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Urban Hawks Take Flight on New York's Upper West Side

2009-06-24T16:36:19Z

Reason No. 137 that I love commuting by bike in New York City: I get to watch baby hawks go to flight school.

Last year, I was fascinated and then heartbroken by a pair of red-tail hawks that built a precarious-looking nest over the West Side Highway, produced a trio of hatchlings, then lost their offspring before they got a chance to take flight, apparently to rat poison.

So I was happy -- but concerned -- this year when the hawks returned to Riverside Park and took up in a new tree, this time just off the West Side bike path that I frequently ride to work. (New York real estate experts would no doubt call this new nest an upgrade -- it has great views of the Hudson River.)

I didn't watch the pair as closely as I did last year, because I had a newborn of my own that took up most of my attention this spring. But I did check the updates occasionally at blogs that obsessively follow urban hawks, and I always looked up at the nest when I passed by their tree.

Riding home last week, I noticed more commotion than usual. Photographers -- call them hawkarazzi -- were pointing their lenses skyward, and parks employees were surrounding the hawks' tree with a temporary fence and signs warning dog walkers to keep their pooches at bay.

The baby hawks were learning to fly.

I pulled my bike over and craned my neck up with everyone else. I quickly spotted mom and dad high in the branches, watching as their new trio of youngsters tested out their wings. As a new father myself, I felt a shared sense of pride with the plucky birds who -- like me -- call Riverside Drive their home.

Much has been written about the connection that New Yorkers feel with their hawks -- particularly the famous Pale Male, who nested for years on a Fifth Avenue co-op overlooking Central Park that he shared with Mary Tyler Moore. (The Riverside Park hatchlings are likely his descendents.)

For my part, I think it's a sense of validation and connection to nature -- that even here on the island of Manhattan, one of the most densely packed cities in the world, I can see hawks building nests and raising their offspring, and I can do it from the back of my bicycle while riding alongside the majestic Hudson River.

It's one of those hidden treats, those shared experiences that make life in New York so rewarding and exhilarating, despite its daily hassles and challenges and the constant queries from non-New Yorkers along the lines of: "You've got a kid now. When are you going to move out of your tiny apartment and into a real house in the suburbs already?"

If the hawks can make it here, they can make it anywhere -- and so can the rest of us.

I think there's another appeal to hawk watching, as well: A sense that if nature survives and thrives in an environment like New York City, surrounded by all the concrete and chaos, then maybe things aren't as bad as we sometimes fear they are. Maybe the world as we know it will shrug off the pollution of our atmosphere, the changes in temperature, the loss of thousands of species, the massive shifts in climate that science tells us are coming. Maybe nature -- and we -- are tougher than we think.

Of course, that kind of hope can also bring disappointment.

I stopped by the nest again on my ride home last night and learned from my fellow hawk gawkers that one of the three fledglings had been hit by a car and killed. Reports say that it was flying low while carrying a dead rat in its talons -- probably the first meal it had caught on its own. Nature may be resilient, but there are dangers around every turn.

Still, the dead fledgling's siblings hadn't given up. There they were yesterday evening, up in the trees, taking short flights from limb to limb and following their father as he enticed them farther away from the nest with a dead squirrel in his grasp.

I wished the fledglings luck and continued home. Soon, if they survive, the young hawks will fly off for good, leaving an empty nest behind. Surely there are safer places for the adult hawks to raise a family than this busy spot on New York's Upper West Side, but selfishly, I hope they continue to return year after year.

I want to bring my own son here one day, to point up into the trees and hope that he shares my sense of wonder and inspiration at what's learning to soar just above our heads.

Photos: Courtesy D. Bruce Yolton

Good Fish, Bad Fish: Is Your Favorite Seafood Unhealthy for the Planet?

2009-06-08T15:45:39Z

When I was growing up, my family lived in New Orleans for several years, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One of my father's friends had a boat, and he liked to take it out shrimping. My dad and I would often join him and his son.

I loved those early morning boat trips (except for the time that I got very seasick -- probably my fault for snacking on Fritos -- and the trip that I'm about to tell you about). The lake was so big that you could barely see the shoreline.

On one occasion, our nets were coming up empty, so my dad's friend steered the boat toward the mouth of the lake where it meets the Gulf of Mexico and ventured into a cove where he hoped to find some shrimp. Soon, the boat started dragging. We feared that the net had gotten snagged on the bottom of the lake. But when they winched it in, the cause turned out to be quite a bit scarier for my 10-year-old self.

The boat had gone right over a school of stingrays, which had probably ventured into the lake from the Gulf, and our net was full of them. As the net came up, it looked like they were going to spill into the boat. My dad and his friend struggled to release them without damaging the boat or the fishing equipment, but eventually they had no choice but to cut the net away.

I watched from the prow as those ghostly stingrays spread out beneath us, silently gliding away from the hapless weekend fishermen who had inadvertently disturbed them.

Drawing food from the sea is one of the most fundamental interactions that we can have with the our oceans, and I'm glad that I have those early experiences in New Orleans to draw upon. The stingray incident taught me a respect for the ocean and its creatures -- and a concern for how we interact with them -- that sticks with me today.

