FLUSHING WATERWAYS Vision Plan 2018 Executive Summary

6 FLUSHING WATERWAYS Vision Plan 2018 Executive Summary The Vision Planning Timeline 7 The Vision This Vision Plan is as forgotten waterways; rather, we The Flushing Waterways play unique a community-driven see waterways teeming with aquatic and crucial roles in the economy, society, life, active recreational communities, and urban environment of these local catalog of the efforts clean water stewards, and committed communities, of greater Queens, and of already underway. It educators. We see a waterway with New York City. great potential. This Vision Plan is a is also a record of the community-driven catalog of these efforts STATE OF THE SYSTEM pollution, access, and already underway. It is also a record of A complex social urban ecosystem like the pollution, access, and investment no other, the Flushing Waterways are investment barriers barriers facing the Waterways, and a plan polluted and degraded but are also facing the Waterways, for how to overcome those barriers. regularly used for fishing and recreation. The ebbs and flows of use, attention, and a plan for how THE FLUSHING WATERWAYS and investment, from the redevelopment to overcome those Determining a path forward for the of LaGuardia Airport to the crumbling Waterways affects Queens as a borough. bulkheads of Flushing Creek, have barriers to achieve a The Bay and Creek connect the shaped the system we work and live with unified vision. communities of Downtown Flushing today, and will define the bounds of what and College Point to East Elmhurst and is possible for the future. INTRODUCTION Corona, home to hundreds of thousands Together, Riverkeeper and the Guardians of New Yorkers. Flushing Meadows- Ecologically, the marshes, riprap, of Flushing Bay launched this vision Corona Park and the World’s Fair breakwalls, and piers of the Waterways process in 2016 in order to help put Marina promenade connect Citi Field to are part of the larger New York-New to paper the energy and momentum LaGuardia Airport, and welcome millions Jersey Harbor and Estuary. Tidally building around the clean water future of visitors every year for tennis, baseball, driven and saturated every rainfall, of northern Queens. With city plans festivals and tourism. College Point is these wetlands have the potential to be for sewage and stormwater pollution nested on the western edge of the Bay among the most productive ecosystems investments taking shape, redevelopment and runs into the Upper East River while in the entire regional estuary. Today, of Flushing Bay piers starting, and Flushing Creek separates downtown much of the historic wetlands, marshes, redevelopment plans for Willets Point Flushing from Willets Point, and both seagrasses and soft edges have been and downtown Flushing, the waters banks will see planned redevelopment transformed into riprap or hardened with of Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek that brings thousands more to new bulkheads. Strong, healthy wetlands needed their own long-term plan. With homes and businesses along the Creek. bring a number of co-benefits to the all of the pollution presently discharging into these waterways each year, and all of the uncertainty around access and investments in the waterfront, there is, and always has been, a community of people fighting for this community resource and a place to play, learn, fish, and paddle. We see Flushing Bay and Creek – together the Flushing Waterways – not Flushing Creek today as an unapproachable problem, or 8 FLUSHING WATERWAYS Vision Plan 2018 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / The Vision community, such as water filtration and forward was needed, one that addressed waterfront, between communities, and on storm surge protection. The Waterways and accounted for all of the system’s the water. Ensuring climate and economic are also home to water-dependent components – from industry to oysters. resilience, of the industries, businesses, industries – barges carrying construction communities and ecosystems. materials to the Creek, charter boats Beginning with a community meeting in picking up customers at the Bay’s two 2016, and continuing through most of COMMUNITY COLLABORATION marinas – that must also be considered 2017, Riverkeeper and the Guardians With this framework in mind, we sought in this Vision. Alongside these industries, of Flushing Bay framed our approach to generate ideas and input for actual the region is being reshaped by new to community visioning around what projects along the waterfront and in developments, new infrastructure, and we called the “Four Rs” - remediation, the waterways. Dividing the Bay and new zoning plans for Willets Point, restoration, recreation, and resilience. Creek into four different reaches allowed Flushing, and parts of the park itself. Remediating historical