Bronx River Ecomedia Blog

On a Bronx History tour last Saturday, I walked along a pleasant stretch of the Bronx River between Allerton Avenue and Gun Hill Road. Cars whizzed along the Bronx River Parkway to the east, while Metro North trains rumbled on the west, but in between, the woods were tranquil. Tall stalks of pussy willows bloomed yellow along the river bed and the branches of a few weeping willow trees with leaves and flowers of the same hopeful yellow hung over the stream. Tiny yellow flowers hugging the forest floor were said to be alien plants, but I found them charming immigrants.

Along the way, Lloyd Ultan, official historian of the Bronx Historical Society, communicated more information about the Bronx than I could ever tell you. One tidbit that fascinated me was that before the Kensico reservoir captured water that once flowed into the Bronx River, it was wider and deeper. French immigrants who settled in the area opened restaurants on houseboats moored out on the water, accessible only by rowboat. Weary city dwellers who wanted a nice outing in the country would take the train, then the New York & Harlem River RR, to the Bronx and enjoy French cuisine on the boats along with a walk in the woods.

About midway through our walk, we began to follow what was once a piece of the original Bronx River Parkway. Back in the day, it seems the parkway was a narrow road meandering back and forth across the river. It was intended for bicycle travel. When today’s parkway was built to accommodate big cars driven by more people, both the road the river were straightened.

Along the river’s flood plain, Rob Benaton of the Neighborhood Initiative Development Corp. (NIDC) sponsor of the tour, told us about efforts to eradicate Japanese knotweed there. Japanese knotweed is a notorious invasive plant that grows thick and tall, crowding out native vegetation. After pulling some out and hacking it back systematically, the next step is to replant the area. As part of this effort, NIDC is having a spring tree planting next Saturday, April 21, from 10 am to 1 pm. All are welcome. To help, meet in front of the NIDC office at 2523 Olinville Ave., near Mace.

In the peace of the river and woods, it was possible to imagine what the Bronx looked like 100 years ago, all woods, wetlands, and truck farms, before the subway came and the city expanded north along its route.

Take your pick of Earth Day events on Saturday, April 14.  You could enjoy a Bronx River History Walk with noted Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan or participate in a National Day of Climate Action with a Bronx River Tribute.

During the Bronx River History Walk, you will find out about the restaurants that once lined the river, why the Co-ops are historic landmarks and other Northeast Bronx “trivia.”  This is sponsored by the Neighborhood Initiative Development Corp. (NIDC) and will start at 1 pm in front of its office at 2523 Olinville Ave, near Mace Ave.  A RSVP is required — call 718-231-9800 x16.

The Bronx River Tribute is part of a nation-wide call for Congressional action on climate change.  It is sponsored by Step-It-Up, a group created by author Bill McKibben, and it is calling for Congress to enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions and to pledge an 80% reduction of emissions by 2050.  McKibben inisists that ”the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate.” 

The Bronx River Tribute will take place from noon to 2pm.  You meet at the intersection of Allerton Ave. and Bronx Park East and will walk north from there 1/4 mile to a bridge/walkway over the Bronx River.  You can get more information and RSVP to this at http://events.stepitup2007.org/events/show/32.

If you feel like going downtown, Step-It-Up is organizing a “sea of people” that will surge up from Battery Park to mark the areas that would be submerged if the threatened melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves actually takes place.  The event begins at noon at Battery Park — wear blue to be part of the sea of people surge.  For more info, go to http://events.stepitup2007.org/events/show/103. 

Van Cortlandt OUTDOORS!
Spring 2007 Teacher Workshop Series
The Friends are excited to be offering another teacher workshop series
this spring.  These workshops are designed to train teachers in using
the park as an outdoor lab where lessons come alive for students.  We
will demonstrate how teachers can use the 1,146 acres of parkland as an
outdoor classroom and how you can bring the park inside.

*Project WET: Saturday March 17th from 11am-5pm Project WET (Water
Education for Teachers) is a collection of innovative, water-related
activities that are hands-on, east to use and fun!  Project WET
activities are geared for students from K-12th grade and are easily
incorporated into a school’s existing curricula. Held in partnership
with the Bronx River Alliance.  **This workshop will be held at Fannie
Lou Hamer Freedom High School at 1021 Jennings Street, Bronx, NY, 10460.

