City Rolls Out a Rocky Welcome Mat for Mussels

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Now don't start chopping shallots, but we thought you'd be interested to know that an artificial mussel bed - believed to be the first of its kind along the city shoreline - is under construction on the East River.

The habitat, two submerged V-shaped concrete troughs studded with about 340 rocks, is part of a new “eco-park” in the East River Waterfront Esplanade. The $165 million esplanade project, by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, extends about a mile and a half from Pier 35 down to the Battery Maritime Building. The corporation would not break out the cost of the mussel bed, whose home will be at Pier 35, near Rutgers Slip.

The park will open to the public next year. It already is open to any mussel daring enough to thread its way through a construction zone and hitch its beard to a chunk of granite atop a steel dowel embedded in concrete.

On July 1, work ers for the Hunter Roberts Construction Group began installing 30 big concrete blocks, weighing 11 to 59 tons each, that compose the mussel bed. The job will continue through August. The blocks were fabricated in Schuylerville, N.Y.; then taken by barge to Newark, where the rocks were attached; then barged again to Pier 35. They are made especially heavy to keep them weighted down in place.

David Kane, the executive vice president for capital programs at the Economic Development Corporation, said creating the marine habitat allowed officials to piggyback an educational and environmental feature on infrastructural work that had to be done in any case: the reconstruction of a deteriorated storm sewer outfall pipe at the foot of Pier 35. The mussel bed is being installed on top of the outfall.

At best, the 65-foot-long habitat will attract colonies of blue mussels and ribbed mussels. An environmental consulting firm, Great Ecology, determined that a mussel bed would be feasible in this location, city officials said.

East River water quality has improved considerably since the 1970s. One critical yardstick, the level of fecal coliform bacteria in 100 millileters of water (about 6.7 tablespoons) has dropped to 118 from 160,000. But city officials do not anticipate that the mussels will be fit for human consumption, especially since the bed sits so close to a sewer outfall.

Though unusual in its scope, the mussel bed is not unique among efforts to provide such habitats in New York waterways. For example, artificial reefs known as reef balls have been installed at Hunts Point Landing in the Bronx.

Even if the bed at Pier 35 fails to attract mussels, officials envision it as an unusual abstract sculpture that can be used to study the extent and effect of tides. A little bridge will cross over the mouth of the habitat, which occupies a small cove. At high tide, the structure will be almost entirely under water. At low tide, it will be almost completely exposed. Maritime grasses will border it at one edge.

Neither state nor federal regulatory agencies required such a habitat, Mr. Kane said, adding, “This was about doing something new.”

The “eco-park” and walkway on Pier 35 will be screened from the adjoining Sanitation Department shed on Pier 36 by an inclined vine-covered wall. The lead project manager for the Economic Development Corporation is Terri Bahr. The designers of the esplanade are SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architect; engineering is by a joint venture between HDR and Arup. Ocean and Coastal Consultants served as structural marine engineer for the mussel bed.

All this expertise and it will still be up to the mussels themselves to decide whether it was worth the effort. How will we know if they start moving in?

Get ready for Mussel Cam 2013. (But please put the shallots away.)