NYC NOW - July 6, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Some of New York's oldest bridges will soon get some much needed upgrades. And, Former U.S. Representative Mondaire Jones is running for Congress…again. Plus, New Jersey has been doing something called “beach replenishment” where they widen the beach by pumping in sand dredged from offshore. WNYC’s Sean Carlson talked with NJ Media’s Steven Rodas about the harsh weather that has taken out some of the beach's coast. And finally, we mark the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. New York's bridges are among the oldest in the country, some of which were built over 100 years ago, and they haven't seen repairs since. But that'll change soon. This week, Governor Kathy Hokel announced more than $516 million to repair local bridges and culverts.

Those are water channels embedded underground. The most money will go to Long Island in New York City, with about $74 million each. The rest will go to areas the state finds most at risk of flooding. Officials say harsh winters and a high volume of car commuters have aged the state's bridges more quickly. Former U.S. Representative Mondare Jones is running for Congress again. This time he's heading back to the suburbs. WNYC's John Campbell has more.

Jones used to represent part of the Hudson Valley in Congress, but after redistricting last year, he chose to run in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn instead. losing to Dan Goldman. For next year's House election, he's heading back north to the 17th district. His new announcement video highlights how he grew up in Rockland County. Growing up, I didn't see people like me in Congress. Then I was elected to represent the same people whose homes I watched my grandmother clean. Republican Mike Lawler currently holds the district.

Jones is expected to face off in a Democratic primary against Liz Garrity, a former school board member and sister of Michigan governor, Gretchen Whiteman. Stay close. There's more after the break. It's going to be a great summer on the wildwoods. It's summertime, and that means a lot of people in our area will likely flock to the Jersey shore. But harsh weather has taken out some of the beaches coast. In response to that, New Jersey has been doing something called beach replenishment, where they widen the beach by pumping in sand dredged from offshore.

In fact, more than 2.6.6. billion dollars have been spent replenishing the Jersey shore. With beach erosion likely to worsen in the future because of expected sea level rise in climate change, this may become an unsustainable method. Stephen Rodas is a journalist for NJ Advanced Media. He talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson. Can you explain the process of beach replenishment to us? So beach replenishment also called beach nourishment and sand replenishment essentially means the U.S. Army Corps heading out offshore or in some cases federal inlet sites in order to dredge sand, basically collect it from the bottom of the ocean, and then pipe it in or pump it back onto

the natural coastline. So as we said, it's really expensive to do this. Can you tell us how long it's been going on for and do other places do it? So super expensive, more than $2.6 billion has been spent in New Jersey, but that figure might actually be higher once Western Carolina University where we got that data from updates its figures this fall. Do other states do it? Yes, but per foot of shoreline, New Jersey has been how one group told me the most productive and how another group phrased it most wasteful. How long has Jersey been doing it for?

It depends on who you ask. Some folks say since the early 1900s. The data that we collected for our recent story goes back to 1923. So there are a few different years in terms of exactly when it started, but at least a century. So when we talk about this method, the whole crux of the conversation here, is doing that dredging sand and replenishing the beaches? Is it sustainable? So whether it's sustainable, it is something that a lot of people have debated. It is something that folks do in terms of towns for protecting, you know, physical.

homes and structures that are built up along the coast. It's also done in order to fend off the erosion that naturally develops on our beaches. It is currently something that the state says we are looking at something that makes sense as an option in order to replenish the Jersey shore and different beaches. Ultimately, though, we will reach, according to experts I spoke with a tipping point where it'll be very, very, very expensive and will have to be done so frequently that it won't actually make sense as something that we can always look to as an option. What is happening this summer at the shore? Is the replenishment happening? So the replenishment typically happens during the offseason, so the fall, the winter months, but it can happen during the summer. In fact, in Stone Harbor,

they are in the process of replenishing a beach now. And for the town officials there, That wouldn't be the best case scenario. They would have preferred to start the replenishment earlier. Storms and other factors made it so that they had to push the project ahead. So that is toward the, I would say, middle to end of completion. But for the most part, a lot of towns are on the stage where they can welcome people onto their beaches. So the Jersey Shore is such a huge part of Jersey's identity, right? Like it's hard to associate New Jersey with something more than the shore.

So it makes sense that people would want to keep it a tourist attraction. Are there other solutions and what are the solutions that state officials and experts are talking about when it comes to protecting the towns from erosion and seasonal flooding? Towns want to protect and to keep their beaches plentiful. Everyone loves to visit the shore as I do every year. The alternatives outside of center punishment haven't been studied or exploited. too extensively. Now, living shorelines is one option that one group, the Surfeiter Foundation, said, is something that we can look to on a larger scale. There are also hard structures such as T-Groins and jetties that experts say could be an alternative to make replenishment less

required, but again, they haven't been invested in a large-scale way like San Replenishment has. We as a state haven't supported when it comes to using our budget or other financial tools to invest in those alternatives. We have looked at pairing hard structures, jettys, tea grains, things of that nature, with replenishment pouring the sand onto the beach. In Neptune, a bay area there, they're using coconuts to develop a living shoreline. Again, making it so that replenishment and pouring of sand isn't needed as often. That's Stephen Rodas, journalist for NJ Advanced Media talking with WNYC's Sean Carlson. Hip-hop burst on the scene in the Bronx 50 years ago this summer. We're marking the milestone by highlighting women in the area who have made their own distinct mark on the culture.

My name is Maria Castillo, also known as Two Fly. I was born in Ecuador, but I grew up in Queens, New York. I'm known as Two Fly because I grew up with the graffiti culture. I started in 92. When I would go to school, I'd see a lot of graffiti tags, and I wanted to be the female version of what I was seeing on the street. There wasn't that many women. I started to carry around my marker and draw in black books,

which was a book that many artists kind of shared within the culture. And the more you got known as a graffiti writer, which was illegal at the time, obviously, and still is. But when I did it, it was obviously we were defacing property, but we were also trying to find our own expression, our own voice on the street to get recognized by other artists and kind of build a community. And then from there, we would expand and evolve and become much better artist with time and hours to paint with.

I had a very great mom who actually took me graffiti writing at nighttime, so that doesn't happen often. I guess she just didn't want me to be in an unsafe grouping of guys. You know, anything could happen. It was hard and harsh for us to grow up around kind of a kind of a kind of a group. a male-dominated scene that felt very tough. And so that completely changed when we women started to paint because we were creating spaces that were more areas

where women could come and also young people and transgenerational communities and multicultural communities. And so we expanded the space to feel more safe. The message that I tried to put out on walls because now I've become a street artist versus an illegal person on the street defacing property. Now it's permission-based or, you know, community-based and also commercial-based.

My messages are usually like women empowerment. I love hip-hop culture because that's what I grew up with. And also style. Like, we love color and we love the urban aesthetic, which was kind of viewed negatively when we were growing up, but now we've transformed it. And now it's like the biggest phenomenal, like, art world look for many artists to have in their apartments or their homes.

Two Fly is a street artist who grew up in Queens. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.