The fish we choose to eat -- and the way we fish for them -- can have a tremendous impact on our oceans. As part of a personal goal to eat healthier, I'm trying to increase the amount of fish in my diet. It's a lean protein with great health benefits. But there are risks, as well: Some types of fish can be contaminated with mercury and PCBs, and sometimes seafood is harvested in a way that's bad for the oceans.

That's why NRDC created a new Sustainable Seafood Guide for consumers. It provides seven basic guidelines that you can follow when shopping for seafood or ordering at a restaurant, to help make the choice of what's healthy for you and the planet a little easier.

We also have specific advice about America's favorite types of seafood, from shrimp to tuna to fish sticks, and a handy list that shows what's OK to eat and what you should avoid. Once you've made your selection, we also have a collection of helpful recipes for serving healthy, feel-good seafood meals.

When working on the seafood guide with NRDC's oceans experts, I was a little disheartened to see that many of my favorite types of fish -- grouper, halibut, orange roughy, cod -- had landed on the recommended "avoid" list. (Pacific cod and halibut are OK, but the Atlantic varieties are badly depleted.) I was aware of the overfishing problems that many species face, but this put it in pretty stark terms.

Today is the first-ever World Oceans Day, designated by the United Nations as an occasion to celebrate and protect the world's oceans. And there are certainly a lot of problems facing our seas -- overfishing, habitat destruction, acidification, water pollution, jellyfish invasions, giant trash vortexes in the Pacific ... the list goes on.

We might not be able to tackle all of those big problems all at once. But as my colleague Laura Pagano suggests, one way that each of us can make a difference right now is to make smarter choices about the seafood we eat and understand its impact on the oceans. We hope that NRDC's Sustainable Seafood Guide will help. Please share it with other seafood lovers!

To learn more about the threats facing our oceans and other ways that you can help on World Oceans Day, visit nrdc.org/oceans.

Planning for School Growth Should Be Elementary

2009-06-03T16:36:18Z

New York magazine featured a great story last week on school overcrowding in Manhattan. What struck me -- aside from concerns about how my own kid might fare -- was this passage about the city's failure to anticipate that New York's success in retaining families over the last decade would result in the need for more classroom space:

Growth is not spontaneous; a city must build it before they will come. When Bloomberg promised to reinvent downtown, and by extension the rest of New York, after 9/11, he stoked residential development with an array of tax breaks. Unlike the towers of old, the buildings that sprang up weren't marketed as pieds-à-terre for Port Washington sophisticates or glam toeholds for junior execs. In a borough once synonymous with the studio apartment, the new Manhattan properties featured three and four bedrooms, plus the signature millennial amenity: the building playroom.

In 2007, the Department of Buildings issued permits for 31,918 units, a 35-year high-water mark. By the most conservative estimate, that year's activity alone brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the city coffers in closing taxes, much of it from buyers lured by strong public schools. But a disconnect yawned between development and the children it engendered. The crux of it, says Beveridge, is revealed in PlaNYC 2030, the mayor's blueprint for a livable city of 9 million people-who, it should be noted, will be making lots more kindergartners. The document called for parkland within ten minutes of each New Yorker and a local war on global warming, but spent less than a sentence on the DOE's capacity needs. "School construction is not part of the plan-full stop," Beveridge says. "They plan all the other infrastructure, but they don't worry about the schools."

When I covered growth and development for The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina earlier this decade, some city officials had exactly the same kind of blinders on. It seemed that the planning commission and the school board could never get on the same page.

Gigantic new subdivisions would be approved in former farm fields on country backroads without taking into account the need for school growth, and school district planners seemed to consistently underestimate the need for new classroom space. It was a recurring concern for neighborhood leaders and parents -- one that I wrote about several times in the paper.

I'm a big believer in the need for cities. Counterintuitive as it may seem, dense urban concentrations provide a lot of benefits to the environment (along with many challenges, of course). Life in big, dense cities allows reduced energy use per capita, greater transit ridership, fewer vehicle miles traveled, preservation of open space and more benefits that serve to reduce the overall carbon footprint of its residents. That's why New York frequently ranks among the "greenest" cities in the country, even though it's not what most people might consider eco-friendly.

But dense urban concentrations also require smart planning and provision of services for their tightly packed populations. New York does this well on so many fronts (troubles with the MTA notwithstanding). It would be a shame if an inability to provide adequate schools for its children were to drive people away.

It's strange that officials seem to have the same problems planning for new school buildings and classroom size, whether we're talking about suburban Charlotte or New York City Hall. My own son has five or six years before we enroll him in kindergarten. I hope the blinders have come off by then.

Bike to Work Day: Motivation for Getting Back on the Bike

2009-05-14T21:40:42Z

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work Day, which is part of National Bike Month, coinciding with Bike Month NYC here in the Big Apple, and I have to admit that it's all making me feel a bit guilty.

Last summer, after I started working at NRDC's midtown Manhattan offices, I reveled in the ability to ride my bike to work (even when I had a minor accident soon after my pedal commuting began). I felt healthier, happier, more in touch with myself and my city, and certainly more alert to speeding taxi cabs.

