Mayor De Blasio, Call Off the Tree Massacre, and Begin Again
By Karen Loew, October 31, 2021
When we New Yorkers reminisce about the bygone eras of past mayors, we remember highs or lows in our lives and those of our communities. It all depends on your situation at the time. Over Mayor Bloomberg’s 12 years, were there lows like being routinely stopped by police for walking while Black? Were there highs like experiencing large-scale public artworks such as The Gates in Central Park?
During Mayor Giuliani’s eight years preceding Bloomberg, one of many examples comes to mind: The low point when, toward the beginning of Giuliani’s second term, he sold an Alphabet City community center to a private developer, who has neither developed the site nor allowed others to do so. The result is that a NYC Landmark building fronting two residential blocks has been nothing but an empty, dangerous blight for nearly a quarter century. Rudy is long gone from City Hall, but PS 64 might as well have “Failure By Giuliani” branded on its crumbling facade. Community activists in the 1990s fought the sale long and hard, but they lost. Nobody won.
In the final months of his two terms, Mayor De Blasio now has the chance to avoid just such a losing proposition, and on a far vaster scale. Where the vibrant PS 64 community center may have touched, let’s say, tens of thousands of people over its lifetime, there’s a current project that will affect millions in even more critical ways. The East Side Coastal Resiliency project (ESCR) is slotted for substantial work beginning Monday, Nov. 1, with the felling of 1,000 mature and healthy trees in East River Park.
This cannot happen. A sacrifice of irreplaceable public property may not be enacted by a city government without grave deliberation -- something not adequately demonstrated to stakeholders. A 2022 deadline that’s part of the current equation can be changed; it must not warp the entire ESCR project. The situation is similar to one Mayor De Blasio embraced in December 2018, when he called NYC’s legalization of marijuana a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to get a historic issue right for future New Yorkers." The same is true for ESCR. Halt the chainsaws!
John V. Lindsay East River Park is absolutely vital to residents of nearby neighborhoods, from the Lower East Side north to Stuyvesant Town -- although many New Yorkers barely know that it exists. I’ve walked the length of it a few times recently, feeling delight at the monumental sights along the river on this bump of the island, as well as at the boxing, bicycling, barbecuing, sunbathing, jogging and conversing taking place in the park. In nooks of lawns, people set up lavish party decorations for a baby shower, a child’s birthday celebration. I found myself at a free Saturday afternoon dance party on the river-facing side of the Amphitheater, then admiring a flower garden of transporting beauty. Good vibes flow in abundance, from a human ecosystem that developed over years, like all ecosystems.
De Blasio has pursued the ESCR project, begun under his predecessor Bloomberg, for good reason: Hurricanes Sandy and Ida demonstrated that much of NYC is vulnerable to flooding. Not long after Sandy, the idea was embraced, and federally funded, of remaking the southern end of Manhattan for better water management via a program called Rebuild By Design. Bloomberg released a plan in 2013, acknowledging that it would be up to the next mayor to implement. In 2018, De Blasio replaced Bloomberg’s plan with his own. Ground officially was broken this past April of 2021 in Stuyvesant Cove Park. And now, the trees come down.
No one is ready for that. A day of some tree-cutting may yet arrive; the activists of East River Park Action and other advocates know it. In fact, remarkable consensus exists between the city and everyone else around the existence of a particular problem: that Lower Manhattan (among other places in the five boroughs) will continue to be prone to damaging flooding, especially with the rising seas and more frequent and intense precipitation that climate change brings. And remarkable consensus also exists about the need to physically modify East River Park so that this coastal sliver of land can better protect the city “interior” including and beyond the elevated FDR Drive.
Which is why we might as well get the actual plans correct, too. It is possible to make the ESCR reflect current engineering best practices and help affected communities swallow the bitter pill of park closure during construction. Given that almost a decade has passed since Sandy walloped New York, it’s understandable that some are impatient to get the project underway. But given the massive scope, cost and ambition of the project, it’s essential to do it right. Speed over quality is not the leadership choice.
Let’s get one concern about urgency out of the way: the deadline set by the feds for use of $355 million in Rebuild by Design funds is Sept. 30, 2022. I spent some time on Friday calling several HUD numbers to see what they’d say about extending the deadline. No one answered the phone. It’s an illusion anyway: deadlines are man-made. The deadline has been pushed back before. It can be done.
