of aerial photographs of the Refuge’s Yellow Bar Hassock taken in
1959, 1976, and 1998. “It is drowning,” says Rosenzweig.
Considerable biodiversity has been lost as well, including all the resi-
dents of what were once high marsh ecosystems there. In the dry
words of MEC’s climate change assessment report, “If Yellow Bar
Hassock once had high marsh areas, as was suspected upon inspection
of texture of some vegetation in the 1959 photographic print, then they
were no longer in evidence during field visits.” Jamaica Bay’s ecosys-
tem totaled 24,000 acres in 1900; by 1970 it was down to 13,000 acres.
In the summer of 2003, workers began importing sediment and spray-
ing it on Big Egg Marsh, trying to prevent its relentless shrinkage.
The borough of Brooklyn, now home to more than two million
people, was once largely marshland, but the redesigning of this land-
scape for exclusive human use has resulted in the loss of valuable, nat-
ural protection in times of flood. “If you could imagine just putting a
big sponge in front of lower Manhattan, that’s what it would be like if
there was a wetland there,” explains Alex Kolker, a graduate student
studying ecology and evolution at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook.
One way to limit the loss of these flood barriers is to give coastal
areas room to migrate inland. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
(under the Clean Water Act) and the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation oversee current waterfront development.
But according to Ellen Kracauer Hartig, a former research associate at
Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research, applicants can apply
to bypass federal and state wetlands regulations, and permission is fre-
quently granted. “At this time, the state gives out permits for develop-
ment projects easily,” she says.
That is an understatement. In 1998, the Corps rejected only 3.2
percent of major wetlands projects. Rejections are likely to become
even more unlikely under Bush administration revisions that “stream-
line” the wetlands development process and relax Army Corps scrutiny
in flood plains.
Global warming has also begun to affect the health of the city’s res-
idents. “In New York City, asthma rates in some neighborhoods are
among the highest in the nation,” explains Pat Kinney, an environ-
44 Jim Motavalli with Sherry Barnes