When Corzine was elected I though urban issues would get attention and get some change. Not so much, it was more business as usual. Maybe the stick of attacking the corrupt Democratic machine will yield more than the carrots of a friendly Governor.

OTOH, cluelessly calling NYC a GOP stronghold totally undermines everything else said.

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That's what I said in post 10. But "cost effective" is a relative term, relative to who's saving and who's losing money. What motivation does the MTA has to stop charging PATH customers in exchange for a presumed split of the single fare with the PA? One assumes their calculation doesn't show them recovering the loss by increased ridership, the extra 2 subway fares per day probably doesn't deter most people who would be commuting anyway.

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Like ThirdGrove said, it's a money loser, like most mass transit. I believe they got it when they got the WTC site. Most institutions that run mass transit are at peace with it's subsidized nature, but not the PA. They won't give an inch, look at how they renovated the east exit at Grove without an elevator because no one actually forced them to, even though it was the right thing to do.

Clearly the first step would be a "one fare" transfer from PATH to MTA, no? Just follow the money folks. I've never even heard anyone talking about that mild step, even though it all goes on the same Metrocard as the "one fare" NYC implemented a few years back.

The only way an actual connection would ever happen is if the PA sold the PATH to the MTA. The PA hates the PATH, always has, and resents having to put ANY money into it.

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You're right, this JUST like Chocolate vs. Vanilla ice cream, except Vanilla just tore some old lady's head off.

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The most absurd trope of the pit bull apologists. Sure, lots of dogs bite, but few of them have the size, strength and tenacity to do the kind of lethal damage a pit bull can do.

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I LOVE deco! I just think the short memory is funny. Mercury+Loft doesn't equal "deco design" in my mind, but "poisoned residents". The story was a really big deal back then. What next, the Triangle Shirtwaist Lofts, or the Columbine Preschool?

As for the property itself, everybody makes their own choices along the space vs location continuum, the combat here among people who make different choices is silly. Not everyone here would choose to live in Manhattan if they could, but I sure would. But I can't get what I consider livable space there so I made my choice for Downtown at a time we could afford it (couldn't now). However I wouldn't choose to live in the Beacon, an island of luxury in a relatively inconvenient and unsafe neighborhood. But for others like you it's perfect and works, so enjoy. But don't get worked up that it's not for everybody.

Okay, that name is hysterical. Clearly no one involved was in the business long enough to remembered 96 when a Hoboken loft building was found to be swimming in toxic mercury and poisoning it's tenants. Oh Irony, you really know how to party!

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/29/nyr ... -poisoned-by-mercury.html

Fasteddie, that sound pretty cheap for the materials, the ply alone for 25' should be 6-9 sheets (depending on construction) at $40 per, and when I last priced the corbels and braces they were $25-70 apiece.

One of the attractive things about the fiberglass is there's nothing like that ply to rot out, or even paint if you order it with colored resin.

Sam, could you email me a contact # for Mike?

My parapet needs repair and so I'm thinking now is the time to restore the long lost cornice. Has anyone ever done this, and what did it cost?

I mean a nice one, not one of those crappy half hearted ovehangs with a couple of brackets. I'm looking at some of the premolded fiberglass options (nonhistoric district) where the whole thing is just a couple of sections that get bolted on, rather than built up piece by piece. But when I got a price for it 8 years ago it was $200/ft plus installation! Ouch.

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Well, most of my favorite campgrounds are near great whitewater, so that's not a universal standard. The family is forcing me to do more nonpaddling camping trips, so I will say that Stokes State Forest up on 206 has some of the nicest sites, woodsy with lots of space between, not one of those places where you feel like you're camping in a parking lot. We were at one of those along the Housatonic this summer and some clown in a camper fired up his generator at 6am!

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There's so many great state parks in NJ, PA, NY & CT you'll have to narrow down what you're looking to do there. Just in NJ you have parks diverse as the Pine Barrens, Delaware Watergap and High Point.Unfortunately, NJ has the WORST website and booking system, refusing to subscribe to the national reserveamerica.com system.

WEBMASTER, IF YOU'RE GOING TO CONSOLIDATE ALL CAMPING THREADS, AT LEAST GIVE IT A GENERIC "CAMPING" TITLE.

