Two mysterious abandoned barges are still taking up room in Jamaica Bay despite efforts by residents and the U.S. Coast Guard to figure out their origins and safely remove them from the environmentally sensitive ecosystem.
In October, the Coast Guard, Fire Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation sent teams to the Barbados Basin where residents say tugboats piloted by unidentified persons left two barges to sink at the bottom of the bay back in September. Coast Guard officials said they still had no information on who abandoned the barges or why as of Tuesday.One of the barges lies completely sunken under the bay, while another is partially sunk, according to the Coast Guard. Broad Channel resident Don Reipe, who first spotted the barges back in September, said that the half-capsized barge has been sinking deeper into the water.
"Now, it'll be difficult for them to get it out," he said.
The half-sunken boat appears to be an old Sanitation Department barge with a licence number DS74, the Coast Guard said. Officials from the state's Department of Environmental Conservation said it was investigating some leads into who piloted the tugboats.
On Sept. 23 Broad Channel residents said they called the Fire Department and the city's Department of Environmental Protection to alert them to the incident so that they could prevent possible pollution to the bay. The ecosystem, located near John F. Kennedy International Airport, has been losing numerous acres of its marshland.
According to a study released in August by the National Resource Defense Council, a national conservation group, the bay will lose all of its marshes in five years. Although Coast Guard officials said the boats do not currently pose any environmental threat, they are still trying to decide how to remove the barges without harming the environment.
Residents, however, are frustrated that the boats still stick out like a weed in their scenic back yards.
"These things are tremendous and nothing is being done. We've made so many calls and reached out, but they're still here," said Dan Mundy, a member of the Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, an area conservation group.