There are plenty of good reasons to bike to work:

It's good for our health: An estimated two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, increasing their risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Simply riding 30 minutes to work provides the kind of exercise needed to reduce weight, improve fitness and relieve the burden on our health care system.
It's good for our communities: If more commuters cycled, it would reduce the burden on taxpayers of road building, street maintenance, parking spaces and police services, while losses from car accidents, pollution and congestion would go down.
It's good for our planet: If Americans who live within 5 miles of their office rode their bike to work once a week -- only once a week -- we could save nearly 5 million tons of global warming pollution every year. That would be like taking a million cars off the road.
It's good for our wallets: Bicycle commuting saves on parking fees, parking tickets, fuel costs, auto maintenance costs and transit fares. In some large urban areas, the League of American Bicyclists says, it's possible to save more than $200 a month on parking alone. (In New York, I think that would be even higher.)

After getting off to a good start last summer, I kept riding right on through the fall, even braving bad weather and getting thoroughly soaked on more than one ride. Then came snow and the holidays and several nasty colds (all the usual excuses), and my bike pretty much stayed in the basement through the dead of winter.

By the time spring came around -- and it took its sweet time this year -- I had a newborn baby at home, and biking through New York traffic while exhausted from late-night feedings and diaper changings didn't seem like the best idea, so I mostly stuck to the subway.

I've biked a few times this spring, but nowhere near the regularity of last summer and fall. Bike Month is just what I've needed to get me motivated and back to my regular riding routine. (Whoever scheduled Bike Month for May knew what they were doing.)

I wonder, though, if the streets and bike paths will feel different this year. Last summer, high gas prices led to a surge in bike sales and commuting across the country. Biking has been on the rise for several years in New York City, but despite improvements to bike lanes and more bike racks, cycling still seems impractical to many.

I'm sure that a lot of those bikers who took up riding to work last year, around the same time that I did, also took the winter off. Will they be back this year? Do they still feel the lure of the spoke, or is the dip in gas prices enough to keep them in their cars?

Alex Marshall wrote a memorable column for Streetsblog last year asking if biking in the winter was like eating Spanish tortillas. He enjoyed them all the time when he was living in Spain, but stopped making them when he moved back to the U.S. -- even though he still loves the taste, they're easy to whip up and the ingredients are close at hand.

It's the same thing with winter biking, he postulated. In Amsterdam, for instance, people ride regardless of the weather. In New York, despite the brave and admirable few, most people stop riding in cold weather, and so did he. "Culture matters," Marshall wrote.

"I'm not shirking the fact of my own laziness; it's a real observation about how the world works. If my friends and family members were riding off to work in the cold, I likely would to, without complaint. But alone, when few other people are, it's easy to decline the invitation my bicycle offers me, or not even see it."

Then, of course, there's the safety-in-numbers argument. Plenty of studies show that as biking increases, accidents actually decrease. The theory is that drivers get more used to seeing bikers on the road and know how to deal with them. So it might actually be a smart strategy not to be out there by yourself.

Regardless, I'm glad for the extra push that Bike Month gives me to pump up my tires and start riding more regularly again. I'm lucky to live and work in a city where biking is more practical and accepted all the time, and I aim to enjoy it and all the benefits that bike commuting has to offer. Hope to see you out there!

Here's What Earth Day Means to You

2009-04-22T18:10:02Z

Earlier this month, I asked readers in my blog, on NRDC's Facebook page and via our online newsletter to share what Earth Day means to them. And you did!

Here are some of the responses that made me laugh, smile or think:

Berit Ertman via Facebook: It's just like voting. You don't think your vote counts -- but it does. Speak up on April 22nd. Give a crap!

Debbie via Switchboard: My hope is that on Earth Day that I can affect at least one more person by example or through education and enlighten them to live their lives as lightly as possible and to think about every action that they make.

Back to Natives Restoration via Facebook: Earth Day shouldn't be about going to events, picking up a bunch of fliers and free plastic crap, then tossing it all once you get home and forgetting about it.

Alice Packard via Switchboard: On Earth Day everyone will be thinking green thoughts, so why not motivate them to change our future on such a wonderful day? I plan on spreading the word as much as possible about how our window of opportunity to make things better is slamming shut on us.

Colin Kennedy via Facebook: It means begging more people to give a crap about the small planet that allows all of us to survive. (You'll notice that the folks commenting on Facebook were fond of the word "crap.")

Sasha Rickard via Switchboard: As a young person, Earth Day means a chance to save the world I plan to be living in for the next 80-90 years.

What makes me happy is seeing how many young people responded and how dedicated they are to the cause of fighting global warming and improving our planet. As I mentioned in my previous post, Earth Day for me is all about my new son Henry. (Here's the new photo that I promised to share.)

I hope that he'll grow up to share the care and commitment that many of today's young people do. (Ouch, that made me sound old.)

I'll conclude here with this thought from Ann Lihl via Facebook:

We need to live by example ... our kids follow our every move but not what we speak of, but by what they see ... and if they see US caring, the earth will be a better place.

I sure hope she's right. Feel free to keep those thoughts coming in the Comments section, and check out NRDC's advice and ideas to help you celebrate Earth Day today and every day.

What Does Earth Day Mean to You?

2009-04-09T04:24:07Z

Here's what it means to me:

That's my new son, Henry. (Sorry, I can't help showing him off a little bit.)

