BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Dan Goldman will get a tour of the wasteland of the former East River Park’s southern section, courtesy of activists who have been fighting the city’s clear-cutting coastal resiliency project.
The Congressional District 10 candidate and former Trump impeachment counsel will meet with park activists on Tuesday at noon and walk over the temporary bridge to the Corlears Hook Park ferry entrance to survey the sad scene.
Former City Councilmember Kathryn Freed said park activists have liked what they have heard so far from Goldman about the park at recent candidate forums.
“He said a couple of things at some of the forums,” she said. “Some of us are supporting him. Others of us just want to let him know about the issue. I mean, he kind of knows. But it’s a lot more effective if he sees the devastation for himself. … We’ll have the press conference on the temporary bridge, so that he’ll be able to see the devastation.”
Bordering a low- and middle-income area, the $1.45 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency flood-control project calls for building a levee topped, eventually, by a new park. In order to do that, the existing, nearly 50-acre East River Park is being bulldozed away. The city scrapped an alternative plan that would have preserved much of the existing park.
Freed, who is also a former judge, who lives on Grand Street next to the park, said she believes Goldman will understand the environmental and climate change concerns both for the neighborhood — which “will be hotter and more polluted for years to come” — and for the planet.
“He will see that more forward-thinking solutions must be sought — for New York and the nation,” she said.
Goldman’s family, in fact, has been involved in championing environmental causes for decades. In 1990, his grandparents established The Goldman Environmental Prize — often called the “Nobel Prize for the environment” — which celebrates achievements and leadership of grassroots environmental activists from around the world. The 2022 prize winners include Nalelli Cobo, who led the effort to shut down toxic oil drilling in her Los Angeles neighborhood, and Marjan Minnesma, a leading Dutch climate-change activist.
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