McGuire  1  

Ryan  McGuire  

Work,  Culture,  and  Politics  in  New  York  City  

May  2014  

RIVERBANK  STATE  PARK:  COMMUNITY  RESISTS  ENVIRONMENTAL  RACISM  

 The  spaces  in  which  we  live  affect  our  spirit  and  our  actions.  

Oppressive  physical  surroundings  perpetuate  and  reinforce  their  residents’  oppression.  

The  processes  by  which  our  habitat  is  planned  and  built    keeps  people  isolated,  disempowered  and  depressed.  

-­‐  Peggy  Shepard  19941    

On  any  given  weekday,  you  can  find  families,  intrepid  athletes,  elderly  strollers,  and  

young  friends  grazing  Riverbank  Park  along  the  West  Harlem  landscape.  The  twenty-­‐eight  

acre  park  is  home  to  an  Olympic-­‐sized  pool,  an  athletic  complex  with  a  gym,  tennis  and  

handball  courts,  a  cultural  theater  holding  eight  hundred  people,  and  a  covered  skating  rink  

where  people  can  ice-­‐skate  in  the  winter  and  roller-­‐skate  in  the  summer.  This  place  did  not  

come  about  from  the  plans  of  elected  politicians.  Nor  is  it  the  product  of  any  philanthropic  

interest  looking  to  extend  their  name  into  new  territory.  Riverbank  State  Park  was  built  

precisely  as  a  result  of  what  lies  underneath  this  haven  of  green,  a  water  treatment  facility  

servicing  some  one  million  residents  of  Upper  Manhattan—North  River  Water  Treatment  

Plant—and  the  surrounding  residents’  response  to  this  being  built  in  their  backyard.  

North  River  Water  Treatment  Plant  and  Riverbank  State  Park  are  at  once  textbook  

examples  of  environmental  racism  playing  out  on  a  local  level  and  organized  community  

resistance  that  resulted  in  concrete  wins  for  residents  of  West  Harlem.  The  history  of  this  

struggle  over  public  space  entails  many  interests,  forces,  and  actors  that  collided  over  a  

                                                                                                                         1  Shepard,  “Issues  of  Community  Empowerment.”,  745  

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period  of  several  decades,  and  is  still  not  fully  resolved.  What  I  seek  to  do  in  this  paper  

though  is  not  to  give  definitive  explanations  for  who  came  out  on  top,  or  how  things  could  

have  gone  differently.  History  will  have  enough  to  say  about  that.  I  will  give  one  telling  of  

the  story  of  the  genesis  of  Riverbank  State  Park,  and  it  will  proceed  like  this.    

After  giving  an  introduction  to  what  environmental  racism  means  for  communities  

of  color,  I  will  start  with  the  earliest  municipal  efforts  at  water  treatment;  from  here,  I  will  

divulge  how  these  ideas  actually  played  out  in  the  multiple  ‘takes’  at  water  treatment  in  the  

city.  It  is  here  where  we  will  find  the  most  decisive  top-­‐down  decisions  that  had  material  

consequences  for  different  parts  of  the  city.  From  here,  community  (re)action  to  the  plant  

moves  front  and  center—we  will  read  how  WE  ACT  was  created  to  fight  for  an  

environmentally  just  West  Harlem,  and  some  recent  efforts  of  theirs  that  continue  this  

work.  I  will  then  analyze  where  this  story  leaves  us  in  twenty-­‐first  century  City  life.  

ENVIRONMENTAL  RACISM,  ENVIRONMENTAL  JUSTICE  

Environmental  racism  can  be  broadly  described  as  the  “unequal  distribution  of  

environmental  benefits  and  pollution  burdens  based  on  race”2.  Although  environmental  

racism  is  at  times  a  result  of  intentional  discrimination,  most  if  not  all  of  its  victims  are  

subjected  to  it  through  processes  and  practices  that  are  bureaucratic,  impersonal,  and  

oftentimes  the  result  of  unquestioned  policies.  In  other  words,  environmental  racism  is,  at  

its  core,  systemic.  In  this  way,  issues  of  environmental  racism  are  different  from  

mainstream  political  issues  in  that  they  don’t  solely  deal  with  issue  identification,  but  with  

positionality,  or  how  a  person’s  location  in  social  formations  are  shaped  by  things  like  race,  

