Reviving New York's Rivers -- With Oysters! by Architect Kate Orff | Video on TED.com

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Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean -- thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture." Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

About Kate Orff:

Kate Orff asks us to rethink “landscape”—to use urban greenspaces and blue spaces in fresh ways to mediate between humankind and nature.



Kate Orff is a landscape architect who thinks deeply about sustainable development, biodiversity and community-based change—and suggests some surprising and wonderful ways to make change through landscape. She’s a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she’s a director of the Urban Landscape Lab. She’s the co-editor of the new book Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park, about the Gateway National Recreation Area, a vast and underused tract of land spreading across the coastline of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey.

She is principal of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design office with projects ranging from a 1,000-square-foot pocket park in Brooklyn to a 100-acre environmental center in Greenville, SC, to a 1000-acre landfill regeneration project in Dublin, Ireland. 

"Perhaps the snazziest proposal is also the oddest, calling for oyster beds in the Gowanus Canal. The oyster reefs, as imagined by Kate Orff, would ease the impact of storms and filter pollution in the water. Orff’s fantastical future also includes a flupsy (for “flowing upweller system”) parade of oyster-filled boats along the Gowanus."

Samantha Henig, “Earl Versus the Oysters,” New Yorker, Sept. 2, 2010

Decimated by Years of Pollution, Oysters Once Again Find Home in Jamaica Bay by Adam Lisberg - NY Daily News

Gregg Rivera pours oysters into Jamaica Bay near JFK Airport, part of $350,000 project to restore mollusks that have been absent for years.

Oysters left Jamaica Bay slowly, declining for decades from overharvesting and pollution, until they were just a memory.

Oysters came back Tuesday - by the bagful.

Under a gray sky, ecologists emptied the first of what will be thousands of oyster shells into the gentle waves of the bay - the beginning of a plan to rehab the reefs that once filled these waters.

"At one time, oysters were a navigation hazard. Ships were sinking just from coming into New York Harbor and hitting the reefs," said John McLaughlin, director of ecological services for the city Department of Environmental Protection.

He was standing on a boat slowly chugging to an underwater platform of old clam and mussel shells, where crews today will nestle up to 10,000 shells seeded with oyster larvae.

If years of planning and decades of cleaning up the bay work as hoped, the young oysters will survive and thrive - and encourage new life.

"They're a keystone species," McLaughlin said. "The water quality in the bay is the best it's been in a very long time."

DEP has poured $624 million since 2002 into improving the four sewage plants that dump into Jamaica Bay. Another $244 million worth of work is planned by 2014.

The tab for the oyster bed project is $350,000, and it has taken years of coordination with agencies and advocacy groups.

They used computer models of water currents to find the best home for the oysters - a long-neglected site surrounded by rotting wood pilings in the shadow of Kennedy Airport.

The marshes around the bay have been eroding over time - and the DEP hopes the oysters can help with regrowth.

If the oysters can reestablish a foothold, they'll help filter the water, improve its clarity and enable it hold more oxygen.

"A single mature oyster can filter 30 to 35 gallons of water a day. If you multiply that by a lot of oysters, that's a lot of water," McLaughlin said. "Restoring oysters, restoring the wetlands, restoring the eelgrass. These are all parts of the puzzle that over time should begin to have an effect."

Can the City -- and the Oyster -- Save Jamaica Bay? by Anya Khalamayzer - (Gotham Gazette, May 2010)

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The marshes of Jamaica Bay have been shrinking for decades, essentially vanishing into New York's toxic waters. Photo by Unforth

The largest urban wildlife preserve in the United States sits adjacent to Kennedy Airport, near the high-rise apartments of Starrett City and the Rockaway housing projects. Home to the peregrine falcon, the loggerhead sea turtle, the short-eared owl, the area -- Jamaica Bay -- at the intersection of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island, serves as a stopover for 20 percent of American bird species on their annual migration along the East Coast.

