City parkway at Catherine Slip - New York City, NY

Description

A compacted, weedy parkway was turned into a beautiful, vibrant space of native plants and healthy soil to absorb rainwater runoff from the sidewalk and nearby properties before it can get into the storm drain...which is just a stone's throw from the East River. The roads and sky scrapers we've plastered on top of pristine land and waterways have rendered Manhattan an impermeable surface. With little land to naturally filter rain water and New York's antiquated combined sewer system, even a tiny amount of rain can combine with sewage and dump - untreated - into NY rivers...which happens about 63 times each year!

Over three days, with 10,000 lbs of gravel, 500 lbs of compost, over 200 plants and shrubs, and 40+ volunteers from Surfrider-NYC, Loomstate, Lower East Side Ecology Center and Open Source Landscape completed New York's first citizen-led bio swale! They knew this swale would help filter urban runoff and keep sewage from flowing into NY rivers, but we did not expect the even more powerful impact... Read on >

BIG thanks to Citizens Committee and Double R Foundation for making this project possible! Also thanks to OurdoorFest and Google for sharing some amazing volunteers.

Surfrider-NYC's Jason Camhi organized a re-fresh of the site, and it's looking good (see attached pictures). See pictures of first the workday here:

http://actnatural.loomstate.org/2014/06/save-swales.html

It's located between Water St. and South St.