’s involvement in the purchase was shrouded by a series of affiliations with other companies.

David Joseph was the representative who placed the bid at the auction, but his company was listed as “WMAP LLC.” Even so, according to Paul Millus, a lawyer who has run the mall since the bank foreclosed the $127 million loan in February 2009, Joseph is actually a principal at a Chicago company, Walton Street Capital, which made the purchase.

And now, according to Crowley, Macerich is the company behind the purchase and will run the mall by the end of the month.

The relationship between Macerich and Walton Street Capital was not known.

The Shops at Atlas Park started as Damon Hemmerdinger’s vision of high-end retail in Glendale about five years ago. He was the owner of the shops until 2009, but that vision did not pan out.


In February 2009, Hemmerdinger’s creditor, France-based Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, foreclosed the loan and turned over the shops to Millus, the court-appointed receiver who ran the mall during its bankruptcy proceedings.