For years, though, this estuary, a shallow marsh where fresh and saltwater meet, has been vanishing into the toxic waters of the New York City harbor, losing an estimated 33 acres annually to deterioration, nitrogen buildup and rising sea levels. Spanning some 16,000 acres about a century ago, the salt march islands have shrunk to a mere 800 acres. Thought not nearly as dramatic as the environmental catastrophe now confronting the Louisiana coast, the threat to Jamaica Bay could completely destroy the marsh by 2024, decimating the home for an abundance of rare and endangered plants and animals.

"Marshland completely changes the nature of the bay," says Larry Levine, staff attorney for the Natural Resource Defense Council. "If it were to ever disappear and become open water, it would be a tremendous loss of natural habitat."

Now, the federal state and city governments, prodded by citizen's groups, have stepped up their efforts to preserve the area. This year, government and private groups collaborated to update the Jamaica Bay Watershed Protection Plan to try to avert disaster in the urban refuge. Whether government will keep its commitment and whether its actions can reverse the decades of deterioration remains to be seen.

[For more on efforts to revitalize New York's waterfront, go here.]

Destruction of an Ecosystem

Spartina cod grass anchors the land of the marsh in place. To survive, the grass must receive fresh water rich with oxygen and nutrient-loaded sediment. Small streams in Queens and Brooklyn once provided this, but many of these vital veins have been paved over the decades.

Four sewage plants ringing Jamaica Bay contribute further to the deterioration of the marsh by spewing 250 million gallons of nitrogen and large amounts of chlorine into the water every day. Ironically the nitrogen has worsened since 1992 when the government, in an effort to prevent pollution, banned the dumping of sewage into the ocean and instead diverted the treated wastewater into the bay. The excess nitrogen in the water is naturally converted into hydrogen sulfide, which kills the roots of the marsh grass.

In this nitrogen-rich environment, weed-like algae blooms thrive, suffocating the estuary by draining it of dissolved oxygen. Algae blooms kill the thousands of fish found floating belly-up in the very waters that are meant to nourish them.

In addition, during heavy rains, untreated oils and toxins wash from nearby streets and parking lots when storm drains overflow and end up in the bay. The bay also shares many of the contaminants that pollute the rest of New York harbor, such as dioxins, PCB particles, and mercury.

"The New York harbor is a wasteland," said Jeff Levinton, professor of marine ecology at SUNY Stonybrook.

Photo by Gail Robinson

Humans have taken their toll on Jamaica Bay.

Next-generation issues also are emerging, explained Levine. Studies show that Jamaica Bay flounder are affected by pharmaceuticals flushed through the sewage system and not removed by treatment plants. The population of male flounder has drastically diminished because of the feminizing effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals -- a pattern Levine says is being observed around the world.

Sounding the Alarm

Dan Mundy, founder of citizen group EcoWatchers, noticed that Jamaica Bay was ailing in the mid 1990s. By 2000, he said, as many as 50 acres of saltwater marsh were being lost every year. And in 2002, the state authorized a study of why the marshland might be vanishing.

It was not until 2005, though, that Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a measure calling for the city Department of Environmental Protection to devise a plan to save the bay and creating a seven-person advisory task force. The committee included community activists and representatives of nonprofit organizations and government agencies. The resulting report presented a number of options, including installing storm sewers for flood prevention, dredging and re-contouring creeks, restoring eroded land, re-oxygenating the water and hiring pump-out boats to clean waste. Overall, the committee wanted visitors to Jamaica Bay and the government to be more vigilant of the estuary's condition.

Gradually, steps to restore and preserve the marsh began. Between 2006 and 2007, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers allocated $13 million to restore Elders Point East, an island marsh which once spanned 132 vegetated acres, but which had broken apart to a mere 21 acres.

While activists applauded many of these efforts, a number of them faulted the city for failing to do more to reduce nitrogen levels in the bay. For years city officials maintained that little evidence linked the disappearance of the marshes and nitrogen levels in the bay and balked at spending millions and millions of dollars to address the nitrogen levels.

