SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

An adult Diamondback Terrapin. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

While being parked on the tarmac at JFK airport, you would never guess that the cause of your delayed flight are migrating turtles wandering onto the runway. The New York Post is reporting that airport officials have constructed a huge barrier in hopes that the turtles will be safely herded away from the runways.

When the turtles, classified as Diamondback Terrapins, come to shore to nest, they have made the airport runway part of their journey, causing flight delays. To create a solution that improves airline service but also protects the turtles, airport workers plan to construct a 4,000-foot, 8-inch-wide plastic pipe that stretches across runway 4L and leads into Jamaica Bay marshes favored by the turtles.

“We’re trying to find a balance between nature and aviation,” Port Authority spokesman Ron Marsico told the Post. “We don’t want to see the turtles get hurt, and this should keep the airport running smoothly.”

While the barrier plan is expected to be effective, not all experts believe that it will make the turtles any safer. Dr. Russell Burke, a biology professor at Hofstra University who consulted with Port Authority on the fence, warned that the barrier might expose the turtles to raccoon predators.

“If you build a barrier like that, they might just walk along the barrier and nest there. Between 90 and 100 percent of terrapin turtles are killed by predators, so they need to be given a fighting chance,” Burke told the Post.

While those are harrowing numbers, the turtles, which are a protected species, have actually thrived in recent years. Burke estimates that their population has risen to over 20,000. Despite Burke’s warnings over predators, he still believes the barrier is the best solution.

“I think the barriers are a step in the right direction. It should stop flight delays and will hopefully keep the turtles safe,” Burke said.

Recchia

The following is a press release sent yesterday from the offices of City Councilman Domenic Recchia:

The City Council passed legislation today renewing and improving upon the J-51 tax abatement and exemption program. Sponsored by Council Member Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., Chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee, the legislation builds upon the State Assembly’s property tax relief bill passed earlier this year, which extended the previously expired program, offering tax exemption and abatement for qualified homeowners who undertake renovation and development projects. Passed unanimously, the exemption will be retroactive from December 31, 2011 and will last until June 30, 2015.

“The J-51 program revitalizes our neighborhoods and communities by incentivizing apartment owners to rehabilitate and improve their buildings. It has been a great success in the past and I’m proud to sponsor its renewal and improvement now to ensure that we remain committed to the betterment and beautification of our City for the future,” said Council Member Recchia. “I’m grateful for Speaker Quinn’s leadership in moving this legislation forward.”

A 2012 report noted that over 580,000 New Yorkers have directly benefitted from J-51. With this extension, improvements will be made to the program, restricting eligibility to developers focused on creating or preserving affordable housing. These changes will allow the City will both cut costs and ensure that needed housing rehabilitation continues in the future.

Source: AdamCohn/Flickr

Express stop riders will be happy to learn that they’ll have a quicker trip over the weekend, while local riders at Avenue U and Neck Road will moan and groan as they have to double back to Sheepshead Bay Road to catch a train to Manhattan. The F… well, the F.

Here are this weekend’s subway service advisories:

Q LINE

From 10:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, Manhattan-bound Q trains run express from Sheepshead Bay to Kings Highway.

F LINE

From 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, Jamaica-bound F trains run express from W 4 St to 34 St-Herald Sq.

As we all know by now, the Army Corps of Engineers has been hard at work replenishing sand at Plumb Beach and installing long-term fixes to prevent against future erosion.

At ground level, the one thing you notice is that, hey, there’s actually a beach again in that area near the parking lot closest to the Belt Parkway. That section was the most heavily eroded, with just a few feet of sand bags between the water and the highway. Now there’s a nice stretch of sand. Other than that, though, it’s hard to see the extent of the work.

Until now. A local photographer who asked not to be named sent in this fantastic aerial photo of Plumb Beach after the Army Corps of Engineers completed phase one of the project, in which they pumped in fresh sand from the Ambrose Channel. That’s Gerritsen Beach in the forground.

