Climate Chaos - Community Uproar Over Park Plan and Possible Privatization.

     After Superstorm Sandy in fall 2012, community groups worked with the City to create a flood control plan for lower Manhattan and East River Park. Four years later they came up with a plan which involved a berm (similar to a dike) that would run along the FDR and the park. But to the shock of the community, about two and a half years ago Mayor Bill de Blasio trashed the community-backed plan and changed it to what is now called The East Side Coastal Resiliency Plan, (ESCR), a plan that will clear cut 1000 mature trees, remove every shred of biodiversity, then bury the entire, (almost 50 acres) park in 8-10 feet of landfill, killing every living thing and exposing the neighborhood to an enormous amount of particulate dust for many years, meanwhile all of it costing the city twice as much, almost $2 billion.

     Tune in to learn about this plan and how activists from a number of affected communities are opposing the plan. Lambda Award Winning Poet and activist Eileen Myles, Tony QueyLin from National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS) and community activist Rachel de Aragon fill us in on an effort that is getting the run-around from elected Council members, the mayor and various city officials and agencies.  Some activists suspect the city is moving to privatize the park and build housing on it.  Whatever the motivation, why did the city overturn the community favored plan, and substitute their plan. Why did the city refuse to provide the report justifying the decision, then turn around and say no report existed, then turn around after it was sued after it failed to provide it under the Freedom of Information Act? A process that took a year and a half.  Why did they then deliver a redacted plan that was completely unreadable and only deliver a readable report after more legal pressure? What's at stake? Activists say the ESCR Plan would devastate the community and leave it open to more flooding.

     Removing this large number of trees will without question harm the health of many New Yorkers. Removing the trees will remove the only substantial protection from the traffic on FDR and the air cleansing and reduction in heat the trees provide. People will be killed from the heat created in the absence of these trees. This plan will especially affect those living in NYCHA (NY City Housing Authority) buildings along the East River Drive (FDR) who already suffer high rates of respiratory disease. And now with COVID, we cannot afford to lose any open space. Many people will have no place nearby to go for recreation without this park; and of course the mental health effects of this destruction are not quantifiable. The City claims they will then build a new park on top of the fill but no matter what, once the trees are cut, we will not get a park back like this in our lifetimes if ever, Many of the trees are 80 years old.