I've cared about the environment for a long time, but while my wife was pregnant with Henry here, I noticed that I started to think about it a little differently.

When it comes to global warming, for instance, I know that the planet is already changing, but many of the worst consequences probably won't happen until I'm gone. That's no excuse for not caring or taking action, but I suppose it's always made the real problems feel a little distant for me, as they do to many people.

When I start thinking about my son's life, though, and how long I hope he'll be around, it starts to become more concrete. Then there are my possible future grandchildren and great-grandchildren (no pressure or anything, Henry). The world I'm leaving them could be a much more difficult place than the one that I was born into if we don't take decisive action, and fast.

So on my son's first Earth Day this April 22, I'll naturally be thinking about him, his future, and what I can do to make that future a better one. It seems appropriate that the theme of this Earth Day is the Green Generation, because I hope my son will be part of a generation that takes its relationship to nature and responsibilities to the world seriously -- as we need to do today.

So that's what Earth Day means to me. How about you? Let us know in the Comments below, and I'll publish some of your thoughts and plans on Earth Day. If you're lucky, maybe I'll throw in another cute picture of Henry.

And be sure to check out NRDC's Earth Day toolbox for advice, tips and ideas about how you can help our planet this Earth Day -- and all year long.

NBA and NRDC Team Up for Green Week

2009-04-01T20:49:32Z

My March Madness bracket is in shambles. This weekend's Final Four games will be a terrible reminder that -- for the first time I can remember -- I failed to pick even one team correctly.

But at least I've got one reason to cheer for basketball this week: The NBA is going green.

Green Week starts Thursday at NBA arenas around the country and continues through April 10. If you're in Denver, Charlotte or Chicago, your home team will even change its uniform colors to green -- a reminder that saving the environment is a team sport, and we all need to step up our game.

This special week is the NBA's way of generating awareness and funding to preserve the environment. The league will hold auctions to support conservation, sponsor hands-on community service projects, and launch this public service announcement featuring NRDC Trustee Robert Redford:

The league is also launching www.nba.com/green, featuring everything from tips for fans to interviews with NBA players about their efforts to support environmental protection.

"NBA Green Week 2009 serves as a reminder to fans that we can all work to reduce our environmental footprint," said Kathleen Behrens, NBA's executive vice president of social responsibility and player programs.

That's not all, though. Working with NRDC experts, the NBA is taking steps to become a more environmentally responsible organization year-round. The league recently purchased green energy credits to offset power usage for the 2009 All-Star Game and plans to do even more for next year's all-star event. And check out this list of 10 ways that individual NBA teams are going green.

"The NBA's commitment to reduce its ecological impact and to help educate basketball fans worldwide about the importance of environmental protection confirms why this league is regarded as one of the world's most responsible sports organizations," said NRDC Senior Scientist Allen Hershkowitz.

Allen has been working with businesses, sports teams, award shows -- even Broadway! -- for many years, helping them produce less waste, consume less energy, and use resources more efficiently, all in an effort to be more environmentally responsible. Last summer, he advised Major League Baseball on ways to green its All-Star Game here in New York City. (I helped him and other NRDC staffers collect recycling at the free Bon Jovi concert in Central Park.)

Allen and other NRDC experts have also helped create the Greening Advisor, an online resource that can help any company be more efficient and ecologically responsible in its day-to-day operations. The best part is, going green can help businesses save money, too.

So if you're an NBA fan, do your part and get involved during Green Week. And if you're a fan of the planet, you'll want to keep it going all year long.

New Report Says U.S. Birds in "Widespread Decline," Need Help

2009-03-20T16:41:44Z

Last spring, I found myself entranced by a pair of red-tail hawks building a nest in Riverside Park, just a few blocks from my apartment in New York City. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of their parents and the best wishes of many hawk watchers, the three hatchlings didn't survive, probably because of poison.

It's certainly not unusual for young birds to succumb to the many threats -- natural and manmade -- found in the urban wilderness. But this morning, on the first day of spring, a new report had me thinking of those baby hawks and their fate again.

According to an analysis of 40 years of data, bird populations in the United States are declining at an alarming rate due to climate change, habitat destruction, invasive species and other environmental forces.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the disturbing news a "clarion call" for action. "If we move forward with a new ethic of conservation, we will be able to restore bird populations," Salazar said at a news conference.

Nearly a third of the 800 species of birds in the United States are endangered, threatened or in decline, according to the report, which is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of birds in North America. But more than that, the decline of birds is a warning sign about the overall health of our environment -- or lack thereof.

Birds are literally the "canary in the coal mine," Salazar said.

Among the report highlights, as reported by Scientific American:

U.S. grassland bird species have declined 40 percent.
Birds in arid lands have declined 30 percent.
39 percent of U.S. birds restricted to ocean habitats are declining.
Some coastal shorebirds are doing well, but many face habitat losses and dwindling food supplies.
Birds in Hawaii face a conservation crisis, with many species on the edge of extinction.

Not all of the news was bleak, however. In some places where conservation measures have been adopted, bird populations are rebounding and even thriving. "We need to protect habitat and aggressively attack climate change with renewable energy," said John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society.