By 2010, New York City faced a possible lawsuit under the federal Clean Water Act. The threat spurred intense negotiations between citizen groups, the Department of Environmental Protection, then Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler and other City Hall officials. The city, according to Mundy, expressed concern about the cost of the technological upgrades needed to address the nitrogen problem, but over time became convinced that the installations were necessary for the bay's survival.

"It shouldn't be a matter of economics. Not when it comes to the environment. Not when it comes to Jamaica Bay," Mundy said.

Cutting the Nitrogen

In February 2010, Bloomberg announced the city would commit $115 million for a combination of efforts to safeguard the only wildlife refuge accessible via subway. As part of that, he said New York would spend $100 million to install new nitrogen control technology at sewage treatment plants on the bay.

Don Riepe, who headed negotiations on behalf of the American Littoral Society, said the city pledged another $15 million to support marsh restoration. The Army Corps of Engineers will match the restoration funds two-to-one.

The first of the plant upgrades will begin operating in 2014. Technology to control nitrogen will be installed at the 26th Ward and Coney Island wastewater treatment plants in Brooklyn, and at the Rockaway plant in Queens. These efforts are predicted to reduce nitrogen discharges by 50 percent over the next decade and to allow the bay to filter its waters over time.

Reclamation of Elders Point West Island has already begun. Clean fill, or "slurry" -- muck being dredged from waters around the city -- is currently being shipped from the harbor and Long Island and will become 35 new acres of marsh. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers is hand-seeding Spartina grass into the fill. When they finish this at the end of the summer, they will move on to reclaim Yellow Bar island.

Photo by Gail Robinson

Restoring grassland is essential to the survival of marshes so many animals call home.

Wave attenuators, marina-like docks that act as buffers against beach-deteriorating waves, are to be installed between 2014 and 2019.

Despite all this technology, though, Jamaica Bay's brightest new hope may be a bivalve that once lived in the 350 square miles of the estuary: the oyster.

A Natural Solution

Oysters last thrived in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary in the early 20th century. Describing the bivalve as a "keystone" species that affects other components of its ecosystem, NY/NJ Baykeeper has championed experimental oyster farming. Every animal can filter nitrogen and pollutants from 50 gallons of water daily. They eat oxygen-guzzling phytoplankton that suffocates the bay. In, addition the beds where the oysters live serve as homes for small marine organisms and the fish that feed on them.

"Right now you can hardly find a live oyster in Jamaica Bay," says Levinton.

Their decline both signifies and intensifies the bay's ailments. Chester Zarnoch, associate professor of natural sciences at Baruch College, and his colleague Tim Hoellein have received funds from the National Science Foundation to study the growth and survival of oysters in the estuary and to determine their potential in restoring it.

Zarnoch says that there has been tremendous growth and evidence of spawning where the bivalves have been re-introduced.

While that is good news, the oysters may not solve the nitrogen problem in the long term. Research has brought to light that oysters, while they do filter nitrogen, they simply store the substance in their bodies and release it back into the environment upon their death. Scientists now hope to harness the oyster's digestive cycle to remove the nitrogen from the water.

"In Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, you can remove nitrogen from the water by removing oysters and consuming them," said Zarnoch. "But we can't consume them from Jamaica Bay because of the amount of bacteria present."

Oyster gardening is still in the beginnings stages of a two-year experiment that will determine whether they will benefit the bay's condition. The next several years will be critical to see if the oysters can once again thrive in the estuary as part of a recovering environment and if the marshes can once again shelter and nourish an authentic mix of native New Yorkers.

This article was written under a partnership between Gotham Gazette and the Baruch College's Department of Journalism and Writing Professions.

Jamaica Oysters No Shell Game: Bay's Pollution Hinders Renewal by Lisa Colangelo - NY Daily News

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It's been a long time since oysters called Jamaica Bay home.

