Living throughout Northern Brooklyn my entire life, I have already witnessed how seemingly distant environmental issues have already impacted everyday life. Hurricanes have become stronger, and more frequent; Irene, Sandy, and Ida all come to mind when I think of the powerful storms that have, at times, crippled our city’s public infrastructure. Flooding from Hurricane Ida has kept my own local YMCA, over on Humboldt Street, closed for the last three years. I work as an educational programmer at the Prospect Park Zoo and our offices were fully flooded after Tropical Storm Ophelia last September and they have yet to reopen. I approach each hurricane season with a new trepidation.
Since 2000, I’ve also lived in Bushwick Houses, a NYCHA housing complex that’s had a spotty history with hurricanes and infrastructure. According to the Center for Disease Control’s Social Vulnerability Index, the buildings clock at a 0.9815, a number that measures a community’s ability to prepare for catastrophic events. Identifying that my block is considered extremely vulnerable was alarming. I recommend others check out their SVI numbers too.
There are many ways to push those numbers down, like building rain gardens, replacing streets and sidewalks with permeable surfaces, reinforcing our combined sewage overflow systems, and reducing street litter to ensure the storm drains remain clear. Creating ways to minimize flooding caused by the excess rain that comes with strong storms. We have seen how damaging and threatening flooding can be. But these improvements can only happen when communities are pushing for change.
For the past year, I’ve been more involved with the Bushwick Houses Resident Association, after years of attending their events on and off.This past Earth Day, we held the building’s first “Community Clean Up Day,” followed by activities aimed at children, like taking small planter pots and filling them with soil and seeds for pollinator-friendly plants and decorating reusable metal water bottles and canvas tote bags. As those plants grow, they will provide another food source for important local pollinators and the bottles will promote the use of reusables and reduce the reliance on single-use plastics. It’s important to introduce these ideas to children during their formative years since caring for the environment is something anyone can do at any age, and having exposure when young reinforces that care as they grow older.
These were just the beginning of the group’s ongoing efforts. We’ve also started seasonal clean-ups of our shared spaces, like our softball field, we hope will both clean our green spaces as well as increase the connection people in our community feel to our living environment and hopefully inspire some individuals to change some of their day-to-day actions. This could look like making sure to put trash and recyclables into the appropriate containers, picking up after their dogs, or living more sustainably in general.
Christine Peralta works as a Manager of Education for Prospect Park Zoo at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is a graduate student with Project Dragonfly at Miami University of Ohio in conjunction with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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Images provided by Christine Peralta.
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