*Project Wild: Thursday April 19th from 5-8pm Project WILD provides
lesson plans that will help students learn basic concepts about wildlife
and their needs. Project WILD is an award-winning education program
designed for teachers and youth leaders of students from kindergarten
through 12th grade.

*Aquatic Wild: Tuesday April 24th from 5-8pm Project Aquatic Wild helps
to explore and understand the fascinating world of water and the aquatic
habitats it supports. The goal of all Project WILD workshops is to help
teachers and youth leaders prepare students to develop problem-solving
skills in exploring responsible human actions toward wildlife and the
environment.

*Flying Wild: Thursday May 3rd from 5-8pm Flying WILD is an exciting
environmental education program of the Council for Environmental
Education (the creators of Project WILD) designed for middle school
students. The materials introduce students to bird conservation through
hands-on classroom activities and school bird festivals.

HELP: Wetlands: Sunday May 6th from 11am-4pm The Habitat Ecology
Learning Program (HELP) is an exciting interdisciplinary curriculum
designed by the Wildlife Conservation Society for students in grades
3rd-6th.  HELP encourages students to use language arts, life sciences,
social studies and math to explore the richness of ecology.  This
program was validated by the US Dept of Education as an exemplary
program in life science and the program covers the animals, plants and
indigenous people of specific habitats. This hands-on program consists
of six modules with Wetlands being the focus of this workshop.
Participants will have an opportunity to purchase lesson plan book for
$20 (regular purchase price is $40).

*These workshops will be held with the NYS Department of Environmental
Conservation and participants will receive a book with plenty of lesson
plans and background info.
**All workshops are being held at the Van Cortlandt House Museum except
where noted.

Fee of $5 per workshop (or $20 for all five) is required to cover cost
of food and beverages.

For more information contact Christina at or email
http://www.bronxriverart.org/ecomedia/cj/fvcpeducation@hotmail.com.

Christina Taylor
Interim Executive Director
Friends of Van Cortlandt Park
124 Gale Place, Apt. GrA
Bronx, NY 10463
ph-
fax-

Channel 4 (wnbc-tv) coverage of the ongoing cleanup of NYC’s “Bronx River”. Aired Friday 29-Dec-2006.

Great news!!!

No more raw sewage dumped in the Bronx River!

I also found this very good video produced for the American Museum of Natural History about the Bronx River and ecological initiatives.

From the beginning, Olivia Metellus, 9, and Nia Brown, 12 enjoyed taking pictures with digital cameras during photography classes for children and parent teams. More difficult was learning to edit them on Macintosh computers.

The class, sponsored by the Bronx River Art Center, challenged the parent/child teams to take interesting microphotographs of natural subjects, zooming in on flowers, parts of trees, and waterfalls, for example. The idea was to bring the teams into their natural surroundings close up. BRAC provided the cameras and an engaging teacher, Marisol Diaz.

Nia liked taking nature pictures because they are beautiful and because “we’re in nature, and if we don’t have nature we don’t have anything all.” She didn’t like doing the close-ups at first, though. She had to exchange the Olympus camera she loved for a Nikon, and she had to exclude from her pictures aspects that interested her. But her teacher, Marisol Diaz, explained that professional photographers have to focus on whatever subject is assigned to them, and Nia liked being professional about her work. She’s really good at it, and it’s her best way of being creative, she thought.

The first weeks of the class were spent learning to use the cameras and uploading and filing their pictures into the computers. They also talked about elements of composition. In the next weeks, they learned to sharpen and size the pictures on Macintoshes using Adobe Photoshop.

Selecting which pictures to edit was hard for Olivia because all were “so good.” She had to pick 10 or so to show on Dec. 15 for a special exhibition at BRAC.

The exhibit will include the work of this class along with that of the documentary and computer games classes for teen-agers, and the adult class making this blog. Olivia’s favorite pictures were of a raindrop of water on a flower and a pine tree.

Nia, called “the brain” by Marisol because she remembers everything she is told about using the cameras and computer, said she tried to tell a story with her pictures. Her favorites were of a waterfall and of a red rose she saw near an old house.

