Protecting and improving the community for the people who live and work here

Good News:

The Guardian: Nestle’s loses bid to privatize water:

“‘Who owns the water?’ – in this round, the state and public do, because selling containerized water for profit is simply private, not public”

“Michigan’s second-highest court has dealt a legal blow to Nestlé’s Ice Mountain water brand, ruling that the company’s commercial water-bottling operation is “not an essential public service” or a public water supply.

The court of appeals ruling is a victory for Osceola township, a small mid-Michigan town that blocked Nestle from building a pumping station that doesn’t comply with its zoning laws. But the case could also throw a wrench in Nestlé’s attempts to privatize water around the country.”

“What this lays bare is the extent to which private water marketers like Nestlé, and others like them, go [in] their attempts to privatize sovereign public water, public water services, and the land and communities they impact,” Olson said.

Several Native American tribes and the environmental attorney Ross Hammersley are challenging the permit in state administrative court. Hammersley told the Guardian the appellate court finding that Nestlé is not a public water source could help in his case, as could remarks about the company’s impact on the water table.

“[Nestlé] extracting water and sending it to other places where it cannot return to the water table, and, critically, doing so faster than the aquifer can replenish, is an ‘irretrievable’ depletion unless the pumping is reduced or halted,” the judges wrote.”

The Nestle motto: “Enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future.”

and reality:

“It takes at least 2x as much water to make a plastic water bottle as the amount of water contained in it.”

Bad News (though good it is getting more frequent reporting):

NYTimes: “The Amazon is Completely Lawless: The Rainforest after Bolsanaro’s First Year”

Mr. Bolsonaro has again voiced an aggressive, nationalistic view of the Amazon, describing the rainforest as a resource to be exploited.

“…for months he has also dismissed Indigenous people’s concerns about increasing invasions of protected land by loggers and miners, even as Indigenous groups have pleaded with the government for protection from growing violence.

It was the highest loss in Brazilian rainforest in a decade, and stark evidence of just how badly the Amazon, an important buffer against global warming, has fared in Brazil’s first year under President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Deforestation and fires have always been a problem, but this is the first time it has happened thanks to the discourse and activities of the federal government,” said Marina Silva, who as environment minister in the mid-2000s cracked down on illegal activity in the Amazon, contributing to an 83 percent fall in deforestation from 2004 to 2012.”

The furor reached such a pitch that Brazil’s businesses became worried about the potential impact. “Did we have our image harmed? Yes. Can we recover it? Yes. The government has to align its discourse to what the world wants,” said Blairo Maggi, a billionaire soybean producer and former agriculture minister known as the Soy King.

“The farmers, associations and industry will have to redo what has been lost,” he said. “We retreated 10 steps; we will have to work to get back to where we were.”

The push into the Amazon has also been driven by demand from abroad. Every year, Brazil exports nearly 15 million tons of soy, much of it to China, and more than $6 billion worth of beef — more than any other country in history. Cattle ranches account for up to 80 percent of deforested land in the Amazon, according to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Major beef and soy firms have been fined millions for buying commodities sourced from illegally deforested land, but such rules have proved difficult to enforce.

From Al Jazeera News:

“Countries cannot wait for the end of 2020 to step up action. They, every city, business, region and individual need to act now.”

“The annual Emissions Gap Report paints a grim picture of the rise in global warming, and points the finger at G20 countries, especially China and the United States the two top greenhouse gas emitters, along with Russia and the European Union, which are doing too little to tackle the climate crisis… India is the fourth-largest emitter”

G20 countries are collectively responsible for 78 percent of all emissions, but they are not doing enough to contain global warming

“Emissions need to go down by 55 percent by 2030,” said the report’s Christensen. “There is no way we are going to make it if we don’t step up action as of next year with ambitious plans.”

“G20 countries are collectively responsible for 78 percent of all emissions”

From the NYTimes: 

“Mumbai got more rain this year than it had in 65 years”

India’s Ominous Future: Too Little Water, or Far Too Much

“THE MONSOON IS CENTRAL TO INDIAN LIFE AND LORE. It turns up in ancient Sanskrit poetry and in Bollywood films. It shapes the fortunes of millions of farmers who rely on the rains to nourish their fields. It governs what you eat. It even has its own music.

Climate change is now messing with the monsoon, making seasonal rains more intense and less predictable. Worse, decades of short-sighted government policies are leaving millions of Indians defenseless in the age of climate disruptions – especially the poor.”

Years of drought, crops ruined by pests and unseasonably late rains, exceptionally fierce monsoons, lakes that once held the rains clogged with plastic and sewage. Groundwater drawn faster than nature can replenish it, people settling for fetid streams, sacred rivers covered in toxic foam from industrial runoff, kitchen taps dry for months…

The neighborhood is looking forward to the move-out of the storage [we store materials for the entire borough of Manhattan] and the reclamation of this building for its original community purposes and to create that beehive of activity which would provide the real safety of this area of this Park neighborhood.

