Don Riepe of the American Littoral Society hoists a piece of insulation to Dan Mundy Sr. of the Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers during Tuesday’s cleanup of Sandy debris in Broad Channel. A Build it Back home reconstruction allowed temporary wetland access.
October 23, 2014
On the cusp of the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, Broad Channel residents are still trying to rid surrounding wetlands of debris caused by the storm’s wrath.
The unexpected golden opportunity: a torn-down home.
A partnership of several city and community groups, including the Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, Broad Channel Civic Association, Jamaica Bay Rockaway Parks Restoration Corps, Build it Back, the city Parks Department and the American Littoral Society assembled to clean a patch of wetland right behind a reconstruction site on Cross Bay Boulevard at West 11th Road.
“This worked out perfectly because we’re taking this house down,” Dan Mundy Sr., of the Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, said. The home, belonging to the Blake family, is being rebuilt through Build it Back.
Mundy asked the construction company, Arverne by the Sea, to pause work for a couple of days so volunteers could remove piles of flotsam and jetsam, like bits of home insulation, plastic containers, and pieces of metal and nail-studded wood brought in by pooling water two years ago.
In the past, they tried moving rubbish over fences or through alleyways, but the paths were too cumbersome or narrow. Mundy said that normally, volunteers would have to move debris through somebody’s living room.
Mundy and his son, Dan Mundy Jr., also of the Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers, sawed an access hole through the back fence and laid down a plywood board to help around 20 volunteers, wearing rubber boots and gloves, move around the land behind the lot.
Residents have been eyeing the debris in this particular spot, which is edged by a boardwalk at East 12th Road, for years.
“All this storm debris came back here and they’ve never been able to come back here with boats because of the boardwalk,” Borough Director at the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations Rudy S. Giuliani said. “As Build it Back starts to ramp up more and more, we have more opportunities to team up with the community and this is a good example of that.”
Giuliani helped round up the day’s volunteers, some from Friends of Rockaway.
“We’ve taken tons and tons of debris out since the storm, but this is the home run,” Dan Mundy Jr. said of the project. He said in the last year, volunteers have hand planted hundreds of thousands of plants. Without clearing debris, the plants wouldn’t flourish. “It’s not just aesthetically unpleasing, it’s a hazard to the bay,” Mundy Jr. said.
Even under the afternoon’s pouring rain, volunteers worked, hauling debris into a Dumpster provided by the Department of Sanitation. They separated recyclable material along the way.
“It’s amazing how much debris is left from Sandy,” Nancy Barthold, assistant commissioner with the Parks Department, said. “In remote locations that people don’t regularly pass by, people don’t realize that that [debris] impacts their land. It is surprising.”
Barthold said there have been several ongoing projects uniting different organizations in the Jamaica Bay region, including those moving sand, restoring fences and planting dune grass. She said work will continue into the winter.
After the cleanup, the only debris remaining was a large discarded piece of a dock, which would need to be sawed into smaller pieces.
The Blake lot is a few doors down from the home of the Galimi family, another house being reconstructed by Build it Back and visited by Mayor de Blasio on Monday. There, de Blasio announced the city’s 2014 goal: to start construction on at least 1,000 homes and issue reimbursement checks to 1,500 homeowners.
“Good timing and community initiative came together,” Amy Peterson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations, said in a statement.
While de Blasio’s changes to the Build it Back program have brought clear improvements from a year ago, many caution there is still a lot to be done.
“As we approach the two-year anniversary of the storm, I can’t stop thinking of my constituents who are still not in their homes,” state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. said in a statement about Build it Back. “Progress announcements are nice, but the hard work that lies ahead in helping people needs to be highlighted as well.”
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