Public Airs Concerns About Waterfront Plan

The Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for NYC was released late September, and this Tuesday night the Department of City Planning held a public forum to hear citizens’ concerns. The Brooklyn plan, we already noted, covers areas like Newtown Creek, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the piers between Red Hook and Greenpoint. The main concern for Brooklyn brought up at the forum was the lack of focus on Significant Maritime Industrial Areas, or SMIA’s. Sunset Park, Red Hook, the Navy Yard, and South Williamsburg were targeted as lower income communities clustered around polluted, maritime areas. In particular, the Waterfront Plan was criticized for using “vague, non-committal language” to address SMIA’s. One speaker complained that “NYC’s environmental burdens fall on low-income communities” while another called the Waterfront Plan a “Civil Right Issue.” Besides SMIA’s, issues varied from the desire for increased access, more transparency, and a larger scope of the plans. City Planning will take all issues into consideration (you can still submit a proposal online) and should release its agenda by the end of the calender year.
City Planning Vision for Brooklyn Waterfront [Brownstoner]