By Helen Klein
Everyday, it seems, the Shore Road bike path comes a little closer to the pounding waters of the Narrows. So close, in fact, that in some areas the water is lapping through cracks and crevices in the path, where the seawall is in the process of caving in, just yards from where thousands of cars pass by daily on the Belt Parkway. “Here’s the problem – exhibit A,” pronounced Congressperson Vito Fossella, standing astride a cracked and shifted chunk of bike path under which the surf could be seen. “It just goes all the way down, for blocks. It’s not a matter of walk over there, not here. The seawall is falling in. I am concerned that the walkway itself is being undermined. The situation is going to get worse, and an additional concern is that the weakened area doesn’t approach the roadway. Then, we have a big problem.” Fossella, accompanied by representatives of Community Board 10, had come to the bike path to meet representatives of a variety of governmental agencies – the Army Corps of Engineers (which had previously agreed to study the seawall and its problems), the city’s Department of Transportation, Department of Parks and Recreation, and Department of Environmental Protection, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation. On display was the enormity of the problem – “craters,” as Fossella said, 13 or 15 feet wide,” and continually enlarging. While the community board has been lobbying city government for restoration of the bike path for the past decade, the hope now is that action can be taken quickly to stave off what some see as a disaster in the making. While the reality is that the restoration of the seawall and bike path is likely to take time, and about $20 million, to accomplish, the congressman and community board are pushing for emergency repairs to prevent walkers or bicyclists from falling into some of the crater-like holes, and to prevent the bike path from literally crumbling into the Narrows. In the past few weeks, areas with particularly bad sinkholes have been cordoned or fenced off, as, in the past, efforts have been made to fill in holes that quickly re-formed. But, even as the congressperson and his party spoke about the problems along the stretch of bike path between the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the 69th Street Pier, passersby showed no hesitation about crossing over into the restricted area. “We get calls about the path every day,” noted Craig Eaton, CB 10’s chairperson. “My concern is safety. You get people bicycling here at night. If it’s dark and one of those things is moved, you are going to lose them in a hole. I envision problems this summer, people getting hurt. It’s something that needs more than a Band-Aid. The holes that are the real problem are the ones right along the seawall. Those are the ones that keep falling in. As the sand underneath starts to shift and move toward the water, you are going to find weakness everywhere. It’s a slow process, but a process that’s probably been working against us for 10 or more years. “The question I’ve got,” Eaton later noted, “is that the federal government is going to do a study. It could take months if not years. What are we going to do now?” Eaton, who had stood with Fossella on the broken piece of bike stressed, “Every time a wave came, it shook. The only thing holding the cement seawall intact there is the fence.” How quickly the deterioration has accelerated was pointed out by Julius Spiegel, the Brooklyn borough commissioner of parks. Looking at the spot where Fossella stood above the churning waters, he said, “This happened in the last month. You did not see water here a month ago.” “I’m not a fear-monger,” noted Fossella, “but, if this can happen in a month, in another month, the whole path may have to be shut.” For a quick fix, the best hope may be emergency efforts on the part of the Army Corps, noted Frank Verga, a project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers. “That may be the way to do it, spot fixes for now,” he remarked. “The emergency has to be taken care of,” Fossella agreed, “then we can start thinking short, middle and long-term.”
