White Island to be Reconstructed
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White Island / Mau-Mau is going to be reconstructed via a NYC Parks capital project. The total cost of this project is: $1,155,000. The website has no project description at this time.
This project was announced at the May Property Owners meeting by Anthony Weiner’s representative, who was announcing a different project but knew of this project. There might be representatives, from Gateway and NYC Parks at the June meeting to explain what they are doing.
Marine Park Capital Projects (In Progress)
Project Description.
- MARINE PARK/WHITE ISLAND – RECONSTR & HERBICIDE APPLICATION Total Budget: $1,155,000.00
- MARINE PARK – DEMOLITION OF FIELD HOUSE & CONSTR OF COMMUNITY CENTER @ FILLMORE AVE Total Budget: $6,060,000.00
Posted: May 14th, 2008 under Creek, Jamaica Bay, Mau Mau / White Island, NYC Parks, NYCity.
Comments: 5
Reconstruction!!!! So the recent marking of trees I suppose is for their removal? If thats the case then what remains to hold this former garbage heap in place… The application of herbiside is for killing and not very good for the environment or our local waters either.
Being an active “power Boater” who utilizes these public waterways, what other plans are in the works that we don’t know about. I would like to obtain more information here as to the overall grand scale of this project. As a local resident, homeowner & tax payer who “may” be impacted by these plans it’s only right that we be informed. Where have these planning meetings been held, who gave the approvals to proceed and why as the local community have we not been informed or invited to attend. I assume these planning sessions were supposed to be public forums but as we all know from past experience you need to know the secret code and handshake to get in. While our little waterfront community slept the winter away these chuckleheads were working, funding and approving their own grand plan behind the scenes. I will be out on the water over this weekend and will make a point to snap some photo’s of the Island happenings.
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Thats a lot of money for that island! We gotta get out there before the herbicide starts spraying…. hows your skiff?
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This is an outrage! Who decided this? That island is teeming with birds, there are alot of species that were not common to the area when I was young and they are amazing to watch. Aside from the ducks,there are terns,egrets,& cormorants.What effect will this herbicide have on them? What about the runoff? Those marshes are an important estuary and this should concern anyone who fishes. Its unbelievable that they could plan something like this without any community imput.As far as I’m concerned, MauMau is part of Gerritsen Beach and always has been.We were better off when the city forgot we were here and disregarded us.Maybe we didn’t have “improvements” like a skate park but we didn’t have them meddling in our way of life either.
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Your worried about herbicides…. do you realized what is probably leaking into the water from Mau-Mau right this second… I dont know if you realize it but Mau-Mau is an old city garbage dump.
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Joe,
You hit the nail on the head! As mentioned in my earlier post the trees that they plan on hacking down are an important part of what is retaining the island and contents in place. an effort was made some years ago to sandbag the island banks in an attempt to prevent additional spillage of liquid and solids back into the waters. In the past few years, these sandbags have deterioated from the salt exposure and UV rays and in many spots leakage is becoming evident.
I rowed over this past weekend to take a peek and there is certainly some tagging going on. There are also paths that have been cut throughout the island as well.
There was some mention of dredging and re-capping the island with sand but my question is will they re-cap the island with the locally dredged sand? Who knows what contaminents they will stir up with that novel idea. Also, what impact will a distrubance like that have on the fish and shellfish that breed here locally.
Hey, I’m all for improvements but lets look at the big picture here. We have all been using these waterways for years to swim, fish, ski and enjoy with our families. We all want the opportunity for our kids to do the same. If they want to take a step towards improvement why not target the removal of the bridge…this is a navigational hazard and a danger to all including the canoe’s and kayak’s. another step could be the removal od sunken vessels. For years we have made our plea for this bit it only got cought up in the political circle jerk. NOBODY wanted to take responcibility or ownership for this task and it only spurred a finger pointing match between Parks, Army Corps of Engineers and our local politicians, and in the end…Nothing got done or at least they claimed that there was NO funding…Well, now they have some funding!
Anyway, the boats are in and waterskiing has begun, Hope to see you out on the waters.
Keep this in mind while out and about…NYC Parks will tell you that they have jusisdiction over this waterway…They do NOT! According to the U.S. Coast Guard, any tidal waterways fall under their control and jurisdiction. I have given them the GPS coordinates for the “Island area” and in fact they have confirmed their athority in this area. The point here is “dont always believe what you are told”. Question and challenge their authoriative references they want you to believe.
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