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My disdain is for the list, not the school. The school is clearly the best public HS in JC, it's just not really one of the best basic unfiltered student body schools in the US because that's NOT what it is! Did you actually read the methodology I linked to, or just want to do the knee jerk thing?

We shouldn't be crowing about getting on this list with a bye, we should be embarrassed about being disqualified from being classed with the the great selective public schools around this country like Stuyvesant, their true peers.

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Make no mistake, I desperately want my kids to get in to McNair. I just am repulsed by naive cheering over an achievement that at the least needs a huge asterisk next to it. Having them in this list is like letting a high school baseball team play in the Little League because their batting average sucks so badly. I look forward to the day McNair's students achieve it's way OFF this list!

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Jeez wibbit, read the thread. my post #12 explains all.

I guarantee not 1 in 5 JC drivers can tell you what a flashing red or yellow actually means. Somebody connected's auto body shop must be slow.

You don't need to be Nostradamus to see how this'll play out. People will be reluctant to call 911 fearing insurance rise and more houses will burn down and more people will die. But the city will collect a couple of hundred thou more, so all is good.

Just put it out early, the metal guys will get it, the regular collections will never see it.

I've heard that some co-ops or condos have a carpet clause, like "60% must be covered", but I've never heard of it for rentals even in NYC, which I assume you are since you don't mention complaining to a board.

Unless you can get your landlord to intercede, you'll either need to work on your people skills or start apartment shopping.

HPAH is actually closer to that nasty 12th street 6 lanes of traffic than White Star is to the turnpike overpass 100 ft in the air. Just look at the view from the front door, there's a park between the bar and the overpass, what's not neighborhoody?
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I believe you are sincere, just naive about what makes thing tick.

Enos: Locked much of the time.

Van Vorst: under the TLC of Parkman & Co.

Roberto Clemente: Locked, and presumably cared for by the little league that somehow owns a city park.

LSP: State Park, not a JC park.

Waterfront: not familiar enough to say. The only actual city park I know is the ones down by the canal, and they're no beauties.

HP: there has been a chronic problem of graffiti on the playground and gazebo, dealt with occasionally by HPNA, never by the city. Garbage was commonly all over in the shrubs and playground.

Also keep in mind, once a stable Conservancy is in place, the landscaping doesn't need to stay static, it can be constantly improving under a city approved plan funded and executed by the conservancy. Don't expect the city to put down a shovel in this park for another couple of decades.

U-Haul rents appliance dollies, maybe they rent hand trucks too. You could buy one for $50 easy.

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They didn't, and presumably won't. And no one wants unaccountable and unreliable in the long run "citizen gardening groups" to be in charge of anything. Start your reasoning from there to suggest a alternate way to keep the park in top maintenance. Your naivete & negativism so far only leads to a graffitied, dirty park with poorly cared for greenery.

NYtimes front page article on flooding & sewage overflows, ours is exactly the same.

November 23, 2009
As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways
By CHARLES DUHIGG

It was drizzling lightly in late October when the midnight shift started at the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant, where much of Brooklyn?s sewage is treated.

A few miles away, people were walking home without umbrellas from late dinners. But at Owls Head, a swimming pool?s worth of sewage and wastewater was soon rushing in every second. Warning horns began to blare. A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates.

That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn?s sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal.

?It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall,? said Bob Connaughton, one the plant?s engineers. ?Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you?ve got overflows across Brooklyn.?

One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation?s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

But despite those upgrades, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage is spilling into waterways.

In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation?s 25,000 sewage systems ? including those in major cities ? have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency.

But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows.

It is not clear whether the sewage systems that have not reported such dumping are doing any better, because data on overflows and spillage are often incomplete.

As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed rainwater. That has contributed to sewage backups into more than 400,000 basements and spills into thousands of streets, according to data collected by state and federal officials. Sometimes, waste has overflowed just upstream from drinking water intake points or near public beaches.

There is no national record-keeping of how many illnesses are caused by sewage spills. But academic research suggests that as many as 20 million people each year become ill from drinking water containing bacteria and other pathogens that are often spread by untreated waste.