Pollution, overharvesting and other woes wiped out what was once a healthy population of the bivalves.

But a new study is showing that oysters may be able to return and even help clean up Jamaica Bay.

Researchers have been able to grow oysters in certain test areas. And now they are trying to find out if there is any natural oyster larvae flowing into the waterway.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Queens, Brooklyn) pointed out that tons of treated wastewater is dumped in the bay, making it tough for anything to survive.

"Oysters are a natural filter," Weiner said during a news conference at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field with researchers who are conducting the study. "This could help us deal with that problem. We don't want this waterway to go the way of the Gowanus Canal."

Prof. Jeffrey Levinton of SUNY Stony Brook, who is overseeing the study, said it's a good sign that he was able to grow oysters in parts of the bay.

Seafood lovers, however, shouldn't get their hopes up.

"We are not looking to restore them as a food source," said Barry Sullivan, superintendent of Gateway National Recreation Area. "But they are a really effective filter."

For the next few weeks, Levinton will check to see if any oyster larvae attach themselves to shells submerged in the water.

During the current phase of the study, which is being funded by the National Park Service and the Hudson River Foundation, several bags of shells were placed in different locations around the bay.

The hope is that oysters will be able to grow on their own. But that may be a long shot.

And if that fails, officials said, much more study will have to be done before any full-scale plan is developed to reintroduce oysters to the bay.

One fear is that bringing in nonnative oysters could hurt the bay's already ravaged ecosystem.

But Dan Mundy of the Jamaica Bay Eco Watchers fears officials are being too cautious.

"We wish we could bring in thousands of oyster shells, spread them around the bottom of the bay and bring in live seed oysters tomorrow," said Mundy. "Time is of the essence. We are losing acres of marsh and the water is declining."

He said bringing back oysters would boost other efforts to clean up the bay, which include restoring the marshes and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.

"There is no magic bullet," Mundy said. "We're trying everything."

lcolangelo@nydailynews.com

After a Century Without Oysters in Jamaica Bay: Weiner Takes First Steps to Bring Them Back

Bivalves Would Help Revive Long-Suffering Bay Ecosystem

SUNY Professor Jeffrey Levinton, Dan Mundy of Jamaica Bay Eco Watchers, Rep. Anthony Weiner and Gateway Park Superintendent Barry Sullivan examine the eco-friendly bivalves they are trying to grow in Jamaica Bay.

Representative Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn and Queens), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, was joined by expert marine biologists and Gateway National Park officials to launch the first efforts to bring back native-oysters to Jamaica Bay.

Over a hundred years ago, oysters were abundant in the Jamaica Bay estuary. But back in the 1820s, over-harvesting nearly demolished the oyster banks in New York City. Then in 1938 the Bay was hit with a hurricane, toxic pollution and rampant over-harvesting which wiped out the native Jamaica Bay oyster. “Bringing oysters back to the bay is one of the best things we can do for the estuary ecosystem. After over a century of absence, it’s time for Oysters to return to Jamaica Bay.” said Rep. Weiner

Now, Congressman Weiner, the National Park Service, SUNY Stony Brook, the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation and Jamaica Bay Eco Watchers are taking the first steps to bring back the native oyster to Jamaica Bay. In a 3-year study, costing $155,000, the research will determine if native oyster larvae are present in Jamaica Bay and determine if the oysters can grow and survive in the Bay. If the growing conditions are adequate, then a full-scale oyster restoration project could commence. It takes about two to three years for oysters to mature into adults.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, Dan Mundy of Jamaica Bay Eco Watchers, SUNY Professor Jeffrey Levinton and Gateway Park Superintendent Barry Sullivan look at bags of oyster shells which will hopefully serve as as a friendly habitat for oyster larvae living in the Jamaica Bay estuary.

Having oysters back in the Jamaica Bay estuary would do a world of good to the ecosystem. The little bi-valves are efficient filters that can go through 50 gallons of water per day. When filtering –which is how they eat—the oysters consume algae, reduce nitrogen levels and increase the oxygen levels in the water. With more oxygen and less nitrogen in the water, fish, plants and other animals will be better able to thrive—increasing the species diversity.

