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“For decades, development in New York was about concrete, skyscrapers and roads — highways that often ringed the city and kept people from the hundreds of miles of waterfront shoreline that help define the city. Now, the city’s first waterfront plan in two decades will spend billions of dollars to reunite New Yorkers with their water.
“The $3 billion-plus plan, to be announced by the Bloomberg administration Monday, would add 50 new acres of parks, expand dozens more, overhaul the city’s sewage system to reduce waste pushed into the rivers and dredge waterways to make room for giants ships that are rarely seen on the East Coast.
“For much of the city’s history, the waterfront was viewed more as dumping ground than destination. The Erie Canal’s opening in the early 1800s made the city America’s main port, and industrial toxins and human waste turned much of New York Harbor to muck. The harbor’s oysters died, methane gas bubbled to the surface, and the horrific smell wafted inland and kept the city’s upper class far from the water.
“The first stages of the effort are expected to cost the city more than $3.27 billion over the next three years, with most of the money going to wastewater infrastructure. The work is meant to create 13,000 construction jobs and 3,400 permanent maritime positions. The longer-term components of the plan have no price tag yet, and their outcome will depend on the approach of future administrations.
“Roland Lewis, president of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, a coalition of environmental, recreational and business organizations, said the plan “will increase the attention and use of the waterfront tremendously, from greenways, to boat access, to cleaner water, to preservation and cultivation of maritime industry and the working waterfront.”
Read more: WSJ
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