By Rebecca Henely
While both Queens politicians and the city Parks Department agree the Queens Seawall along the East River in Long Island City is in desperate need of repair, the Parks Department maintains the money simply is not there.
Borough President Helen Marshall, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria), state Sen. George Onorato (D-Astoria), state Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria), Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan (D-Ridgewood) and City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) wrote a letter June 28 to the mayor’s office asking for immediate repair of the seawall.
In the letter, they said the seawall completely failed “many years ago” and the area has been fenced off to prevent injury to residents in the nearby Queensbridge Houses. The letter said the dilapidated wall keeps residents from the waterfront, but cathodic devices used to run some of the New York subway lines are under the wall and could be compromised.
“There’s no reason to wait any longer,” Maloney said in a statement, “and thousands of reasons to get the seawall repaired as soon as possible.”
But money remains an issue. Joshua Laird, assistant Parks Department commissioner for Planning and Parklands, said the city agency’s annual budget is generally allocated for specific projects and there is none allocated for this one.
“It’s a source of really great frustration for us, for the commissioner [Adrian Benepe],” Laird said. “We recognize it as a real hardship for the community.”
According to the letter, Maloney secured $555,000 and Nolan obtained $350,000 in fiscal years 2005 and 2006 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a survey and repair the seawall. But the Parks Department rejected the funds.
Laird said this was done because the agency believed the survey was unnecessary.
“We don’t need a feasibility study,” he said. “We know it needs to be done, we need construction money.”
He added that working with the corps could have meant the project would take five years to complete, so the plan was rejected by the department at the time. But money or occasions to complete the project through other means have not surfaced in the same amount of time.
The letter said the seawall should be repaired through mitigation obligations by either or both the city Department of Transportation or city Sanitation Department.
Laird said that in mitigation obligations, an organization that does a city project involving construction on a body of water needs to mitigate the harmful impact by additional construction.
The letter said the DOT has obligations for its repairs to the FDR Drive in Manhattan and the Sanitation Department has obligations for building the North Shore Marine Transfer Station in Flushing Bay.
“In each case, the relevant agency has not yet satisfied its obligation to mitigate the impact of construction on a body of water,” the letter stated. “Either agency could fulfill its responsibilities by repairing the Queens seawall.”
But Laird said while both agencies were initially receptive, the work they need to do is not a complete match and may be greater than their obligations. He said it is a complicated project, one that involves removing the collapsed bulkhead, working around the Metropolitan Transportation Authority facility under the park and deal with any soil issues that could arise.
He said the Parks Department is hoping to investigate and break the project into smaller parts that would make it easier for the DOT or Sanitation to fulfill their mitigation obligations.
Meanwhile, the politicians called upon the mayor’s office to arrange a meeting to solve the problem.
“By failing to take action to repair the seawall before it deteriorates even more, the city is endangering thousands of Queens residents in their homes, along the waterfront, and in the subways,” said Onorato.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
