*Tours will leave at 10:30 am and 1:45 pm. Choose your preferred tour during registration.*
Location: We will be meeting in front of One Pace Plaza (NYC) by the cube sculpture.
New York City has a complicated history with water. We have built upon it, covered it up, and limited access to it to the hands of the highest bidder. This walking tour will take students, faculty, and staff on an exploration of the past, present, and future of water justice in lower Manhattan. We will visit key locations like the Collect Pond Park, once a 48-acre freshwater pond that provided drinking water and food to the Lenape people, which was polluted through early industry and then filled in in the 1800s, to become NYC’s first “environmental justice” community, known infamously as Five Points. We will learn about the history of the New York aqueduct system, which led to the destruction of over a dozen upstate communities to make way for a reservoir system that would supply the city with enough drinking water to continue to grow. And we will walk along the East River promenade, where millions of gallons of combined stormwater and raw sewage pour into the river annually in regular violation of the Clean Water Act. Finally, we will discuss key threats to public access and enjoyment of NYC’s waterfronts, including climate change, economic rezoning, and gentrification, and what waterfront-based organizations are doing to ensure that access to clean drinking water and “blue spaces” is a right for all New Yorkers.
(Rain date is Thursday, October 29.)
