NYCWTA City Council Waterfronts Committee Testimony 11-24-09

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

I am here representing the New York City Water Trail Association.

The New York City Water Trail Association is citizens' group launched to support and promote the safe use of the New York City Water Trail, established by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation in 2008. Founded this past spring by a committed group of local paddlers, rowers and waterfront activists, we are an umbrella group representing the interests of more than 20 community boating programs. Our mission is to advocate for the safe use of human-powered boats in harbor, an expansion of the number and quality of launches, landings and storage facilities available to human-powered boaters, and wider awareness of the public ownership of our urban waterways. In short we see the harbor as public space, in fact the largest open public space in our city – a true New York Commons.

Recreational use of our waterways promotes environmental stewardship, physical activity, and a connection to the natural environment that urban dwellers so often lack. The scope of current redevelopment of waterfront land going on in this city is unprecedented in our lifetimes, and we will have just this one chance to re-imagine the way we interact with the water for generations to come. Blueways should be thought of as of a piece with Greenways in the “greening” of New York. As a city of islands, our waterfront parks should be connected not just by bike paths but by paddling and rowing “trails” as well. While we applaud the city’s efforts to provide the public with waterfront access, we feel that there is an important distinction to be made between different types of access and their value in really connecting New Yorkers to their waterways: visual access is important, but direct access to the water, actually touching the water, fosters a sense of stewardship that just looking at the water cannot. Recreating on the water enforces a sense of having a stake in it’s being clean, the ecosystem being healthy, and if you learn to love the water as a child you grow up with that priority.

We don’t know exactly how many people get on the water each year in human-powered boats harbor-wide, but the NYC Water Trail Association is currently launching a comprehensive survey of community boating groups to find out. For now we can say that the Downtown Boathouse took over 10,000 people out last year and the Village Community Boathouse over 3000, and that’s just 2 of the 20+ boating groups currently active in the city. Many of the participants in these programs are New Yorkers whose quality of life is enhanced by the opportunity to enjoy the water directly, but many are visitors from around the state, around the country, and around the world. New York City has become a unique paddling destination, lauded in many articles in boating publications over the last few years. In fact the circumnavigation of Manhattan by kayak has been called one of the “holy grails” of sea kayaking. This kind of attention is starting to bring success to a small but growing industry of small-boating outfitters and schools but also promotes the reputation of New York as a destination for outdoor, eco-friendly sports, pointing to a growing market in tourism: Seeing the statue of Liberty from a ferry is nice. Seeing the Statue of Liberty from a kayak is spectacular.

The human-powered boating community also boasts several world-class events that draw spectators and participants from across the globe. In addition to the Mayor’s Cup New York Kayak Championships which has, in just a few short years, become one of the most important events on the global elite paddle-sport race circuit, the annual Liberty Challenge has for several years drawn outrigger canoe teams from as far away as the South Pacific to compete on our local waters and their supporters to New York to watch and experience everything the city has to offer. Both events are expected to grow with the skyrocketing pace of interest in paddle-sports worldwide, so the value of recreational boating to New York’s sports scene cannot be overestimated.

Human-powered boaters are just one part of a greater fabric of recreational users who share the harbor. Ideally human-powered boaters can take advantage of natural beaches and soft edges with little or no infrastructure required, but even in areas where space is limited and bulkheads preclude the use of natural shorelines, we’ve seen several examples of successful mixed-use facilities in New York in recent years, providing templates for future development of shared access points. One such example was Pier 63 Maritime, a facility that housed historic ships and sailboats, a water taxi stop, and kayak and canoe clubs, while serving as a public boat launch, community art / performance space, and a restaurant, all on a restored railroad barge requiring very little upland space, helping to transform the blighted Chelsea waterfront into a destination.

The New York City Water Trail’s main goal in testifying today is to let you know that, in creating the Water Trail, the Department of Parks and Recreation has set a bold precedent. We’d like to extend a special thank you to Queens Borough Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski for having the courage and vision to spearhead that effort. Parks is the first government agency to not only permit but to encourage, New Yorkers to use the harbor recreationally. There are now nearly 40 officially sanctioned launch sites around the harbor, with more to be added next year.

Unfortunately some other agencies have not exhibited the same foresight that City Parks has. State Parks and some of the economic development agencies have not followed City Parks’ lead and been proactive about providing citizens with access to their waterways from their waterfront sites. We need this council’s help to persuade these other agencies to follow City Parks’ lead in setting precedent and establishing best practices for providing direct public water access, and following up with support for public programming, necessary boat storage, and off-season boatbuilding and education.

We encourage you, as individual council members, to see that your district is not left behind, that you seize your opportunity to open up a whole new world to your constituents that takes advantage of your neighborhood all the way to its literal edges, one with recreational and economic opportunities that encourage a healthy active lifestyle and environmental stewardship. Your neighborhood could have a beach of its own!

We hope you’ll take a stand in the name of your neighborhoods to demand that your waterfront, be opened up to the people of New York as public space to be used, enjoyed, valued and protected by future generations.

Thank you.

nyc water trail association organizational meeting may 14--please rsvp!

Dear Prospective NYCWTA Members,

We’re writing to alert you to two upcoming events.

The first is the launch of the new edition of the New York City Water Trail Guide, which will take place at 10:30 am on May 14 at the new human-powered boat launch in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Should be a festive event, and a chance to glimpse the intriguing spectacle of a launch dock that, according to the Guide, is “submerged at high tide.”

The second event is our own organizational meeting, which we’d like to hold later the same day at the Village Community Boathouse on Pier 40 in Manhattan.  We’re thinking 7 pm would be a good time, with beers and/or dinner possible at the Ear Inn on Spring Street afterwards.

The point of the meeting is to figure out how our group ought to be set up and run. Here’s what we proposed in our last letter:

“The NYCWTA would meet as we do now, which is to say mainly online, and choose, via a simple one-vote-per-group election, a small executive or steering committee that would assign the actual work of listserv managing, calendar posting, letter writing, and note-taking and testifying at public meetings. Major policy decisions or documents would need to be approved by a majority of returned responses from member groups, but would carry only the 'signatures' of those members who supported them. In other words, each boating and access organization would be able to opt in or out of statements, letters, etc, as it saw fit.”

Let us know first if you can send a representative to the meeting, and second, whether you are amenable to the basic idea of this proposed provisional governance structure. If so, we’d anticipate soliciting nominations that night and then conducting elections immediately (with perhaps a chance for non-attending organizations to nominate and vote online). If not, we’d be happy to listen to other suggestions. We'd also be interested in any other ideas for the agenda beyond the creation of a steering committee.

All are welcome at this meeting but because we envision this organization as a coalition of human-powered boating groups, we expect that only groups would be voting for the membership of an executive or steering committee, and that each group would be limited to one vote.

Our apologies for the duplicate emails—we wanted to make sure everyone out there who’d expressed interest was invited. If you know of a group we missed, or have any questions about how to join the nyc-water-trail google group, please let us know.

Hope to see you on the 14th!


The NYC Water Trail Association Organizing Committee