Bush Terminal, Sunset Park

Nina and I photographed at the Bush Terminal in Sunset Park on Saturday. Manufactured goods used to move around the yards by rail to the piers and then out across the world.

Now things are pretty quiet. Quiet enough for raccoons.

As you come out to the waterfront, there is a monument to four firefighters that died on 9/11. In front of this statue is Upper New York Bay.

The old piers, rotting and contaminated, are now fenced off. In the 70s, hazardous waste was dumped there and now these old piers are in the State Superfund Program. This area is also in the Environmental Restoration Program and so appears twice on the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Environmental Site Remediation Database.

Boats docked here in what must be relatively deep water.

A rail went all the way out to the end of the piers inside the now brownfield area. Another rail still operates on the 51st street side.

This area is now going to be developed as a park. At least so it was announced on July 22nd in the Sunset Park Waterfront Vision Plan as mentioned in Brownstoner.com. There were bulldozers there and it looked like work had started. Theoretically, there is $37 million is slated to build the Bush Terminal Piers Park, which will add 22 acres of open space for recreation. however, what happened to earlier money dedicated to remediating this brownfield? Whatever part of this plan that can improve the old rail system and reduce truck traffic is good. It is unclear to me what kind of remediation is planned. Digging up the soil a few feet and trucking it to Pennsylvania?