Professor Jeffrey Levinton, lead investigator and Marine Biologist at SUNY Stony Brook said, “Oysters are important components of marine ecosystems. They are natural filters of the water. If they were reintroduced to Jamaica Bay, they would form mounds and attract diverse plant and animal species. Our research will show us that oysters can survive and grow rapidly in Jamaica Bay. We hope it will also show us that if oysters were reintroduced to Jamaica Bay, they would be able to grow, reproduce, and establish sustainable oyster reefs.

Oyster Decision Could Alter Bay - washingtonpost.com

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Sometime in the next few days, three men will make a decision that comes awfully close to playing God with the Chesapeake Bay.

[Photo caption: Eastern Oyster]

The officials -- Cabinet secretaries from Virginia and Maryland and a colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- will choose whether the estuary should get a new oyster. Seafood interests want to transplant an Asian species to supplement the decimated Eastern oyster, which can no longer fill its role in the bay's ecosystem and the region's deep-fat fryers.

A lot of people think the answer should be no.

Environmental groups, states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say it's not clear whether the new oyster would become a kind of kudzu on the half shell, crowding out the old one, or simply die and waste everyone's money.

For now, the officials seem split. One is leaning against the Asian oyster, one is neutral and a third supports it, at least if the oyster is confined to shellfish farms.

Their choice could alter the Chesapeake in a way few recent decisions have. Once an animal that can lay 10,000,000 eggs is set loose, it's loose.

"There's no real experience in an open aquatic system like Chesapeake Bay . . . of completely removing a non-native species," said Donald F. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "So it really is a point of no return."

A favorable ruling could pave the way for watermen and shellfish farmers to put millions of the Asian oysters in the Chesapeake. That makes it the most important decision in a long regional debate -- all arising from the odd-sounding idea that one of America's great shellfish grounds needs a Chinese transplant to save it.

"This is the moment we've been waiting for, you know, 10 years. . . . We will potentially be looking back on this for decades to come, either with fondness or regret," said Bill Goldsborough of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The Chesapeake's Eastern oysters, which once filtered its water and provided a living for generations of watermen, have dropped 99 percent below historic levels, because of overfishing and a pair of diseases.

[Photo Caption: Critics of the plan to add Asian oysters, above, to the Chesapeake say they could do further harm to the native Eastern oysters - Photo Credit: By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post Photo]

But Goldsborough said he thinks the Asian oyster is too much of a risk.

"It's like saying, 'We're going to replace our black bear with a panda bear from China, and assume the forest ecosystem is going to be fine,' " he said.

The officials are expected to make their decision in the next two weeks, although the ruling will not be officially made public until April.

One idea that had frightened environmentalists -- putting the Asian oysters overboard and letting them spread unchecked -- now seems unlikely to be chosen.

"It's probably not as seriously discussed as it was before," said Col. Dionysios Anninos, commander of the Corps of Engineers' Norfolk District and one of the officials who will decide the oysters' fate. "The scientists [are] telling us there's a lot of uncertainty" about that plan, he said.

But there's still a major fight left.

Seafood dealers and watermen want to create a network of shellfish farms, where sterilized Asian oysters would be suspended in the water in mesh bags or cages. They say it would provide benefits -- a natural water filter and a valuable harvest -- without the worry of the oysters multiplying on their own.

"If you're serious in Chesapeake Bay about restoring an oyster industry . . . why aren't we looking at all the tools in the toolbox?" said A.J. Erskine, president of the Virginia Seafood Council.

[Photo caption: Asian Oysters]

The council has a pilot project raising 1 million Asian oysters at farms in Chesapeake tributaries, including the Potomac River. They sell out, Erskine said. Customers say the oyster has a slight metallic aftertaste when eaten on the half shell and tastes just like an Eastern oyster when cooked in a stew.