So: Why pause the bulldozers now? First, local stakeholders were not involved in the creation of the current plan, and have been deprived of essential information, so they don’t trust the plan. Attaining buy-in is a necessity, not a nicety. Second, as far as can be discerned via limited information, the plan has serious weaknesses — and the opaque process only increases concerns. Third, it does not sufficiently embody truly progressive, forward-looking philosophies.
To explain these points further: It’s standard practice for community engagement to be included in the process of a city-sponsored major land development. The previous administration conducted this engagement, to the apparent satisfaction of stakeholders. The current one conducted far less — so residents were less informed. When residents ask for information, they receive things like a fully redacted report. In July, City Comptroller Scott Stringer rejected a major ESCR contract due to assorted vendor errors, including not hiring enough minority and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBE). In a democracy, you don’t make a case for public works based on top secret documents, or hire shoddy contractors when others are available.
Let the Mayor chart a new course, with an innovative approach — for example, a large-scale, multi-step charrette involving the city’s urban planners and existing plans, numerous community members, and expert engineers and designers from global cities also dealing with and learning from these new problems and solutions. Involve Mayor-elect Eric Adams and his team as well. Take six months to a year. Emerge with all parties confident in a “best in class” solution that the affected neighborhoods will support rather than resent.
As to the plan’s apparent weaknesses: The ESCR is a complex project. Numerous government agencies are participating, reflecting the tangle of land, fill, utilities, estuary, harbor, landscape, climate, traffic, real estate, and recreational issues that impact the design and engineering of such an undertaking, not to mention dealing with toxic waste proximate to NYCHA housing and groundwater. No one thinks this project is easy. That’s why every detail of it must stand up to scrutiny. To cite just a few of many questions: What’s in the redacted report? What is the true impact of ESCR on Manhattan’s aged sewerage system, which during heavy rains currently dumps raw sewage into the rivers via combined sewer outflows (CSOs)? And, does the city have an accurate understanding of the park in question? In a court hearing last week on a complaint brought by East River Park Action, the city’s attorney said the park is dying. This is not credible. The administration comes off as intellectually dishonest.
Now is the time for Mayor De Blasio to reclaim the “true progressive” identity that won his first election in 2013. Adjustments to the ESCR plan are part of that — because at present it includes several unenlightened attitudes. Some point out that it’s unacceptable for the plan to basically have “no comment” about the pollution-spewing automobile artery bordering ESCR, the FDR Drive. It matters, as we create these new kinds of climate-protective infrastructure, that they embody the values of the future, like transportation that’s other than gas-powered.
With his “tale of two cities,” De Blasio won many over by expressing determination on behalf of lower-income New Yorkers. In every borough, that’s who often bears the brunt of negative trends from foreclosures to flooding. The trauma of rootshock is already felt in many ways on the Lower East Side (see PS 64 above). Defined by Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, rootshock is the loss felt by residents of a place when parts of it disappear due to outside forces. The many effects of the pandemic only increased losses of all kinds. We humans need our metaphorical roots as much as trees need their real ones.
And make no mistake, humans do need trees. We all know that on practical and aesthetic levels, in addition to those who feel it in our animal bones. The science behind this instinct is documented by the pathbreaking ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard, whose body of work has opened up a new world of understanding about trees. Trees are connected and they communicate with each other. Knowing more about them as beings makes it that much worse to needlessly kill them. A character based on Simard animates the core of Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory, and her ideas are key to the blockbuster film Avatar as well. True progressives know that everywhere in life on Earth, it’s easy to destroy, and hard to build.
Mayor De Blasio has an affinity for symbolism and showmanship that New Yorkers tend to appreciate. Understatement is not really our thing. Someone who is game to run for president, and now governor, clearly has guts. Now is the moment for De Blasio to show the courage to pause this project. Not to scrap it, but to retool. In merely two months, the next mayor will be carrying ESCR forward with his agencies. There are bumps and redirections coming. Surely a tree massacre can wait? At least because it’s polite to help the neighbors plan for memorials. We may want to use those tree trunks in our community spaces, rather than just have them carted away. This is a neighborhood where local history and cultural lineages are respected. You can’t just cut down an urban forest for vague reasons. Those trees have stood with us through thick and thin, whether we were kissing or crying under the branches.
Bill de Blasio can be the mayor who uses all the best practices to ensure that the ESCR is a lasting success. Otherwise, it may be a lasting failure. And it will have his name on it.