A 2007 study published in the journal Pediatrics, focusing on one Milwaukee hospital, indicated that the number of children suffering from serious diarrhea rose whenever local sewers overflowed. Another study, published in 2008 in the Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, estimated that as many as four million people become sick each year in California from swimming in waters containing the kind of pollution often linked to untreated sewage.

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city?s drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city?s waterways pose serious health risks.

A Deluge of Sewage

?After the storm, the sewage flowed down the street faster than we could move out of the way and filled my house with over a foot of muck,? said Laura Serrano, whose Bay Shore, N.Y., home was damaged in 2005 by a sewer overflow.

Ms. Serrano, who says she contracted viral meningitis because of exposure to the sewage, has filed suit against Suffolk County, which operates the sewer system. The county?s lawyer disputes responsibility for the damage and injuries.

?I had to move out, and no one will buy my house because the sewage was absorbed into the walls,? Ms. Serrano said. ?I can still smell it sometimes.?

When a sewage system overflows or a treatment plant dumps untreated waste, it is often breaking the law. Today, sewage systems are the nation?s most frequent violators of the Clean Water Act. More than a third of all sewer systems ? including those in San Diego, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco ? have violated environmental laws since 2006, according to a Times analysis of E.P.A. data.

Thousands of other sewage systems operated by smaller cities, colleges, mobile home parks and companies have also broken the law. But few of the violators are ever punished.

The E.P.A., in a statement, said that officials agreed that overflows posed a ?significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for E.P.A. enforcement since the mid-1990s.?

In the last year, E.P.A. settlements with sewer systems in Hampton Roads, Va., and the east San Francisco Bay have led to more than $200 million spent on new systems to reduce pollution, the agency said. In October, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said she was overhauling how the Clean Water Act is enforced.

But widespread problems still remain.

?The E.P.A. would rather look the other way than crack down on cities, since punishing municipalities can cause political problems,? said Craig Michaels of Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group. ?But without enforcement and fines, this problem will never end.?

Plant operators and regulators, for their part, say that fines would simply divert money from stretched budgets and that they are doing the best they can with aging systems and overwhelmed pipes.

New York, for example, was one of the first major cities to build a large sewer system, starting construction in 1849. Many of those pipes ? constructed of hand-laid brick and ceramic tiles ? are still used. Today, the city?s 7,400 miles of sewer pipes operate almost entirely by gravity, unlike in other cities that use large pumps.

New York City?s 14 wastewater treatment plants, which handle 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day, have been flooded with thousands of pickles (after a factory dumped its stock), vast flows of discarded chicken heads and large pieces of lumber.

When a toilet flushes in the West Village in Manhattan, the waste runs north six miles through gradually descending pipes to a plant at 137th Street, where it is mixed with so-called biological digesters that consume dangerous pathogens. The wastewater is then mixed with chlorine and sent into the Hudson River.

Fragile System

But New York?s system ? like those in hundreds of others cities ? combines rainwater runoff with sewage. Over the last three decades, as thousands of acres of trees, bushes and other vegetation in New York have been paved over, the land?s ability to absorb rain has declined significantly. When treatment plants are swamped, the excess spills from 490 overflow pipes throughout the city?s five boroughs.

When the sky is clear, Owls Head can handle the sewage from more than 750,000 people. But the balance is so delicate that Mr. Connaughton and his colleagues must be constantly ready for rain.

They choose cable television packages for their homes based on which company offers the best local weather forecasts. They know meteorologists by the sound of their voices. When the leaves begin to fall each autumn, clogging sewer grates and pipes, Mr. Connaughton sometimes has trouble sleeping.

?I went to Hawaii with my wife, and the whole time I was flipping to the Weather Channel, seeing if it was raining in New York,? he said.

New York?s sewage system overflows essentially every other time it rains.

Reducing such overflows is a priority, city officials say. But eradicating the problem would cost billions.

Officials have spent approximately $35 billion over three decades improving the quality of the waters surrounding the city and have improved systems to capture and store rainwater and sewage, bringing down the frequency and volume of overflows, the city?s Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a statement.

?Water quality in New York City has improved dramatically in the last century, and particularly in the last two decades,? officials wrote.

