Overview

Community Eco Docks

Waterfront Action Agenda Solution: Town Docks

Community Eco Docks are floating docks that rise and fall with the tide, making them accessible to all types of vessels at all times during the day and night. Their flexibility, cost-effectiveness to build and maintain, environmental benefits and potential to promote local economic development make them almost universally approved by city agencies such as the New York City Departments of Environmental Conservation, Parks and Recreation and Planning, and by community organizations, businesses and New York City residents alike.

In partnership with other organizations, MWA is spearheading work to construct a minimum of two and up to five Community Eco Docks at waterfront locations in New York City. MWA’s work in 2009 includes managing site selection with a dock location study and determination of site ownership; due diligence, with a maritime and upland analysis; schematic design of the community eco dock facility; and community organizing.

Harbor Camp

Waterfront Action Agenda Solution: Every Kid on the Water

Harbor Camp provides opportunities for kids at summer camps in New York City to attend field trips on or near the waters surrounding the New York-New Jersey region. For example, funding from MWA to the United Neighborhood Houses (UNH) gives children in summer camp programs free access to water-related, environmental, and park-related summer camp field trips. Examples of field trips include trips around the harbor on the historic tug boat Pegasus and visits to the Waterfront Museum, a floating classroom and showboat barge housed aboard the last remaining covered wooden barge, docked in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Harbor Camp introduces young people to the water that surrounds us and is a means for them to experience, many for the first time, the excitement and the beauty of a region and city of water. Harbor Camp cultivates stewardship in its participants by eliciting from these young students a desire to protect and preserve the environmental integrity of our wettest of natural resources.

2009 will mark MWA’s fifth year sponsoring Harbor Camp for children ages 5-17. In 2008, over 400 children from Hudson Guild, University Settlement, Union Settlement, Goddard Riverside Community Center and the Chinese-American Planning Council participated in 20 different field trips.

“Getting to Yes”

MWA’s Waterfront Permitting Project

Waterfront Action Agenda Solution: One Stop Shop

In the New York Harbor there are dozens of governmental agencies that have some hand in regulating waterfront use. It is a complicated, non-transparent, system that stymies even the most sophisticated land owners and waterfront developers. For the small businessman, community program or individual landowner, the waterfront bureaucracy can be overwhelming.

Outcry from Alliance Partners for clarity and uniformity in waterfront permitting became clear during the 18 months of discussions that led to the development of the Waterfront Action Agenda. MWA is therefore taking a leadership role in addressing this issue.

Through regulatory research, conversations and interviews with permittees and government officials, MWA is taking the beginning steps needed to make the waterfront permitting process more transparent and hopefully more streamlined. Identifying relevant jurisdictions and statutory requirements, compiling the many ideas and opinions on this topic, and developing long term recommendations for change are the key initial steps in this process.

At the end of the first phase of this project, MWA will widely disseminate information on how to navigate the permitting process in a comprehensive and user friendly format on-line and in printed materials. Detailed recommendations about how to move this project forward towards the larger, long term goal of solving this problem will also be developed.

Implementing the Waterfront Action Agenda

Re-engaging the MWA Task Forces

Waterfront Action Agenda

The Waterfront Action Agenda is a comprehensive program to enhance the New York metropolitan region’s reputation as a world-class port and waterfront destination. Over 240 organizations, including local, state, and Federal agencies, participated from 2007 to 2008 to share common problems and solutions to many waterfront issues.

Their work established comprehensive, consensus-based, and equitable proposals for the New York metropolitan region’s waterfront that cover economic vitality, environmental priorities, transportation, public access, and infrastructure.

The participation that led to the creation of the Waterfront Action Agenda is being reinvigorated in 2009 to capitalize on the momentum at MWA’s Waterfront Conference in November 2008. MWA will soon begin work with the task forces to find ways to further implement the Waterfront Action Agenda. Additionally the task forces will be asked in late 2009 to provide input for the development of New York City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. The Comprehensive Waterfront Plan itself is a result of work done by MWA and other civic organizations to convince the City to think long-term about use of and access to the New York metropolitan waterfront. It will put in place a ten-year plan and will influence waterfront decisions well into the future.

Candidate Questionnaire and Constituency Building

MWA Community Organizing

Waterfront Action Agenda

MWA will soon finalize a program to challenge our elected officials to support a better waterfront for all. To make the Waterfront Action Agenda a reality, our region needs a broad and deep constituency for the waterfront up to and through the 2009 elections.

MWA’s Alliance Partners along with MWA staff, volunteers, and task force members will begin this work together by administering questionnaires to decision makers in districts facing key elections in 2009.

Leaders among MWA’s Alliance Partners will work with MWA
staff and volunteers to meet one-on-one and ask a series of waterfront
related questions of elected officials, community board members, and
mayors in districts in New York and New Jersey to build awareness of and broaden support for the Waterfront Action Agenda.

Later, Alliance Partners, task force members, City of Water Day visitors, and MWA website visitors will be able to endorse the Waterfront Action Agenda. These signatures will be sent to decision makers and the elected officials who participated in the questionnaire process to reinforce their support for the waterfront. This effort will continue past the elections and will be an on-going effort for years to come as the region is vast and the goals of the Waterfront Action Agenda are ambitious.

Design the Edge 2 – Jamaica Bay

Waterfront Action Agenda Solution: Nature Filled Waterfront Edges

In 2002 MWA joined the New York City Parks Department
to explore how to redesign Harlem River Park, an area that includes the western sea wall along a section of the East River at approximately 135th Street.

The success of this project led MWA to its current 2009 partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and the New York State Department of State to find ways to redesign a sea wall (also known as bulkheads) in Jamaica Bay in much the same way.

The goal of these projects are to push the traditional paradigms of standard bulkhead engineering design so bulkheads can provide multiple uses and functions while still serving as a barrier between land and water. In this way we can provide places along the shoreline that support aquatic life, allow boaters to
access the water, and decrease damage to the intertidal zone from wakes and swiftly moving water.

The MWA will design and conduct a process that will lead to the development of alternative shoreline and bulkhead designs along a 10 block section of the Rockaways on the bayside. Using input from the local community, design consultants, and scientists, MWA’s work will lead to the development of design plans used by EDC to develop final construction documents for this project.

MWA will publicize the results of this project, the process undertaken by MWA and EDC, and the final alternative shoreline designs to provide project information to the community groups, agencies, and practitioners looking to do similar projects in the NYC region.

City of Water Day

Waterfront Action Agenda: The Action Agenda in Action; Fun with a Purpose

City of Water Day is a public celebration July 18, 2009 on Governors Island when the Waterfront Action Agenda will be brought to life for thousands of New Yorkers through environmental education and active recreation. It is fun with a purpose.

City of Water Day is an event conceived of, produced, and executed by MWA. The event brings together everything about the water that is exciting and fun while providing participants with a direct connection to the need for change and action to make MWA’s Waterfront Action Agenda a reality.

At City of Water Day, participants will be able to eat, relax, listen to music, participate in waterfront-related activities, and enjoy the beautiful view of the harbor from Governors Island while participating in the City of Water Information Fair, where dozens of waterfront initiatives will be presented and participants will be encouraged to become involved at local and city levels.