But environmental groups and some scientists have objected, saying that some of the supposedly sterile oysters will turn out not to be. They say the oysters will make sperm and eggs, which will be carried off by currents and brought together to make baby oysters, called spat.

The Asian oyster, without so much as a leg or a fin, will have effectively escaped.

"It will happen, and we don't know when," said Roger Mann, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

And once it happens, Mann said, the Asian oysters could wind up harming the native ones. In a bad accident of nature, the two species' sperm and eggs could essentially kill each other off.

"It doesn't appear as if it's going to coexist nicely," Mann said.

Now, a number of environmental groups and government agencies have lined up against approval for the Asian oyster. The EPA called it "environmentally unsatisfactory." New York, New Jersey and Delaware wrote a joint letter. The Natural Resources Defense Council said "what we need is not a new oyster" but more work to help the old one.

The Corps of Engineers was supposed to settle questions about the risks of the Asian oyster, with a 4 1/2-year, $15 million study.

But a draft report released in October found that "no specific level of risk" could be attached to the possibility that oyster farms might lead to an escape. Then, to compound the confusion, a curious resident spotted a large math error in one of the Corps' calculations: One key figure was off by a factor of 100,000.

"The research that's been done has been a little disappointing," said L. Preston Bryant Jr., the Virginia secretary of natural resources and another of the officials who will decide the oyster's fate. "After five years and $15 million or so, we still don't know if non-native [oyster] introduction would be successful, or if sterile non-native aquaculture would lead to a de facto introduction" of Asian oysters in the wild, Bryant said.

Despite that, Bryant said, he's leaning toward supporting Asian oysters in farms. He said he'd been persuaded by the success of Virginia's pilot program, which had never reported an oyster escape in seven years.

"Given that, why would we recommend backing away from that which has been successful?" Bryant said.

In Maryland, Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin is skeptical about the Asian oyster, a subordinate said this week.

That could make Anninos the deciding vote.

And he hasn't decided.

"My answer right now is I am neutral, and I'm not quite sure which way I'm going to lean," he said last week.

If the two states disagree, it is possible that they could issue separate rulings. But officials say that would only muddy the debate that their choice was supposed to clear up.

In City Waters, Beds (and a Job) for Oysters by Joshua Brustein - New York Times

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Map courtesy of NOAA.gov

Hendrix Creek, flowing for just over a mile in Brooklyn through East New York, passes under the Belt Parkway and between two dormant landfills before it empties into Jamaica Bay. The creek, once fed by a natural stream, now starts at the output pipe of a wastewater treatment plant.

It is the perfect kind of place, said John K. McLaughlin, an ecologist for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, for an experimental project that would establish oyster beds, not for harvest, but as living water filters.

Natural oyster beds once stretched for 350 square miles in New York’s waterways. Over time, overharvesting and pollution took their toll. Sewage first forced the bay’s shellfish beds to close in the mid-19th century, with all harvests outlawed in the 1920s.

There probably has not been an oyster in Jamaica Bay since the 1930s, Mr. McLaughlin said. “There may be a single individual or a few that seagulls dropped,” he said. “But there’s no population of any significance.”

The new project, outlined in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 sustainability policy, is meant to change that.

Scientists in the last several decades have developed a better understanding of the ability of oysters to filter water. As an adult oyster feeds, it can filter 5 to 50 gallons of water a day, depending on its size and the temperature of the water.

During this process, it absorbs nitrogen, algae and bacteria, depositing them in the sediment at the water’s bottom. The oyster beds also serve as the foundation for an ecosystem that can support other marine species, like eelgrass, which in turn absorb other waste materials and provide habitats for fish.

Dozens of similar shellfish restoration projects have been started in other states, some financed by the Nature Conservancy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“You can only improve water quality so much with hard engineering,” said Mr. McLaughlin, who is in charge of the city’s effort. He added that “using soft engineering approaches” can produce both benefits to water quality as well as benefits to the overall wildlife habitat in the bay.