Several years ago, city officials estimated that it would cost at least $58 billion to prevent all overflows. ?Even an expenditure of that magnitude would not result in every part of a river or bay surrounding the city achieving water quality that is suitable for swimming,? the department wrote. ?It would, however, increase the average N.Y.C. water and sewer bill by 80 percent.?

The E.P.A., concerned about the risks of overflowing sewers, issued a national framework in 1994 to control overflows, including making sure that pipes are designed so they do not easily become plugged by debris and warning the public when overflows occur. In 2000, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to crack down on overflows.

But in hundreds of places, sewer systems remain out of compliance with that framework or the Clean Water Act, which regulates most pollution discharges to waterways. And the burdens on sewer systems are growing as cities become larger and, in some areas, rainstorms become more frequent and fierce.

New York?s system, for instance, was designed to accommodate a so-called five-year storm ? a rainfall so extreme that it is expected to occur, on average, only twice a decade. But in 2007 alone, the city experienced three 25-year storms, according to city officials ? storms so strong they would be expected only four times each century.

?When you get five inches of rain in 30 minutes, it?s like Thanksgiving Day traffic on a two-lane bridge in the sewer pipes,? said James Roberts, deputy commissioner of the city?s Department of Environmental Protection.

Government?s Response

To combat these shifts, some cities are encouraging sewer-friendly development. New York, for instance, has instituted zoning laws requiring new parking lots to include landscaped areas to absorb rainwater, established a tax credit for roofs with absorbent vegetation and begun to use millions of dollars for environmentally friendly infrastructure projects.

Philadelphia has announced it will spend $1.6 billion over 20 years to build rain gardens and sidewalks of porous pavement and to plant thousands of trees.

But unless cities require private developers to build in ways that minimize runoff, the volume of rain flowing into sewers is likely to grow, environmentalists say.

The only real solution, say many lawmakers and water advocates, is extensive new spending on sewer systems largely ignored for decades. As much as $400 billion in extra spending is needed over the next decade to fix the nation?s sewer infrastructure, according to estimates by the E.P.A. and the Government Accountability Office.

Legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill contains millions in water infrastructure grants, and the stimulus bill passed this year set aside $6 billion to improve sewers and other water systems.

But that money is only a small fraction of what is needed, officials say. And over the last two decades, federal money for such programs has fallen by 70 percent, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which estimates that a quarter of the state?s sewage and wastewater treatment plants are ?using outmoded, inadequate technology.?

?The public has no clue how important these sewage plants are,? said Mr. Connaughton of the Brooklyn site. ?Waterborne disease was the scourge of mankind for centuries. These plants stopped that. We?re doing everything we can to clean as much sewage as possible, but sometimes, that isn?t enough.?

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Hence the Conservancy to provide that maintenance and break the cycle.

State facility at Secaucus Rd & County Ave. Free. Never had a significant wait.
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I would assume it would look a lot like the deal at VV park, with regular garbage collection and Parks & Forestry doing the minimal job it normally does, but a paid groundskeeper instead of Parkman & co doing the extra work to make the park shine. I certainly wouldn't expect the city to contribute cash to a conservancy, but resources maybe. I'm sure that volunteers with green thumbs to wield would still be welcomed with open arms, but it sets a minimum maintenance level we can be sure of.

Parkman, comments?

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I still don't see how collecting money to pay someone to keep it clean and the landscaping tidy takes the park away from anyone. But some Downtowners resist change of any sort, terrified that some perk of theirs might be jeopardized. I've been here long enough to recall when talk of a HP dog run regardless of size brought howls of opposition from the dog people. It's taken us a decade to make it up that hill.

We're not talking about issuing private keys to the gate like Gramercy Park. Central Park has become a jewel under it's conservancy, rather than the dangerous wasteland it was during the city's lean years. Let's open our minds.

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So it's better to sit in the dark and complain than light a candle, because candles cost money, might burn you, contribute to global warming, and maybe someone else could have bought that candle if you hadn't. Perfect.

Pooper, try reading up on the subject before you doom it to failure, it's far from a new and untested idea. Lots of neighborhoods have faced the fact that their city can't maintain their park as they would like them to.

Central Park Conservancy

Battery Park Conservancy

Madison Square Park Conservancy

Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy

Fort Greene Park Conservancy

The Palisades Parks Conservancy

I stopped before heading out of town.