Both Olivia and Nia were full of enthusiasm for the class and for their teacher. Nia said that besides taking the photographs she enjoyed learning all about the river and about the garden where they took many pictures. In addition, Marisol was “the best teacher you could have. She’s funny, and she tells you everything.” Olivia said the class was not only fun but also a way for mothers and daughters to spend “quality time” together.

The children will receive prints of selected pictures at the exhibition and ceremony December 15.

All are invited to this event at the Bronx River Art Center, 1087 E. Tremont Ave. from 4 pm to 7 pm.

Last week-end, as just about everyone in the city knows by now, 23-year-old Sean Bell, a black man, was killed when police fired 50 shots into his car. Two others were wounded, one described in the press as “a convicted felon.” None of the three were armed. Most (I forget how many exactly) of the five police involved were either black or Hispanic.

From what I hear, most black people see this as yet another expression of racist fears of black men. Many white people take more a “we don’t know all the facts yet” point of view. I would like to hear comments from residents of the Bronx, particularly the West Farms area. What is your experience with police conduct? Do you think young blacks and Hispanics are particularly targeted by police? How? What is your opinion of the actions of police in this case? What do you make of the fact that some of the police officers were black?
–Peggy

On the table at the West Farmer’s Market at Drew Gardens, you will find small plastic bears filled with honey made by our own Bronx River bees. They live on Franklin Avenue in hives kept by Roger Repohl in the Genesis Park Community Garden next to St. Augustine church and in the churchyard.

I was curious about these bees, so I visited Roger on one of the last warm days of October. The bees were buzzing around busily, bringing in some last minute nectar before the winter closes in. Once the weather gets cold, bees stay inside, clustering together and vibrating to keep each other warm.

Roger told me there are about 60,000 bees in each of his three hives. Pretty scary, huh? But not to worry. They are not going to come after you. Honey bees are only interested in flowers, not in people. They will not bother you unless you step on them when they are sipping nectar from clover or if you get too near their hive. Do not mistake them for those yellow and black wasps that ruin your picnic by settling on your hamburger or soda can. Those are yellow jackets, not honey bees, which are brown and black and have a wider abdomen than wasps.

I got to taste some honey produced by these bees. They roam around in a three-mile radius from their home, gathering nectar from flowering trees in the spring, clover in the summer, and wild flowers like goldenrod and asters in the fall. The honey made in each season has a slightly different flavor. The spring honey has a light minty taste. The summer version tasted to me like clover honey, while the fall harvest seemed richer but not as sweet. I liked the fall honey the best.

I worried a bit about exploiting these good workers who pollinate our gardens and trees, giving us honey and wax, but Roger assured me that bees make lots more than they need. He leaves plenty of honey (about 100 pounds) in each hive for the bees to live on over the winter. Although people used to steal honey by destroying hives and even killing bees (making the surviving bees pretty angry), modern methods are gentler. Roger showed me wooden trays he inserts into the hives that the bees obligingly fill up with honey. He claims they aren’t much disturbed when he opens the hives and removes them.

People have been going after honey for as long as we know about. Pictures of bee hives have been found in Spanish caves dating back 8,000 years. And honey never spoils. If you happened to find some that was 8,000 years old, it would still be good to eat. Archeologists once found a honey pot from ancient Egypt containing crystallized but still edible honey.

Roger’s honey is definitely a treat. He keeps bees for the satisfaction it gives him to learn about these fascinating creatures, and we get to enjoy the product. For more information you can reach Roger by e-mail at repohl@att.net.

–Peggy Ray

Why should I care whether the Bronx River is healthy or not? I don’t need to drink out of it (a good thing!). I don’t need to eat the fish that live in it. But I do feel peaceful whenever I get a chance to walk along it in, say, the New York Botanical Garden, where it is lined by trees and the water sparkles. I’d like the whole river to be clean and beautiful, all the way from Westchester to the South Bronx.

That’s why I went to a demonstration on monitoring water quality that was offered Sept. 30 by the Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) and why I was excited to learn that the river has guardian angels, volunteers who check the water every week.

Donna Piluso, a long-time guardian of the waters, gave the demonstration at Drew Gardens.along with her 8-year-old daughter Oshiana. Other child-parent teams were there to watch. Some were taking BRAC classes on how to use digital cameras and some on how to use audio equipment.