And to reclaim park space for park purposes with the removal of truck and car parking and traffic here.

For this and this and this!! – Representing what this neighborhood has asked for (the larger the word the more requested)

From NYC Parks Department website:

This project will reconstruct a comfort station in Building A in Sara D Roosevelt Park.

Or the Stanton ParkHouse!

THIS:

NOT THIS:

Key climate emergency issue!

Tuesday, December 3rd at 12:00pm -1:15pm.

Location: Stern School of Business (44 West 4th Street) in room 2-80.

-please bring an ID!

With our very own Rob Watson!

The Topic:

Our panelists will talk about what zero waste is; showcase the various applications of zero waste at the local, state, and national levels; and discuss how these initiatives intersect with business and policy, and the challenges and opportunities that arise.

Lunch will be provided!

Speakers include:
Sarah Edwards, Director, Eunomia Research & Consulting Inc.

Julie Raskin, Executive Director, Foundation for NY’s Strongest, NYC Sanitation

Rob Watson, Founder & Co-Chair, SWEEP Solid Waste Standard

FREE but please register here.

“You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. ‘Artist’s conceptions’ and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.”

-The Life and Death of American Cities

From: Renewing Philanthropy’s Commitment to Local Journalism

Rebuilding local news coverage is part of a civic-repair program we must pursue to restore the democratic promise of our cities and of our country.

“In her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described how city life emerged from countless small relationships and residents’ belief that decision makers understood them and their needs. She held that decisions about a city’s development should be based on reality as observed on the street, not on theories or politics developed from afar. She famously described the importance of “eyes upon the street” to keep people safe. ”

PARKS DEPARTMENT MAY SHRINK COSTLY BATHROOMS TO SAVE CASH

Councilmember Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) questioned why the system for other agencies to review parks projects isn’t more streamlined.

“We cannot have parks projects stalling for each of five agencies,” said Levine.

“I’m flabbergasted by the fact that they have 50 open positions while their projects sit there doing nothing for as much as a year,” Kallos, chair of the Council’s contracts committee, told THE CITY.

“All Under Heaven Are Equal” 

Inscribed and gilded in Chinese on the front of the pedestal is the Confucian motto using Dr. Sun Yat-sen*’s own calligraphy.

Council Member Chin, Manhattan Parks Commissioner Castro and many other luminaries spoke of this important moment of the new Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Plaza.

A cold day but joyous celebration – nice to see Harold Moy and the Lion Dancers!

And Karlin Chan, Chinatown advocate.

And our wonderful former Park Manager Terese Flores and Deputy Chief of Operations Ralph Musolino

A great day

*Chinese philosopher, physician, and politician, who served as the first president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China)

Join the local community and the 5th Precinct for this important  event! Ask questions, let the officers know your concerns.

Current Neighborhood Issues

with the MTA project:

We appreciate the MTA’s coming to meet with the neighborhood and with other affected agencies. It helps to struggle through together on this very disruptive and difficult project with some sort of cohesive effort. We thank Council Member Chin’s Gigi Li for her stalwart efforts to organize these meetings.

And.. the Coalition was very grateful for the MTA’s permission for a local high school to chalk for the UN Climate Summit week and the MTA even had the contractor repaint it for us – very much appreciated.

Despite the best of intentions however, the  MTA project has been hugely disruptive and even dangerous at times.

• The fencing used near Delancey Street on Forsyth Street created a blind alley in which two attempted assaults took place, hard drugs were sold and used, sex acts performed (not great for the families with small children finding them in progress!)
• Elders were threatened and buildings doors and a small business’ windows were smashed.
• That small business is struggling due to being hidden behind a wall and the unsavory goings on in front of it.
• The community garden adjacent was overrun with rats because the contractor/MTA didn’t abate (as legally required) before the project began. (And, the rats will get far worse when they do the dig alongside the garden) – planting beds had to be smashed and rebuilt and rat abatement is now constant – no one wants to be in the garden in late afternoon.
• The MTA was forced to remove all the trees alongside the park to great upset from the neighborhood some were saddened by the loss of “transplantable” trees.
• The community has to constantly harp on the unsafe traffic conditions the MTA job has set up.
• A plywood wall was put up a few months ago that abuts Sara Roosevelt Park as a barrier for the MTA’s staging area for their new ventilator for the subway. The wall creates another ‘alley’ between the street and the fences enclosing the park’s soccer fields across from housing for our deaf neighbors and the NYCHA housing complex. We’ve asked for a safety plan that might include gating that area.

This park’s neighborhood is already struggling: one murder last year in the park, assaults in the park and on Forsyth/Chrystie Streets, a homeless population that numbers 40-60 a night in summer (many of whom help us out but some very troubled). The lighting is too dim.

We’ve been extremely “understanding” as a community because we know this needs to be built, but it has been a lot of unpaid hours and effort for very slow and messy results.

We are looking for solutions to help answer (or at least mitigate?) the neighborhood’s understandable upset and anger over the start of this projected four year undertaking.