Help Keep Portside NY Open

Portside needs a new home confirmed by 4/30 or they will close and their historic ship, the tanker MARY A. WHALEN would likely be scrapped.

To help, sign their petition to Mayor Bloomberg here and forward the petition link! (link is http://chn.ge/PortSideSOS). 


Portside is a young non-profit organization that run programs to educate the community about waterfront history and promote waterways. Check out their site for more ways you can help!

The Mary Whalen in Danger

PortSide has been holding a variety of great events and tours on their restored tanker, the Mary Whalen since 2005. They are an organization devoted to the revitalization of Red Hook and our nautical history.

But now The Mary Whalen needs a home confirmed by April 30 or PortSide will close and the ship will be scrapped.  

PortSide asks concerned community members to meet them Monday, February 27 6:30-8:30pm at Long Island College Hospital to get your endorsements, your ideas, and your help joining action committees. 

Meeting Address:

Long Island College Hospital 

339 Hicks Street, Brooklyn NY 11201
Corner of Atlantic Avenue & Hicks Street, Brooklyn
Enter from Hicks Street (some raised steps) 

If you can't make the meeting, join PortSide at salty Montero's Baracross Atlantic Avenue from LICH just south of Hicks. They will be there until 10:30pm. 

 

Possible Changes to our District and Ports

The Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association has shared two pieces of news about our neighborhood's future. 


There are concerns about a proposal to split up the Columbia Waterfront District on the State Assembly map, giving us two different Assemblymembers and splitting our votes. Read here for the whole story: 
http://cowna.blogspot.com/2012/01/redistricting-blues.html

You may have heard that American Stevedoring is no longer the operator at the container port. Council member Brad Lander has organized a meeting to update the neighborhood on these developments and, hopefully, help us understand what the future may hold.


Date: 9 February 2012
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Postgraduate Center, 177 Columbia Street


Learn more on the COWNA blog:
http://cowna.blogspot.com/2012/01/brad-lander-to-present-overview-of-port.html

Port Authority Failure

Thanks to Brad Kerr of the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association for keeping us up to date on the port pollution issue. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports has posted this damning report on the Port Authority's failure to spend the 33 million appropriated to their clean truck program. Here's the full article.

http://www.cleanandsafeports.org/2011/08/the-price-tag-for-the-port-authority%E2%80%99s-clean-truck-boondoggle/

“Replacing 11 trucks out of a fleet of more than 7,000 does nothing to reduce diesel pollution, eliminate childhood asthma, prevent heart disease and clean the air in New York and New Jersey and it certainly didn’t create any jobs for our residents – instead it created more hardships for the drivers who are already overburdened by debt and low wages. This is an environmental injustice for both the drivers and community residents impacted by port pollution every day.” - Ana Baptista with the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark

Amen to that.

After everything thats happened, now the container port might move???

This past Tuesday, Brooklyn's Chamber of Commerce and Sovereign Bank sponsored an Economic Outlook Breakfast featuring a number of speakers, including Chris Ward, Executive Director of the Port Authority, who in his speech talked about the idea of moving our local container port entirely to Sunset Park near 39th Street.

Among his reasons for this were the Brooklyn Bridge Park development, the need for the Brooklyn waterfront to be integrated with planning for Governor's Island, the changing face of Red Hook, the larger industrial buffer of Sunset Park (as opposed to the residential area near the local site here), and the Cruise Ship Terminal.

While all of this makes sense in many ways, what doesn't make sense is that this announcement comes less than a year after the Port Authority signed a 10 year lease with American Stevedoring, the company that operates the container port.

Back to the drawing board? Does this mean that the EDC should wait to ink its deal with Phoenix Beverages for Pier 11, if Pier 7 may be back up for grabs? The fate of our waterfront has so many ups and downs....

Stay tuned for this ongoing saga and check out more details from Chris Ward's speech and the other speakers of the breakfast at Brooklyn Paper and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
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Speaking of the Port Authority, they also made news this week with plans of making the Cruise Ship Terminal more environmentally friendly by trying to find a way for cruise ships to get electricity from the land grid while parked at the terminal, rather than idling with their less efficient and much dirtier diesel generators. Read more about that here.

Operation Christmas Cheer 2008

While many of us enjoyed time off from work and the company of family today, many workers on the tugboats and barges of New York City's waterways had to remain at work and out on the water, away from home.

Fortunately for them, local organization PortSide NY has an annual event called Operation Christmas Cheer in which they deliver cookies and newspapers to the workers of this necessary industry.

Here's a description of the event (before-hand) from PortSide:

We show up in a small powerboat wearing silly Christmas hats, make a ruckus, and hand over a plate of cookies and newspapers (papers are hard to get when you work on the water). Tugs and barges work 24/7 and often work long hitches (two weeks on, two weeks off is typical). They frequently work national holidays and keenly miss their families on those days. They also feel the burden of working in obscurity, bringing you the stuff you use. The simple gesture of being remembered on Christmas means a lot to them. Just $600 covers the cost of a paper plate of Christmas cookies and a bundle of newspapers (New York Times, Daily News, and The Post) for 40 tugs and barges, plus boat fuel and sandwiches for the elves.

We weren't on the scene today, but the Tugster blog was and posted the following photos:


All pictures taken by Will Van Dorp. More available on the Tugster blog here.

Update: More pictures posted to Tugster here.

Happy Holidays everyone!