In phase two of the project, Army Corps contractors have closed off the parking lot and bike path as they bring in equipment. They’ll be constructing two rock jetties at either end of the eroded section. One will go near where the sand roughly drops away in the photo above, and the other will be just at the right edge of the image. They’ll also add a groin in the middle – a man-made sandbar of sorts that will help diminish the power of the waves before they strike the sand.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Part of Bloomberg’s Proposed Plan (Source: nyc.gov)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious and massive $20 billion storm protection program that seeks to safeguard New York City from future extreme weather catastrophes faces some serious obstacles before it becomes reality. The New York Times is reporting that the plan will have to pass through the ringer of City Hall, Albany, Washington, government agencies, zoning panels and community groups before construction ever begins.

Yesterday we reported on the stark climate data that inspired Bloomberg to come up with a massively detailed storm protection plan, that if enacted, would be his greatest legacy. The plan, which calls for massive construction projects and the placement of a network of seawalls and bulkheads across the city’s coastline, would dramatically alter the look and landscape of the city. The $20 billion price doesn’t figure in estimated billions more needed for the project as it will inevitably grow in size and scope. But the cost and construction would represent only the final hurdles of the ambitious plan.

Andy Darrell, New York regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund explained the key of bringing the plan together.

“Many of these solutions will require an unprecedented level of cooperation,” Darrell told the Times. “We know how to do these things. What we have to do is clear a path.”

Columbia geophysicist Klaus Jacob agreed with Darrell’s assessment.

“A plan is a plan is a plan,” Jacob told the Times. “But there will be a hard reality of how to put this into action. Many of the infrastructure systems that the city depends on are not under city control.”

With Bloomberg serving out his final term, part of the problem will be how much leadership the future mayor invests in the project. While candidates like Council Speaker Christine Quinn support the project, others, like Public Advocate Bill de Blasio raised questions.

“Many questions remain. As we review the plan, we must ensure that it truly serves the needs of low-income residents without a safety net, many of whom suffered the worst and longest-lasting impacts from Superstorm Sandy,” de Blasio told the Times.

Source: BrokenSphere via WIkimedia Commons

In many ways, the battle between the march of commerce and the effort to protect the environment is one of the defining conflicts of our time. The inconvenient facts that environmentalists and scientists bring up over pollution’s effect on the Earth’s health often affect the bottom lines of businesses both large and small, leading to intense political battles. A smaller example of this conflict is the city’s proposed plan to ban styrofoam from stores and restaurants. AMNY is reporting that protesters representing small businesses across the city gathered at City Hall to fight the proposed measure.

Styrofoam is soft, lightweight, durable and most importantly cheap, making it extremely useful for storing hot liquids and food. The substance is also highly detrimental to the environment. Restaurant workers like Rosemary Nunez aren’t concerned with environmental issues but the economic impact the ban would have on businesses.

“This is just another example of the administration trampling on the interests of the people who create jobs in this city,” AMNY reported Nunez saying.

The plan to ban styrofoam is supported by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilman Lew Fidler, however it is not known when the Council will vote on the measure.

Source: NYC DOT

The proposed installation of speed enforcement cameras across the city has been touted by some legislators and opposed by others, but now there is a chance that a slimmed down version of the plan has a chance of actually happening. Streetsblog is reporting that legislation to install cameras in school zones might have enough support to pass.

The battle over installing a network of speed enforcement cameras across the city has been between politicians like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who believes it’s a common sense measure that will cut down on accidents and hit-and-runs, and politicians like State Senator Marty Golden, who believes that the cameras will make mistakes and also serve as an excuse to cut cop jobs. A deal to approve the cameras was nixed when Bloomberg refused to back funding that would pay for private Yeshiva busing in the districts of Golden and State Senator Simcha Felder.

Now, a new deal might get passed that is significantly less extensive then a comprehensive citywide installation of cameras. Under the new legislation, only 20 cameras would be installed and only in school zones and would only be active one hour before and after the school day starts and ends. Fines for drivers caught on the cameras would be $50 and they would receive no points on their licenses. While limited, proponents of speed enforcement cameras see this legislation as a necessary first step.

“What we are doing is getting our foot in the door. This is the start of the program,” Transportation Alternatives general counsel Juan Martinez told Streets Blog. “The key is to get the authorization so we can start eliminating these needless deaths.”

While Golden has not yet thrown his support behind the new measure, Martinez believes there is hope that he will change his mind on this slimmed down version of the legislation.