Hendrix Creek was chosen because it is protected from the stronger currents from the bay, and because it is small enough for a relatively modest number of shellfish — oysters and ribbed mussels — to have a measurable effect. Since the creek is directly fed by the 26th Ward wastewater treatment plant, the experiment will also provide a good indication of how well the shellfish can filter water coming directly from the city’s own filtration system.

The city plans to plant oysters near the creek’s mouth, where they will absorb nitrogen, a byproduct of human waste. Further up the creek, beds of ribbed mussels, which feed on smaller bacteria, will be added.

The Gaia Institute, a consulting group that is working with the Department of Environmental Protection on the shellfish project, has estimated that 20 cubic meters of mussels should be able to filter all the effluent from the wastewater treatment plant. But Mr. McLaughlin said it was unclear how effective the mussels would be in removing the kinds of bacteria that can end up in the bay.

The city plans to install water monitors to measure levels of oxygen and nitrogen this year. The shellfish will be introduced in the spring of 2009, and will stay in place for three years. At least one other creek feeding the bay may also be included in the project, which will cost $600,000.

Although the bay’s condition is far from pristine, water quality has improved significantly in recent years, said Paul Mankiewicz, executive director of the Gaia Institute. Already, oysters have returned to several areas in the city without help, including City Island, Pelham Bay and Eastchester Park.

“The long-term modifications of the estuaries because of the Clean Water Act have made all the difference,” Mr. Mankiewicz said.

Even so, four waste treatment plants empty into Jamaica Bay, discharging 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of nitrogen each day. That amount is far more than the bay can naturally absorb, and leads to algal blooms that starve other plants and animals of oxygen. Storms also regularly overflow the city’s sewage system, sending untreated wastewater into the bay.

Mr. McLaughlin said that “any reduction” in nitrogen levels in Hendrix Creek would be considered an accomplishment. The city has not established hard objective measures of success, he said.

Even if the initial change in water quality is not significant, he said, the creation of a self-sustaining habitat in Jamaica Bay — where oysters and other species can survive and spread — would be an achievement. That process, Mr. McLaughlin said, would be the first step to restoring something close to the bay’s original ecosystem.

But if the Hendrix Creek oysters thrive, the city may well face another challenge: keeping away adventuresome gourmands who might be tempted to help themselves to the delicacies.

“There’s a worry that if you have oysters that sell for a dollar apiece, people will steal them and sell them,” Mr. Mankiewicz said. “We want them for habitat, not edibility.”

Queens Gazette: Pollution Control Methods Generate Questions by Thomas Cogan...

The DEP's choice for the lower part of Flushing Bay (which has a volume of pollution nearly 40 times as great as the upper bay) is to install a 25-million-gallon collection tunnel there.

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The fifth and last of the Flushing Bay pollution control meetings sponsored by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was held last week at the Olmstead Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. At the meeting, the recommended water body/watershed plan for both Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, the narrow channel that extends southward from the lower part of the bay, was revealed. It was no surprise that an industrial engineering or "end of pipe" plan was chosen, since it and all alternative plans constituted the DEP's presentation in previous meetings. But attendees at the meeting also heard a DEP official speak of and illustrate pollution entrapment measures. The source control plans he described are being applied to Jamaica Bay, at the south shore of Queens and Brooklyn. His description left attendees to infer that source control might eventually be applied on the north shore, in Flushing Bay.

The DEP's choice for the lower part of Flushing Bay (which has a volume of pollution nearly 40 times as great as the upper bay) is to install a 25-million-gallon collection tunnel there. The plan would also include bending weirs on key regulators and netting systems at two points of outfall on the shore of the lower bay. The tunnel would be 26 feet in diameter, set in a loop about 7,000 feet long and laid 150 feet below grade in the lower bay. Its 25-million-gallon combined sewage overflow (CSO) could be transferred to the weir installation running to the bay from an initial point at 43rd Avenue and 105th Street; and from there to the Bowery Bay water pollution control plant (WPCP) on Berrian Boulevard in Astoria. Another part of the plan is a dredging operation which would be conducted to a level five feet below mean lower low water (MLLW), and the bottom then capped with a two-foot layer of clean sand. Dredging would remove CSO-related sediments that are exposed at low tide.