pollution and us to work with city agencies and the degradation. Restoring and revitalizing communities on specific, detailed Layered over these ecological, social, and lost and damaged ecosystems. Providing proposals throughout the watershed. economic considerations is the state of for safe and accessible opportunities Community members proposed, stress caused by sewage and stormwater for recreation and education – on the contributed, and tested the ideas – at pollution. The vast majority of the land that drains to these waterways – the Flushing Bay and Creek watershed – is Remediation Recreation drained by a combined sewer system. In this system (where storm drains in After decades (and longer) of combined As open waterways in New York City go, the streets are connected underground sewage discharges, illegal dumping, and Flushing Bay and Creek are some of the best with the sewer pipes leading from homes pollution, many parts of these wetlands and places for recreational boating; with relatively and businesses), rain events as small waterfronts need to be remediated before low vessel traffic, protection from the wind and as a tenth of an inch can exceed the they can be restored. In 2017, the New waves, and access at the World’s Fair Marina, sewers’ capacity and cause overflows York City Department of Environmental a large dragon boating community calls into the harbor. Up to three billion gallons Protection launched a multi-year initiative to these waters home. A proposed boathouse of discharge (consisting of sewage, dredge out large quantities of sewer solids and community center could provide free pharmaceuticals, oils, debris, litter, and that have built up below the World’s Fair community boating and allow New York City to many more pollutants) can enter Flushing promenade. host international dragon boat competitions. Bay and Creek every year – enough to fill the Empire State Building ten times with pollution. Restoration Resilience As with most waterways around the City, With lowland swamps and braided streams OUR APPROACH the waterways need significant investments making up most of College Point, Corona, At times (particularly when it hasn’t in wetland reconstruction to restore a and Flushing Meadows before large-scale rained for a long while) these Waterways functioning aquatic ecosystem. Maritime fill and development efforts kicked off in the can, and do, flourish. Pollution, degraded forests, marshes, seagrasses, and oyster mid-1900s, the watersheds here are very wetlands, and crumbling concrete, reefs are all necessary ingredients for vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, and storm though, limit the scope and extent of success. In its 2017 restoration plan, the surge. Investments in green infrastructure and these good days. With climate threats, a Army Corps of Engineers is asking for soft shorelines can help mitigate some of these growing local population, and hundreds Congressional funds for a large wetland risks. of paddlers and boaters getting on project at the head of Flushing Creek. the water every week, a better path 9 we divided Flushing Bay and Creek into four separate reaches, a nautical term for lengths of a waterway. Each reach has an individual story, and connects with a different part of the surrounding communities. Taken together, though, they’re all elements of the same comprehensive Vision. Reach: LaGuardia Waterfront Largely protected from heavy wind or waves, the northwestern corner of Community Visioning Session at Queens Museum the inner Flushing Bay is an estuarine diamond-in-the-rough. Bounded by our standing-room-only 2016 meeting Asian American Chinese Environmental LaGuardia Airport, a rocky breakwall, aboard the Skyline Princess, at our 2017 Protection Agency and Make the Road, and the westernmost end of the Queens Museum visioning event, and at with business owners, with the LaGuardia promenade, this reach consists mainly of a number of smaller stakeholder sessions Redevelopment community engagement tidal mudflats and marshes. Today, the and meetings. team, and with the Mets’ outreach team mudflats have been subject to decades of at Citi Field. The team at Perkins + Will sewage pollution accumulation, age has These meetings and workshops brought brought the ideas throughout this report deteriorated pedestrian access across the together community leaders, residents, to life, and also offered urban design Grand Central, and the breakwall – which and experts from organizations and and planning expertise. For each reach, bisects the Bay – limits tidal exchange agencies around the city. Queens College, and for the system as a whole, we tried and contributes to poor water quality. the NYC Parks Department, Waterfront to capture the present state and future Alliance, SWIM Coalition, Billion Oyster

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