After putting on neoprene wet suits and rubber boots, Donna and Oshiana waded into the river to check the water temperature with a special thermometer and to fill two bottles with water from the river. After they had collected the water, Donna showed us some of the chemicals monitors add to the water to check for such things as the amount of dissolved oxygen, salinity, level of nitrogen/nitrates, and turbidity.

Water monitors also make note of the water level in the river and look for signs of algae blooms that cloud the water so sunlight can’t get through to plants that need it. They try to get rid of invasive plants like Japanese knotweed that have blown in from far away and are spreading along the shoreline, crowding out the native plants.

Along with the demonstration, Donna gave us a lot of information about the river. Among other things, I learned that the water in the river at Drew Gardens (in the West Farms neighborhood) is “brackish.” I always thought brackish water was unclear or murky. But no. Brackish water is a mixture of fresh and salt water. Ocean tides run up the Bronx River as far as West Farms, making the water there slightly salty.

There are a number of things people can do to help keep the river clean.

·We can dispose of trash properly. Small pieces of litter from the streets wash into the river where fish eat them thinking they are getting food. Not good for fish digestion.

·If we see or smell raw sewage or other pollutants in the river, we can report it to the city’s Dept. of Environmental Protection either by calling the Bronx River Alliance if it’s a weekday (718-430-4665) or calling 311 any time.

·If we witness someone dumping trash in the river, we can call 911 right away. Dumping is against the law.

·To prevent nitrogen from running off our lawns and gardens into the river, we can fertilize with natural compost. This is frequently offered free of charge by the New York City Dept. of Sanitation. For information, see www.nyccompost.org.

·If we want to volunteer to monitor the water ourselves, we can get information by calling the Bronx River Alliance or e-mailing teresa.crimmens@parks.nyc.gov.

–Peggy Ray

I like to buy fresh vegetables and fruits grown by farmers right here in the New York region, so I often hop on the #6 train and make a long trip downtown to Union Square to get my produce. No more! I have discovered the West Farmers’ Market at Drew Gardens, practically at my doorstep, where I will be able to buy local produce every Wednesday until November 15 between 10 am and 3 pm.

DrewGardens, in case you don’t know, is on Tremont Ave., a block or so from the West Farms stop on the #2 train and across the street from the Bronx River Art Center.

Last Wednesday, I stopped by and was personally waited on by Jennifer Plewka, the Environmental Educator at Phipps Community Development Corporation. Jennifer not only organized the market in the first place, but she and market manager Sara Katz begin work at 6 am on market days, themselves loading 50-pound bags of potatoes and onions and other vegetables onto a truck at the Botanical Garden site where they meet their farmers. They then go on to spend the day setting up the market and selling the produce with the help of one volunteer.

“We’re superheros,” Jennifer told me, and I couldn’t agree more. She said the market has been very successful, with lots of repeat customers and people lining up early to get items that move quickly, like peaches or corn.

There’s more. Some of the produce sold at the West Farmers Market was grown right in Drew Gardens, where 30 community gardeners have plots. This project was also organized by Jennifer. She’s proud that the garden has been certified by New York State’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which gives vouchers to buy produce to women eligible for WIC and some eligible senior citizens. They can spend the vouchers at the West Farmers’ Market.

The community gardeners grow their vegetables without using artificial fertilizers or pesticides, and the garden has been certified by the New York Botanical Garden as “organic.” To get this certification, all gardeners had to take a course in proper composting and pass an exam on it.

The farm that supplies most of the vegetables for the market, Rogowski Farm, also uses organic methods, sending the produce into New York from Pine Island in Orange County. The farmer who supplies fruit, The Orchards of Concklin, comes from Pomona, NY. (By the way, if you want to pick your own apples and have a car available, The Orchards at Concklin is about 45 miles north of the city.)

I bought enough peaches (the last of the season), pears, greens, beets, lettuce, and corn (also the last of the season) to last me for the week. I’m already thinking about the cabbage, butternut squash and apples I couldn’t fit into my bag on Wednesday but will certainly try out next week.

For more information, see:
http://www.phippsny.org
http://www.rogowskifarm.net”>
http://www.theorchardsofconklin.com>”>

–Peggy Ray