One place where birds need protection right now is in Canada's ancient boreal forest, where billions of birds -- more than half of North American species -- build nests and raise their young each spring. By the end of summer, they'll head south and snack onbirdfeeders in U.S. backyards.

For many species, the Canadian forest -- teeming with lakes, river valleys and wetlands -- is the only nesting place they've ever known. Yet as NRDC reported last year, attempts to mine and drill the Alberta tar sands for fuel are destroying and fragmenting this precious habitat, resulting in the loss of millions of birds.

You can find out more about the Canadian forest and take action to protect birds from dirty fuel development at NRDC's new Save BioGems site. My hope is that fewer birds have to face the fate of those three hawk hatchlings that I watched perish last spring.

Photo: One of the Riverside red-tails lands on its nest. By Scott Dodd/via Flickr

Don't take your drinking water for granted on this World Water Day

2009-03-18T19:03:54Z

Where does your drinking water come from?

Natural historian Sidney Horenstein has been asking that question around New York City for decades. The answer he always gets is: "From the faucet."

This Sunday, however, is World Water Day, an event created by the United Nations to draw attention to the lack of safe drinking water around the world. (You might have seen the signs in your local Starbucks this week.) More than 1 billion people lack clean water worldwide, which results in disease, poverty and political instability.

"Waterborne illnesses kill 5 million people each year -- an estimated 5,000 children every day," NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner told Congress in 2007 when testifying on the 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, whose passage marked one of NRDC's first major victories.

So this might be a good time for all of us who are lucky enough to have a clean, safe source of drinking water to think a little more about how this precious resource finds its way to our faucets.

The answer is quite different, of course, depending on where you live. But it's a good bet that no matter where you are, your drinking water isn't quite as safe as you might hope, thanks to everything from stormwater runoff to old plumbing to the effects of climate change. (Read more about water problems and solutions at NRDC's website.)

Where I live in New York City, for instance, the fresh water that we've relied on for generations could be threatened by plans to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation underlying the Catskill Mountains.

"Horizontal gas drilling carries the risk of contaminating the drinking water supply that serves half of the state -- including all of New York City -- with dangerous chemicals," NRDC's Kate Sinding and Richard Schrader said last year after Gov. David Paterson signed a law making it easier for gas companies to drill in the Catskills. "Before any drills break ground, the state must be sure that these activities are safe for New Yorkers and their environment."

In my mind, it's especially important that New Yorkers be vigilant about protecting their drinking water -- considering how hard they worked to get it here in the first place.

I learned about the history of New York's water supply system a year ago when I attended a talk by Horenstein, a retired geology professor and environmental educator at the American Museum of Natural History. In the late 1980s, Horenstein curated an exhibition called "On Tap: New York City Water." Twenty years later, he's still working to teach New Yorkers where their water really comes from.

Here are some of the highlights that I came away with. Notice how the history of New York's drinking water touches on many of today's most important issues -- everything from pollution and public health to politics and city planning:

Early worries

Supplying New York City with water has actually been an issue for four centuries, since explorer Henry Hudson first sailed up the river that now bears his name in 1609. He found that the river (actually a tidal estuary for much of its length) remained salty far upstream.

Fortunately, Lower Manhattan used to be covered with rolling hills left over from glacial deposits. They produced fresh water streams and springs that supplied the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, who also drank runoff from roofs. Only once the British took over in 1664 did New Yorkers start sinking wells into the ground.

Pigs and pollution

People probably won't be surprised that from the very beginning, New Yorkers had a penchant for dirtying things up.

The Collect Pond, near where City Hall now stands, was an important source of fresh water for early New York -- until it was filled in with trash and dirt from nearby hills that were flattened to make way for the city's growth. By 1811, the Collect was gone.

As the city grew, its many wells and springs became nearly unusable because of garbage dumped in the streets and free-roaming pigs. As water was pumped out of the ground, salt water infiltrated the aquifers, making the well water unfit to drink. Even the rain runoff from roofs was now filthy because of soot.

Alternative beverages

Never let it be said that New Yorkers aren't resourceful, though. Denied drinkable water, early New Yorkers got by largely on wine and beer.

In fact, when New York finally did get a suitable fresh water supply by the middle of the 19th century, the Temperance Societies were among its biggest fans. They hoped people would give up their booze for fresh water. Good luck, there, guys.

Corruption and incompetence

After the Revolutionary War, city leaders were ready to go to work on a municipal water supply system. But "the duplicitous Aaron Burr," as he's remembered in many New York circles (he's also the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel), convinced the state legislature to charter a private water supplier instead.

Burr's company was supposed to bring in fresh water from the Bronx River. Instead, it did things on the cheap by sinking a well at Reade and Chambers streets.

The well supplied a reservoir of 550,000 gallons, but the city needed 3 million. The company also went the cheap route with wooden pipes, made out of hollowed pine trees from the Adirondacks. By 1804, the company had laid 25 miles of pipe, but the system only reached 2,000 residents -- the wealthy ones, naturally -- who nevertheless complained about the quality of the water, which was fouled by the rotting wooden pipes.

Fire and pestilence

Waterborne diseases such as yellow fever and cholera swept through the city population in the early 1800s, killing thousands. In 1832, swarms of people left Lower Manhattan for places like Greenwich Village and Long Island to escape illness.