                                                                                                                         2  Sze,  Noxious  New  York.,  13  

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class,  sexuality,  and  nation3.  Resistance  then,  functioning  as  it  does  against  all  oppression,  

is  found  in  the  form  of  the  movement  for  environmental  justice.  Perhaps  the  most  

comprehensive  elaboration  of  this  movement  is  the  “Principles  of  Environmental  Justice4,”  

adopted  at  the  1991  First  People  of  Color  Environmental  Leadership  summit.  In  it,  

principles  target  not  only  the  abuses  corporate  polluters  lodge  on  communities,  but  also  

neglect  by  regulatory  agencies,  as  well  as  class  and  racial  bias  in  traditional  environmental  

movements5.  As  with  other  movements  that  seek  to  build  broad-­‐based  Left  coalitions,  the  

movement  for  environmental  justice  takes  into  account  how  different  markers  of  social  

struggle  and  axis  of  oppression  (ie.  race,  class,  sexuality,  national  origin)  converge  into  

distinct  sets  of  power  relations  that,  through  our  material  daily  lives,  produce  vast  

inequalities6.  With  this  understanding  of  what  environmental  racism  is,  let  us  talk  about  

early  pushes  for  water  treatment  in  New  York  City.  

WATER  TREATMENT  AND  COMMUNITY  HEALTH  IN  NEW  YORK  CITY  

The  New  York  City  Department  of  Public  Works  (DPW)  first  proposed  a  citywide  

water  treatment  system  in  1914.  The  idea  was  that  there  would  be  seven  sewage  treatment  

plants  serving  the  West  Side  along  the  Hudson  River.  This  treated  sewage  would  then  make  

its  way  to  Ward’s  Island  facility  for  processing  on  the  East  side  through  a  crosstown  tunnel.  

It  wasn’t  until  1953  that  the  project  was  found  to  be  too  expensive,  and  DWP  would  put  just  

one  plant  on  the  West  Side.  During  this  time,  sewage  being  dumped  directly  into  the  River  

caused  incredible  damage  to  the  waterlife  and  surrounding  air  quality,  and  it  would  not  be  

                                                                                                                         3  Pulido  and  Peña,  “Environmentalism  and  Positionality.”  4  “Principles  of  Environmental  Justice.”  5  Sze,  Noxious  New  York.,  13  6  Crenshaw,  “Mapping  the  Margins”;  Omi  and  Winant,  Racial  Formation  in  the  United  

States.  

McGuire  4  

until  the  mid-­‐1960’s  that  the  environmental  movement  will  put  these  pressing  issues  on  

the  table  once  more.  

The  first  concrete  location  proposed  for  this  West  Side  water  treatment  plant  was  

between  70th  and  72nd  street.  Deeming  it  “incompatible”  with  the  development  plans  in  the  

area  though,  which  included  upscale  residential  buildings  and  a  cruise  ship  terminal  behind  

the  newly  constructed  Lincoln  Center,  the  DPW,  at  the  behest  of  the  city  planning  

commission,  decided  to  push  the  plant  farther  uptown  to  a  part  of  the  City  that  was,  

presumably,  more  politically  and  economically  docile.  

Robert  Moses,  a  figure  who  is  hard  to  escape  when  analyzing  mid-­‐century  New  York  

City  urbanism,  indeed  had  a  big  role  in  deciding  the  final  site  of  North  River  Water  

Treatment  Plant.  As  a  member  of  the  city  planning  commission,  Moses  had  high  hopes  for  a  

massive  West  Side  improvement  project,  and  refused  to  cede  land  for  a  treatment  plant  in  

the  Upper  West  Side  area7.  Contrary  to  one  of  his  legacies  as  the  maestro  of  developing  the  

public  good  through  parks,  of  the  255  parks  he  was  responsible  for  creating  as  

commissioner  of  NYC  Department  of  Parks  and  Recreation,  only  one  was  located  in  

