Answers to Questions About Boating, Part III

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Roland Lewis, the president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, is answering City Room readers' questions about boating in New York waterways. The first set of answers can be found here, the second here, and the third and final set, below.

Is it legal to live aboard a small boat in the five boroughs? I'm not thinking the Hudson so much as the other harbors and waterways in Brooklyn and/or Queens.
- Posted by Dan, Syracuse, NY

Why doesn't NYC develop houseboat marinas similar to Seattle's houseboat communities?
- Posted by Gary E. Eddey, Morristown, NJ

Dear Gary and Dan,
The New York City parks department at any of its marinas does not allow living on boats except for the 79th Street marina. I have seen houseboat communities in San Francisco and Seattle, and they do add life and color to the waterfront. But given space and environmental issues in our area, I think it unlikely that we will see houseboats or full-time boat dwellers in any numbers even if they were legal and encouraged.

I have a 26' shallow draft sailboat that I dock in Staten Island. Are the places on Manhattan where I can beach it or tie it up and disembark?
- Posted by Dan Chilton, Staten Island

Dear Dan,
Currently there are very few places to tie up if you're visiting Manhattan via water. The Dennis Conner North Cove Marina is available at prices starting at $6 per foot, and the Surfside 3 Marina up at Chelsea Piers has docking starting at $5.50 per foot. Better value is available at the city-owned marina up at the 79th Street Boat Basin. Though these are all fine facilities, a couple of hundred dollars to park your boat is prohibitive for many of us. We need more docking facilities of all types in Manhattan and elsewhere in the harbor.

One big step in that direction is the establishment of Community Eco Docks in neighborhoods around the five boroughs for sailing ships and educational and historic vessels. The first two will be built in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and toward the top of Manhattan in Inwood. These facilities would welcome all kinds of vessels, especially historic and educational boats as well as human-powered boats. Developed in partnership with the New York City parks department and the State of New York, Community Eco Docks will be built throughout the region and reacquaint neighborhoods with the water that surrounds them.

Docks are one way to increase boating access. There are many others: mooring fields, retrofitting existing piers and wharves with simple tie-up equipment like cleats and bollards, and even allowing natural beaches to be used for human-powered boating will increase options for future visiting mariners on vessels large and small.

I am a member of the Empire Dragon Boat Team, New York City's only cancer survivor team, and we were th rilled with the passage of the Sewage Notification Act. We cannot afford to paddle in waters with severe sewage contamination, and we wonder when this law will go into effect and how boaters will be notified when the water is badly contaminated by CSO outflows? Is there a way that boaters and the DEP can work together to help with both wet and dry weather notification? Thank you.
- Posted by Alex, Flushing Bay

Dear Alex,
The silver lining to the terrible North River Sewage Treatment Plant fire last summer was the awareness that our waterways are being used as never before for recreation and we need to find ways to quickly notify the public when calamity happens like a sewage plant failure or the more common combined sewer overflows (C.S.O.s) that occur after rainstorms. Led by environmental groups like Riverkeeper and the human-powered boating community, New York State adopted the “Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act” at this spring's legislative session. The law goes into effect May 2013 when the New York State Department will promulgate the regulations and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection will begin to have a new notification in effect.

But D.E.P. and civic groups are not waiting to act. D.E.P. has created a Water Quality Web page, and civic groups are also doing citizen monitoring like Riverkeeper's Water Quality Web page. Finally, a fascinating panel on the topic was held at the M.W.A. Waterfront Conference this spring including the soon-to-be-famous Don't Flush Me warning technology.

I live in south Brooklyn not far from Jamaica Bay which I understand is supposed to be a national park. Why doesn't it look like a national park and why isn't there more access for recreational use of this beautiful area? What needs to be done?
- Posted by RF, Brooklyn

Dear RF,
Jamaica Bay is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, not a national park but close enough. Gateway contain s many beautiful areas, but it is frankly not the national jewel it should be and has not been knit well into the metropolitan area that surrounds it. Through their recently announced cooperative plan, Department of Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plan to remedy this by making seamless the waterfront parks that surround Jamaica Bay and Gateway. Hopefully, soon you could rent a kayak in city-operated Marine Park and drop it off in the national park at Floyd Bennett Field and not know or care about the park boundary transversed.

Cooperation is great, but what is also needed is investment. The New York Harbor and its waterways are waterfronts of national importance, but we have fallen short relative to other water bodies like Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound in federal investment. We need to fix this underinvestment starting with Jamaica Bay and extending to all 720 miles of waterfront. A group of civic organizations have joined together to encourage our bistate bipartisan bicameral Congressional delegation to do a better job and get the resources that other have received. This campaign (M.W.A. is part of it) is called the Harbor Coalition. To get involved visit the coalition at harborcoalition.org.

Some friends have circumnavigated Manhattan on jet skis and we are thinking of doing the same in our little motorboat, putting in by the GW bridge. Where can we get fuel along the way?
- Posted by Liz, Mass

Dear Liz,
You will have to stop along the New Jersey waterfront to fill up with fuel. There are a few fuel docks on the Hudson River, including Liberty Landing Marina, Liberty Harbor Marina, Lincoln Harbor or Englewood Cliffs, as seen on a map provided by iboatnyharbor.com.

I would like to know what the situation is concerning kayaking the length of Newtown Creek. I moved from the area a number of years ago when they didn't suggest it.
- gjdagis, New York

Dear gjdagis,
You have put your finger on a slight schizophrenia with our city government about the explosion of interest and activity in kayaking and human-powered boating. Newtown Creek boasts two sites on the New York City parks department Water Trail, a list of dozens of locations you can launch or land in the five boroughs. At the same time, the New York City health department and the Department of Environmental Protection have voiced concern about the health and safety of exposure to water in the superfund site. Kayakers, canoers and rowers have been plying these waters for a good while with no known ill effects.

As always, let caution and common sense be your guide. Probably avoid the creek after a rain event when C.S.O.s (combined sewer overflows, which combine) will be flowing, and a post-paddle shower would also be wise to get any of the still unclean Newtown water off your body.