On April 14, 1835, the citizens of New York voted 17,330 to 5,963 to build a municipal water system. (The main opponents were outliers living in places like northern Manhattan who still had all the fresh water they needed.) Eight months later, on Dec. 16, the Great Fire destroyed most of the city's commercial district, some 700 buildings. The need for water was more urgent than ever.

Fountain frenzy

The building of the 40-mile-long Croton Aqueduct required a massive (for its time) bridge across the Harlem River. The project originally called for two 48-inch pipes to cross the bridge, but the lead engineer, John Jervis, thought 36-inch pipes would be adequate. "Big mistake," Horenstein said.

Fresh water began filling the Yorkville Reservoir (now the Great Lawn in Central Park) in 1842, and the city celebrated by building fountains and holding a five-mile-long parade on Oct. 14, 1842.

Within two decades, though, increased population, greater water usage and a drought required a 96-inch pipe to be installed on top of the two 36-inch ones across the river.

Never enough

Like all its predecessors, the Croton system quickly proved inadequate, and new dams and reservoirs had to be added. Today, New York gets water from three systems. The original Croton only supplies about 10 percent of the city's water needs (still mainly in the older parts of Manhattan), while the rest comes from the Catskills (completed in 1927) and the Delaware River (completed in 1967).

A third major underground water tunnel (with the not-so-imaginative name of Water Tunnel No. 3) is being built under Manhattan right now. One of the largest construction projects in the United States, it's expected to be completed in 2020. Once it's finished, tunnels No. 1 and 2 will need to be refurbished. Engineers are concerned about cracks and other possible problems.

Today, New York's water system provides 1.3 billion gallons a day to more than 8 million drinkers, and its quality is considered among the best in the world.

But if you learn anything from listening to Horensten, it's that we always seem to run out.

"Right now, when there's an abundance of water, people get into bad habits," Horenstein says. By reminding New Yorkers that their water doesn't just "from the faucet," he hopes to get them to think about conservation, even a little bit.

To me, that seems like a great lesson to remember on World Water Day.

Find out more about what's happening around the globe this World Water Day and how you can participate and help make a difference.

Will New York City survive sea-level rise?

2009-02-18T20:36:34Z

Sometimes in New York, you get surrounded by steel and glass and brick and brownstone and it's easy to forgot that you live on an island -- and not a particularly big island at that.

Then it pours for one afternoon and the subways fill with water and the streets run like rivers and the sewage drains back up and you feel like we could all just float off into the Atlantic at any moment.

And it's not just the rain falling from the sky that we've got to worry about -- it's the rivers and ocean surrounding our tightly packed little city. We're overdue for a major hurricane. Our climate's getting hotter and wetter. And we could be looking at the equivalent of a 100-year-flood every decade, according to at least one report (not to mention losing Long Island lobsters and honeycrisp apples).

Mayor Bloomberg and a special panel of science advisers warned this week that New Yorkers need to brace for the possibility of more storms, more floods, more heat waves and sea level rise that could reach a couple of feet by the end of the century.

"All of the evidence from the science community is that the seas are going to rise," Bloomberg said Tuesday as he unveiled the panel's findings.

The point isn't to scare people. It's to help make the city ready. "We're providing the science by which the City of New York can get ready and prepare," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior NASA scientist who chaired the panel.

So what's an island city to do when the sea starts rising? Get higher. Bloomberg's panel unveiled its report at a sewage treatment plant in Queens, where pump motors and circuit breakers are being moved to 14 feet above sea level from 25 feet below sea level. The city also plans to build up seawalls and take other steps to update its aging infrastructure.

It's great to see the city where I live and hope to raise my family taking the threat of climate change so seriously and planning for the future. Still, it would be nice if we could all make the changes necessary to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. And in many ways, this city is a great example for that, as well.

New York might not look like it to outsiders, but it's actually one of the greenest places on earth. As writer David Owen explained in a 2004 New Yorker piece:

The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric. The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank fifty-first in per-capita energy use.

Since moving to New York two years ago, I've started biking to work whenever I can, taking the train when I don't and walking almost everywhere. My wife and I sold one of our cars. The other we don't see for weeks at a time. New York makes this possible.

Not everyone wants to live like this, I know. There was a time when I didn't think that I ever would. Now, I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Which is why I don't want to see the sea come and take it back.

What can a giant prehistoric snake teach us about climate change?

2009-02-06T16:34:28Z

The snake discovered recently by scientists in Colombia was huge: as long as a school bus and heavy as a small car.

Its remains, now being studied at the University of Florida, are about as long as a T-rex -- which of course makes me start conjuring up wild fantasies about what would happen if they did battle.

Unfortunately for my prehistoric daydreams, the "Titanoboa" -- whose discovery was published in the journal Nature this week -- lived about 6 million years after Tyrannosaurus and the rest of its dinosaur brethren went extinct.

And fortunately for snake-averse humans everywhere, the massive boa hasn't been slithering across the planet for several epochs. But the discovery of its South American remains will help give scientists a better picture of what earth's climate was like during the Paleocene -- the 10 million years or so after the dinosaurs were wiped out.

The answer: It was hot. Really hot.

