STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A group of activists gathered at Staten Island Borough Hall Monday afternoon to protest against a BJ’s Wholesale development currently being built on a portion of the Graniteville wetlands.
The group of about a dozen demonstrators, organized by Gabriella Velardi-Ward, the leader of the Staten Island Coalition of Wetlands and Forests, marched to the offices of Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) and State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore) and called out the politicians for a perceived lack of action to protect the natural area from development, just weeks after construction prep that included the removal of trees began at the embattled site.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The city Buildings Department (DOB) issued full vacate orders to four Mariners Harbor homes after it was discovered water damage from Hurricane Ida made cellar walls in the buildings structurally unstable.
Earlier Monday, the FDNY responded to Maple Parkway, near Spirit Lane, and evacuated a row of connected homes between 204 Maple Parkway and 188 Maple Parkway when firefighters observed significant water damage in the cellars of at least two of the homes.
DOB inspectors found “deflection at several load bearing walls in the cellars of the buildings, and it was determined that those cellar walls were no longer structurally stable,” said department spokesman Andrew Rudansky.
The unprecedented rainfall that remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped Wednesday night made New York City’s climate vulnerabilities starkly visible, less than two weeks after Tropical Storm Henri broke previous rain records.
Boulevards across boroughs could’ve been mistaken for rivers. Yankee Stadium became a lake. Waterfalls cascaded into subway stations.
The scenes were vastly different from those from the coastal flooding in 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which prompted high-profile protection projects focused on waterfront areas vulnerable to storm surge and sea-level rise.
The recent deluges highlight how heavy rains have been largely left out of the equation, experts told THE CITY.
The Coalition for Wetlands and Forests continues their fight to preserve the Graniteville Swamp, aka the Graniteville Wetland and Forest. This is the wetland that saved this Environmental Justice community, a community of mostly black and brown people, from flooding during Hurricane Sandy. We are right across the street from the wetland. This video is highly important to this cause because Carl Alderson, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), proves the point that the community was saved from flooding during Hurricane Sandy and that we are at high risk of flooding, especially if we lose the wetland.
He also shows that a careless land use policy, with no one looking at the whole picture, has led to developments such as the Amazon Fulfillment Center nearby. With the filling in of that land, which was once a valley and now is a hill, and the addition of its very large structures, the Graniteville community is even more at risk of flooding. The policy of not looking at the overall impact of construction or land adjustment on the neighboring communities has to stop. Nothing in nature is isolated. Everything is connected to everything else.
No new land use should be approved without the consideration of the effect on nearby land and communities and without the consideration of climate change, which brings sea level rise, storm surges, and torrential rain flooding. Climate change, climate chaos, is happening now, not in 50 years. Just look at the fires on the west coast, now in 19 states; just look at the record-breaking hurricanes and flooding in the south. Look what happened to NYC during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Let’s wake up and begin to heal the earth.
The Graniteville Wetland located along South Avenue in Staten Island has been a point of contention for residents who do not want the BJs Wholesale Club project to go forward. This project would cut down about 1,800 trees, and destroy the wetland that people living in the area, environmental conservationists, scientists, and others have stated protects the local area from flooding.
The community, which is defined by the USEPA as an Environmental Justice Community, was not consulted prior to the green-lighting of the project by the NYS DEC, and a public hearing was said to be not warranted. This is despite the receipt by the DEC of 1,700 letters, from both community members and concerned citizens, scientists, and politicians from around the country. It is also despite the fact that the Census showed a population of less than 5,000 residents in the area, making the number of letters received over one third of the number of residents.
Interviews with over a half dozen experts and Staten Island residents reveal how air pollution served as a dangerous antecedent to a coronavirus outbreak that ravaged the borough and underscores the need to improve ozone smog on the Island.
…And while the North Shore — above the Staten Island Expressway — has over half the population of the rest of the borough, it has only around 30% the number of trees compared to the Island below the expressway, giving it less green space that can improve air quality, according to NYC Parks Department data.
That total could be further diminished by the creation of a BJ’s Wholesale Club that would result in the destruction of 18 acres of woodland next to the wetlands in Mariners Harbor.
