One of the best days of a man’s life may be the day he gets rid of his boat, but it’s among the worst for the city.
More than 500 rusting and decaying boats are littered throughout the Big Apple’s winding waterways, some of which have been bobbing for close to a century – and locals are growing sick of the eyesores.
The city has plucked just 85 abandoned ships from the shores over the last 14 months as part of a slow-moving, expensive project bogged down by archaic marine laws.
“People want to get that cleaned up. It’s been like that forever,” Brock Weiner, head of the College Point Civic and Taxpayers Association, told The Post.
The seaside Queens nabe has roughly eight derelict boats leaking rust, fuel and other pollutants in its waters, hazards residents have been complaining about for decades.
“Going back 100 years, you could get lobsters out of there and you could get clams out of there. It’s been polluted for a long time – 120 years ago, it wasn’t like that, Weiner said.
The city has cleared 87 decrepit vessels from the Big Apple’s 520 linear miles of shoreline since launching the Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering last spring.
The office, a subsection of the Parks Department, was created to clean up the more than 600 estimated derelict ships, which not only blemish the city’s waterways but also act as a hazard to operating boats and seriously pollute the water.
But the office has been bogged down by archaic marine laws, dating back to the 17th century, that were established to protect the cargo on “wrecks” from being pillaged – an issue that is no longer relevant to the fiberglass pleasure cruisers currently befouling the Big Apple’s shorelines.
Progress on cleaning up the skiffs and sloops is also hampered by a high price tag, costing roughly $7,000 to remove a single boat and transport it to a designated marina to be disassembled and crushed.
Complicating the clean-up process even further is how far-reaching the problem is.
Westchester Creek in the South Bronx and Flushing Bay in Queens – both of which feed into the East River – are identified by the Parks Department as hot spots for abandoned boats, with an estimated 11 tubs in their waters. But abandoned boats can also be found as far out as Vernam Basin in Rockaway and Kill Van Kull in Staten Island.
“They definitely pose hazards for people who are on the water and they’re just a real blight on the neighborhood,” said Kat Cervino, the president of the Coastal Preservation Network, which operates out of College Point.
Six boats alone lie in Flushing Bay, including one that was dumped last spring.
In nearby Powell’s Cove Park lies a dangerously decrepit barge that has been bobbing since the 1930s, according to Cervino.
Residents of College Point typically feel like “underdogs overlooked” by City Hall, she explains, adding that volunteers have previously tried to use community funding to remove the vessels themselves — but the astronomical costs were too high to muster up.
“This is way beyond our capacity as a small nonprofit organization, so we’ve just done our cleanups with our trash bags and always you look from the shoreline and think, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing if somebody somewhere could remove these?” Cervino said.
When the Parks Department announced the Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering, Cervino was quick to track down the office’s Queens point-person and make him aware of College Point’s plight.
“And wouldn’t you know it? Now it’s very much on their radar,” Cervino said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district encompasses College Point as well as other hotspots in the Bronx and Queens, requested $1.2 million in federal funding this week to clean up the nearly 1 million pounds of nautical debris in her district.
If secured, the funds benefiting the Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering would be 25% more than the office’s inaugural budget for the entire city.
“NY-14 has miles of coastline, yet much of it is obscured by these decaying ships. When pieces break off these vessels, they can pollute the water, create dangerous conditions for passing ships, and damage property,” a spokesperson for the office said.
The city has also ramped up its efforts to get ahead of any future abandonments by boaters. The new city marine unit has also established surrender sites so boaters can ditch their unwanted boats and “keep our waterways clear of debris” before they become derelict.
“Removing these boats and other debris improves the health of our marine ecosystem and keeps New Yorkers safe as they enjoy our waterfront,” an agency representative said in a statement to The Post.
“New York is a city of water, and it’s critical that we keep our waterways clear of debris like abandoned vessels,” an agency representative told The Post in a statement.
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