The snake's gigantic dimensions are a sign that temperatures along the equator were once much warmer than they are now, according to Jonathan Bloch, the University of Florida paleontologist who co-discovered the snake.

Snakes and other cold-blooded animals are limited in body size by the ambient temperature of where they live, Bloch said. So for a snake to grow as large as Titanoboa, it had to be living in an extremely warm environment.

Based on the snake's size, its discoverers were able to calculate that the mean annual temperature at the equator 60 million years ago would have been about 91 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 10 degrees warmer than it is today.

Think about that: Only 10 degrees warmer, and snakes were able to grow to the size of a school bus. (According to this map of Paleocene climate, Greenland also had palm trees.)

Scientists currently estimate that unless we control global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of this century.

I'm not suggesting that we should be on the lookout for giant snakes, of course. As The New York Times' Andy Revkin reports, there's a lot of disagreement over exactly what the discovery of Titanoboa means in regard to climate.

But it's a pretty stark rejoinder to the folks who like to argue that earth's climate has been different in the past, so we shouldn't worry too much about it heating it up now.

Yeah, it's been warmer, but it's also been a very different planet from the one on which humans emerged and built our civilization. We've developed our agriculture, our cities and our lives under a fairly narrow set of climate conditions.

If those conditions change radically in a very short time period, outside of what humans are accustomed to, we have no idea how well we'll deal with the consequences. We're potentially seeing climate changes that usually take thousands of years or more squeezed into a few decades.

You only have to look across the Atlantic this week at the havoc a few inches of snow have caused in London to see what happens when we get even a little bit outside of our comfort zone.

I don't know about you, but I'm hoping we don't wind up with a planet where giant snakes would feel right at home. Because that's waaay outside of my comfort zone.

Image: An artist's illustration of Titanoboa cerrejonensi, derived from fossil remains found in Colombia. (Credit: Jason Bourque)

Steelers celebrate Super Bowl win in organic T-shirts

2009-02-02T18:17:54Z

I'm a huge Pittsburgh fan, so I don't need any extra motivation to celebrate last night's thrilling Steelers victory. (You've heard of tennis elbow? Today I'm suffering from Terrible Towel elbow.)

If for some reason you were rooting for the Cardinals, though, or just didn't care at all, here's something you can still be happy about.

Those T-shirts everyone on the winning team donned after the game (and that will be sold to thousands of fans all over the country) were organic, according to Green Options Media. The NFL also purchased renewable energy to power the Super Bowl.

NRDC has done a lot of work with Major League Baseball and other leagues to make them more eco-friendly. I'm glad to learn that my favorite sport also cares about being more green.

Today, though, my favorite colors and black and gold. Can't wait to start wearing my organic championship shirt.

I was a victim of the peanut butter recall

2009-01-30T16:47:38Z

Yesterday, my wife forwarded me an "Important Announcement Regarding Your Recent Purchase of Peanut Butter" that she got from Fresh Direct, the online grocery service here in New York City.

This was not a good e-mail.

As my wife will tell you, peanut butter is very important to me. She even mentioned it in our wedding vows (along with my love for the Pittsburgh Steelers). If I had to choose one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it wouldn't even be a close contest -- peanut butter would top the list.

And you know what? Compared to a lot of the other things that I love to eat, it's not even that bad for me. Unless, of course, it's packed with Salmonella.

"Dear Valued Customer," the Fresh Direct e-mail started, "We are writing because you recently purchased a product affected by a newly expanded recall announced by the Food and Drug Administration."

I really didn't like where this was going. Turns out, the tub of "Freshly Ground Peanut Butter, Honey-Roasted" that we ordered a week ago is now on the FDA's list of recalled products. The e-mail instructed us not to eat it and to throw it out immediately (and, appropriately, offered us a refund).

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, I can work my way through a container of peanut butter pretty quickly -- especially when it's honey roasted. There was almost nothing left for us to throw out.

Chances are, the peanut butter was just fine, and so am I. (Thank goodness my wife doesn't crave peanut butter as much as I do -- she didn't have any.) But it's scary to get a reminder of how vulnerable we are to problems in the nation's industrial food chain. Somehow, when you buy freshly ground peanut butter from a grocery service in New York City, you aren't expecting it to be connected to a processing plant in Blakely, Ga. But that's the way it works.

I've tried in recent years, after reading books such as Fast Food Nation and Omnivore's Dilemma, to be more aware and conscious of the food that I eat and where it comes from. My wife and I try to buy organic as much as possible, and we love getting the fresh produce at the farmer's markets around New York City.

We even joined a veggie co-op two summers ago, and I came to really enjoy visiting the church basement where the veggies were delivered once a week and picking out our share (although I have to say, I got a little tired of the endless string of lettuce). NRDC has a great Eat Local web feature that helps you find what's fresh in your area season by season, and even offers recipes from chefs around the country using only fresh foods.

But when it comes to peanut butter ... well, for me, it's always in season, and I don't pay much attention to where it's coming from -- although clearly, I should.