“He’s been on the right side of these issues for a long time,” Martinez told Streets Blog. “I think he gets the speeding issue.”

Source: Coney Island Hospital

It’s a boy!

Sheepshead Bites offers a hearty congratulations to Anastacia St. Juste and her newborn baby Amari, a beautiful boy who is among the first to enter this world at Coney Island Hospital (2601 Ocean Parkway) since Superstorm Sandy struck in October 2012.

Amari, weighing a petite 6 pounds, 12 ounces, was born on Tuesday at 10:55 p.m., just a smidgen more than 24 hours after the reopening of the Labor & Delivery unit on Monday. Amari and his beaming mother, pictured above with Ob/Gyn chair Toni Stern, are both healthy and happy.

The reopening of the Labor & Delivery unit marks one of the final steps in Coney Island Hospital’s service recovery. Just about all units and services have returned to the hospital, including badly-needed 911 intake. The hospital shut down entirely in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, as water damaged the institution’s equipment and infrastructure, and rendered destruction in the facility’s ground floors. Repairs to the hospital and preventative measures for future floods are expected to cost more than $200 million.

If you have a question about the status specific services, you can call the hospital’s main line at (718) 616-3000.

Source: alexpb via flickr

Councilman Lew Fidler is hoping to prevent people who own 3-D printers from turning their basements into makeshift gun factories. According to a report by the New York Daily News, Fidler wants to implement a series of checks on people who go about “printing” a series of firearms from their computer chairs.

The bill would require all gun makers to possess a gunsmith license, to register the gun with the police and to give each weapon a serial number. Fidler stressed the importance of regulation to the Daily News.

“If left unregulated, these would be weapons without histories — potentially no identifying marks or sales histories. We wouldn’t even know these weapons exist, until they were fired,” Fidler said.

The NYPD expressed the notion that Fidler’s bill may be redundant considering that would be gun makers already need a license to do so and all gun owners must already register their weapons.

Source: JohnnyBarker / Flickr

The New York City Council is pulling out all the stops to halt the spread of social day care centers that rip off Medicaid. The New York Times is reporting that the Council is looking to implement regulation and enforcement in order to weed out the shady centers that lure in healthy seniors in order to reap a windfall in Medicaid benefits.

In April, we first reported on the proliferation of social day care centers, which exploded from just eight programs citywide to 192 in only two years. The facilities arose in the wake of a new law enacted by Governor Andrew Cuomo, which wished to curb Medicaid costs by steering seniors needing expensive in-house or nursing care to the less-costly, community-friendly centers. The centers are supposed to treat patients with severe disabilities and medical problems but instead, many have been tapping healthy seniors to participate, luring them with cash and free groceries. The Times explains how the managed care plans and social centers profit by this practice:

Under the new system, managed care plans get roughly $3,800 a month for each eligible person they enroll in New York City, regardless of what services are provided. The plans contract with the social adult day care centers to provide services to their members. But advocates for the elderly and for people with disabilities have warned state officials that some plans were “cherry-picking” healthy seniors by using the new day care centers as marketing tools, while shunning the people who needed hours of costlier home care.

Joan Pastore, director of Amico, a city senior center in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, said members of the center told her that they were not only signed up by new centers with enticements like $100 in cash and $50 for bringing a friend, but “coached on how to lie to qualify for home care.”

Members of the Council expressed anger at the practices of the managed care plans and the social day care centers.

“It is just outrageous that these pop-up centers are threatening the well-being of our seniors while draining Medicaid resources from legitimate programs for older adults. Increased oversight and regulation of these programs is needed immediately,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told the Times.

In response, the Council has introduced a bill that would impose minimum requirements on the centers, which as of right now, are unregulated. Centers would be limited to treating seniors with impairments, set minimum safety standards and must register with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The bill would also protect centers that play by the rules and offer robust service to patients with actual disabilities.

Centers that don’t register or ignore the new rules could be fined between $250 to $1,000 a day. Enforcing these new rules won’t be cheap. City officials estimate that it will cost $2 million to police the nearly 200 centers throughout the city.

State Senator Diane Savino is looking to create a statewide bill that is modeled after the Council version.