The Flushing Creek project has long since been undertaken (at a cost thus far of $332 million), and the CSO tank was, in fact, in operation as of the end of May, as reported at the meeting. A total of 43 million gallons of CSO can be stored: 28 million in the tank, 15 million inline. It is conveyed in a northeast direction to the Tallman Island WPCP on Powell's Cove Boulevard. Yet to come is the dredging operation, to be conducted to a level five feet below MLLW and capped with a two-foot level of clean sand.

It was not surprising that the DEP's Flushing Bay/Creek plan drew unfavorable commentary from skeptics, who may have had to resign themselves to it but didn't have to like it or believe it would succeed in its purpose. The bay and creek plans were related to the audience by Philip Hwang of the engineering firm O'Brien & Gere. On hand with him to handle the inevitable criticism were Stephen Whitehouse of Starr Whitehouse, a landscape architectural firm, and Chris Villari of DEP. Among the critics was the head of Community Board 7's environmental committee, who said that dredging could have unseen consequences; Villari could only agree. Tim Eaton of Queens College said the tunnel and weirs are subject to groundwater invasion that could dilute the volume of CSOs and simply increase the pumping burden. Hwang tried to tell him of the technical proficiency of these container systems but Eaton wasn't impressed, saying that nature would foil the plans of engineers. He cited a pipe system in Milwaukee that was opened with high hopes in 1986 but never worked well and recently had to be relined. Thomas Campagna, a consulting engineer in the Queens borough president's office, warned that the water table level is rising, which would affect the system. The example he cited was York College in Jamaica, also built in the 1980s. At the time it was built, he said, the water table was seven feet below the basement. Now, it is two feet above, and the impact on the York College buildings is acute.

In the early part of the evening, John McLaughlin, DEP ecological services director, talked about storm water management pilot projects within the Jamaica Bay watershed. He explained how existing roadways might allow for increased street-side tree planting, which could be modified to capture a portion of storm water runoff. Modification would "peel" water from the centralized combined sewer system and start a decentralization process. He showed an illustration of a hypothetical "Design Avenue, somewhere in the Jamaica Bay watershed" that had streetside swales for capturing storm water, saying that up to 25 gallons of it could be drained from each linear foot of roadway. Also, streetside infiltration swales could be planted in the understory of tree pits. He said the largest practical street tree sidewalk openings should be tried, and methods should be studied for storing water during rainstorms for later reuse by the trees through employment of soil moisture sensors and solar-activated pumps. Wherever possible, porous pavement should be used. (On playgrounds, it has the additional advantage of noise abatement; basketballs bounced on it don't make as loud a report as on standard blacktop or concrete.) "Typical urban runoff should be more than well treated by these methods," he said.

McLaughlin also spoke of constructed urban wetlands, which have been attempted at some places beside the Long Island Expressway but not yet in the Jamaica Bay area. He said that green roofs are more practical on commercial than residential buildings, but at least 20 such roofs exist in the city at present; an example is the Silvercup building in Long Island City, beneath the Queensborough Bridge. Restoration of oysters to Jamaica Bay will promote nitrogen removal, if not fishing for them, which hasn't been done in the bay since 1920; rib mussels, inedible to begin with, should be useful in the bay for pathogen uptake. But he warned that the rate of wetlands disappearance, 44 acres per year on the shoreline, would guarantee its elimination by 2025. Wave attenuators are a means of staving off wetlands deterioration. Tom Lowenhaupt asked McLaughlin when the pilot program starts in Jamaica Bay and McLaughlin said by the end of this summer. And when in Flushing Bay? McLaughlin had no sure answer.