And so should the FDA. This peanut butter recall has been yet another reminder that the FDA, like so many other government watchdog agencies, was "one of many hobbled by the Bush administration's antiregulatory efforts," as a New York Times editorial put it yesterday. The folks over at Food and Water Watch also criticize the FDA for its handling of the matter. (And of course, peanut butter isn't the only place where the FDA has been found lacking, as NRDC's effort to get the agency to ban the chemical BPA from food packaging shows.)

If you want to see how badly the nation's system of safeguards has been decimated, look no further than Deepest Cuts, a December NRDC report that evaluated the state of environmental and health monitoring programs at the end of the Bush administration in five key areas: air, water, food safety, toxic substances and human health.

The report authors found "a disturbing and pervasive pattern of program and funding cuts that make it impossible for programs to fulfill their monitoring role. ... These cutbacks will keep us in the dark about threats to our health."

I certainly can't say that I was completely in the dark when I bought my honey-roasted peanut butter last week, but I guess, like so many people, I had the impression that someone was looking out for me. For our industrialized, highly networked food system to work, someone needs to be.

In the meantime, I guess I'm just going to have to cut back on my peanut butter consumption. Somehow.

Obama administration backs smart growth (he should check out our new web tool)

2009-01-21T19:35:53Z

Everyone seems to be having fun reading the revamped whitehouse.gov website today and seeing what it says about their top priorities.

After writing about the challenges of communicating smart growth earlier today, I was curious what the new Obama administration would have to say about the issue.

Before I even got the chance to scroll through the new website myself, though, I noticed this post at the Carfree USA blog (via the awesome Streetsblog Network), pointing me to the relevant passages:

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. President Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.

Foster Healthy Communities: How a community is designed -- including the layout of its roads, buildings and parks -- has a huge impact on the health of its residents. For instance, nearly one-third of Americans live in neighborhoods without sidewalks and less than half of our country's children have a playground within walking distance of their homes.

Those are just two planks in a pretty big platform, but I'm glad to see the new administration including them -- and I'm eager to see how they're addressed in the days to come.

Smart growth has the potential to help solve everything from global warming to the energy crisis to America's obesity epidemic. To understand how, why not check out NRDC's new Picturing Smart Growth feature?

(Sorry, I just had to get in that extra plug, for Kaid's sake.)

What's 'smart growth'? New web tool can help communities get the picture

2009-01-21T15:53:09Z

"Smart growth" isn't an easy term to explain. And I speak from experience here. For several years, I covered the growth and development beat at The Charlotte Observer, at a time when Charlotte, N.C., was one of the fastest-growing places in the country (second only to Las Vegas among large metro areas).

As the region exploded, giant suburban developments (you couldn't really call them neighborhoods) the size of whole towns sprung up almost overnight. Crowded schools, infrastructure and roads were unable to keep up. Former farms and fields were plowed over at an alarming rate, runoff threatened the city's drinking water supply, and everyone worried about losing the very quality of life that made the Charlotte region so appealing in the first place.

Small towns overwhelmed by Charlotte's spillover held planning charrettes, a state legislative commission was formed, and everyone was fighting over the costs and benefits of growth and how best to manage it. Here's an excerpt from a story that I wrote for the Observer in November 2001, about a forthcoming report from the state smart growth commission:

The state's population exploded during the 1990s, growing by more than 1.4 million people, or 21 percent. Projections show a similar spurt in the next decade, leaving North Carolina with a population of near 10 million.

The report blames growth-related problems in part on government policies that have allowed sprawling development to sweep across the landscape faster than communities can provide new roads, schools and other services.

The commission, made up of developers, lobbyists, environmentalists and elected officials, says the state should spend more money on mass transit, require communities to plan for growth and allow them to adopt new rules limiting builders. Communities also should be able to impose fees on construction that would pay for roads and schools needed to serve development.

"Addressing smart growth requires a reappraisal of how government does business in North Carolina," the report says.

One of the challenges that I faced was explaining smart growth (in the often very short space allowed by a newspaper story) to readers who weren't familiar with the terms and concepts. It's a more common idea now, but in the early 2000s -- especially in parts of North Carolina that had been completely rural just a half-decade before -- it was frequently a new thing.

Even in Charlotte, where transit and urban infill and other key components of smart growth had been accepted and promoted by planners for many years, people often didn't know how to picture what the community would look like with these new planning principles in place.

Which makes me wish that I had been able to point my readers toward a helpful tool like Picturing Smart Growth, the new web feature launched recently by NRDC in partnership with Urban Advantage. My colleague Kaid Benfield, director of NRDC's smart growth program, wrote about it last week, so I won't go into too much detail about how it all works.

Suffice it to say that I was happy to work on a project that brings to life the ideas and concepts that I was writing about back then. I think that by walking you through a several-step process for how a community could be transformed by smart growth, it really helps you understand what it's all about.

And the fact that these places are all over the country shows that smart growth can be adopted anywhere that residents embrace the idea of a lifestyle and community that doesn't rely entirely on the car.

Charlotte itself has been making strides toward smarter development, and the city's urban center has greatly improved because of it. Not everyone is on board, though. (You can read about the continuing conflicts on my former colleague Mary Newsom's blog.) No matter how much sense it makes from an economic, environmental and community standpoint, smart growth might never be for everyone.

But if you want to get a better picture of what it really means -- and share that picture with others -- I hope that Picturing Smart Growth will help.