Liberty
State Park’s Interior Ecosystem Restoration
251
acre Natural area with nature trails, including 50 acre open space perimeter
Milestone
Authorization Approved and First Stage set to go within year.
It
will be one of our nation's largest urban nature restoration projects.
In
5/07, Senator Robert Menendez, a longtime LSP champion, who had obtained
millions for the Army Corps’ Interior studies, hailed the Senate’s passage
of the Water Resources Development Act. WRDA, now also passed by the House,
authorized, among other national and NJ projects, LSP’s ecosystem restoration
with an estimated federal cost of $22 million. The Interior is the former RR
freight yards, where nature has made a dramatic comeback. A public meeting will
be held by the LSP Public Advisory Committee in the fall on the landscape
architecture plan.
NJ’s funding
commitments for construction include 10 million dollars from the Natural
Resource Damages Program, which the NY/NJ Baykeeper advocated for, and 1.5
million dollars from the Freshwater Wetlands Mitigation Council, the latter
thanks specifically to LSP Administrator Frank Gallagher and NY/NJ Baykeeper
Conservation Director Greg Remaud. The next step for the WRDA projects is to get
the actual money appropriation, and hopefully it will happen in ‘ 08.
The General Management Plan, approved after many public meetings,
includes:
·
A 40 acre salt marsh will
be added to the park’s Interior by creating a tidal channel of the Hudson
River which will flow into the park from the North Cove. It will go under
Freedom Way and go into the NE corner of the Interior diversifying its
vegetation.
·
This habitat restoration
project will create salt marshes, enhance freshwater wetlands and enhance the
100 acre urban forest and tall grass habitat.
·
Interior natural area will
have nature trails which will bring visitors for education and enjoyment of
passive recreation of walking and bird watching.
With more than five
million visitors annually, the park's development continues to be an
extraordinary successful example of the reuse of a former urban industrial area.
The Division of Parks and Forestry, guided by public input and grassroots
citizen battles that were regularly needed, has spent over 31 years since its
acquisition, planning and building a park for the free use of open space for a
variety of unstructured uses (and an athletic field is planned in SW corner).
Much of the
area has been re-colonized by various plant communities. These communities
represent unique associations of both endemic and non-native species that can be
considered the by-product of the cultural events that have taken place during
the past several centuries.
The U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, New York District has been working in partnership with the NJDEP
to assess the feasibility of restoring selected habitats within the New York-New
Jersey Harbor Complex. Known as the Hudson-Raritan Estuary Ecosystem Restoration
Project, 13 sites within the harbor have been targeted for restoration work.
LSP is the highest priority site.
The environmental impact statement and feasibility for the LSP project
have been completed. The project
has been subdivided into three phases, freshwater wetland, salt water wetland,
and upland improvements. The
first phase, the freshwater wetlands component, is expected to go to bid this
fall with construction to follow in the late fall or early spring. It’s
exciting that LSP’s Interior will be a special natural area that will serve as
an international model for urban nature restoration.