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Public
Employee Press Part 1 in a
series
Greening of New York
Harlem River Habitat By
JANE LaTOUR DC 37 Landscape Architects and
Engineers completed two remarkable, first-of-their-kind projects last year, side
by side on the Harlem River. Replacing rusted and collapsing steel sheeting with
porous edges is helping to keep the river water clean, restore floodplain functions
and improve near-shore habitat. Having this living urban edge prototype visible
from two bridges, as well as accessible by land and water, is expected to inspire
and influence how New York treats future waterfronts. Marcha
Johnson Landscape Architect Local 375 members have
transformed a rubble-strewn stretch along the Harlem River into a beautiful expanse
of urban parkland and shoreline that will serve as a model for future projects.
To create the new quarter-mile segment of the Harlem River Park and Esplanade,
they reconstructed over 1,200 feet of failing shoreline and replaced a 535-foot
section of corroding steel sheet bulkhead with a porous rock structure and ecologically
productive salt marshes and tidal pools. The new waters edge is
built of gabions, rock-filled baskets that protect the land from being washed
away using technology that dates back to ancient Egypt. In order
to build the gabion system, we had to seal the area and pump the water out 20
feet below sea level, said Walid Abdelaziz, the Associate Project Manager
for the construction phase. It was a challenge. It makes me very proud as
a civil servant to complete such a beautiful project, one New Yorkers can enjoy
every day. Landscape Architect Marcha Johnson, a 20-year Parks
Dept. veteran, provided invaluable research and design assistance. She inspired
many of the most pioneering ideas, said Senior Landscape Architect Ricardo
Hinkle. Johnsons work was partially funded under a state Designing
the Edge grant. The gabion seawall is reinforced and built of marine-grade
stainless steel baskets filled with rocks. The rocks and even the steel
mesh provide innumerable pores and surfaces, an ideal habitat for a wide range
of marine organisms, said Hinkle. This encourages a healthier and
more diverse underwater food chain, and many of these organisms actually clean
the river. The salt marsh plantings set back from the shore will
attract even more living creatures. I have already observed clusters of
ducks in the salt marshes, which one would never see along the sterile steel,
he said. The tide pools will attract yet more and different marine creatures,
within the safe confines of the park, so that schoolchildren and the general public
can examine and monitor what types of organisms appear over time. The
reconstruction provided an opportunity to enhance the structure of the shoreline
and invite the public to come down to the waters edge, he added, where
a set of elegant granite seats and smaller steps lead down to low tide level.
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