Harlem8.  While  spending  millions  on  the  expansion  and  improvement  of  Riverside  Park,  no  

funds  for  Riverbank  State  Park  would  come  from  this  city  authority,  and  to  this  day  the  

park  is  the  sole  state  park  in  Manhattan9.  In  this  move,  we  see  Moses,  elected  not  once  in  

his  radically  transformative  reign,  substituting  the  interests  of  West  Harlem  residents  for  

commercial  interests  across  the  city,  one  of  the  many  both  active  and  negligent  decisions  

that  represent  the  oppression  that  goes  by  the  name  of  environmental  racism.  Alongside                                                                                                                            7  Miller,  “Planning,  Power  and  Politics:  A  Case  Study  of  the  Land  Use  and  Siting  History  

of  the  North  River  Water  Pollution  Control  Plant.”  8  Sze,  Noxious  New  York.,  84  9  Ibid.,  83  

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organized  community  resistance  to  the  plant,  the  State  of  New  York  would  eventually  play  

a  role  in  pushing  for  the  creation  of  Riverbank  Park  as  a  way  to  remedy  some  of  the  

abandonment  of  the  public  trust  that  led  to  placing  North  River  Water  Treatment  plant  in  

West  Harlem  in  the  first  place.  

 

As  soon  as  newly  elected  Mayor  John  Lindsay  decided  on  moving  the  plant  from  its  

original  location  on  72nd  to  137th  street,  he  must  have  recognized  that  it  wouldn’t  be  

welcomed  with  wide  open  arms.  To  address  this,  Lindsay  commissioned  the  same  architect  

that  had  just  completed  the  NY  State  Theater  at  Lincoln  Center  to  create  something  that  

might  appeal  to  residents.  Envisioning  “one  of  the  largest  fountains  in  the  world”  to  be  

what  West  Harlem  needed  from  a  sewage  plant,  Philip  Johnson’s  plan,  perhaps  

unsurprisingly,  wasn’t  well  received  by  the  community,  and  opposition  began  to  heavily  

mount  against  it.  Manhattan  Borough  President  and  fellow  Harlem  resident  Percy  Sutton  

was  scathing  in  his  public  testimony  concerning  the  placement,  asserting  that  such  plans  

would  “stigmatize”  West  Harlem  and  would  serve  as  an  “indignity”  that  would  “make  

people  feel  they  are  not  equal…  I  am  hurt,  deeply  hurt,  that  you  do  not  understand  what  

Population White Black Asian & Pacific Islander

Average Household

Income

Persons Below

Poverty Line

Associate/Bachelor's Degree

Graduate or Professional

Degree

Proposed Site

(72nd ST.)

65,042 84.4% 8.0% 2.8% $123,172 8.5% 34.4% 33.7%

Actual Site

(145th ST.)

56,173 15.5% 60.6% 1.3% $26,123 33.7% 10.4% 4.7%

! 1990  Census  Data  

McGuire  6  

you  are  doing  to  Harlem”10.  Opposition  to  construction,  something  increasingly  seen  as  an  

explicitly  racist  act,  escalated  even  more  so  with  the  riots  that  spread  nationwide  in  

response  to  Martin  Luther  King  Jr.’s  assassination  in  the  spring  of  1968.    

THE  TURN  TO  THE  PARK  

With  resistance  mounting,  and  tensions  high,  the  community  nevertheless  shifted  

energy  away  from  outright  opposition  to  the  plant  to  negotiating  the  terms  of  the  facility’s  

admittance  to  the  area,  namely  by  demanding  that  a  park  be  built  on  top  of  the  structure  

for  public  recreation.  Community  Board  9,  with  the  wind  at  its  back,  dug  deep  into  public  

meetings  starting  in  1968  over  what  specific  community  asks  was  in  the  construction  of  a  

park  over  the  imposing  water  treatment  facility.  Things  like  a  pool,  a  skating  rink,  a  track,  

and  open  green  space  were  brought  up.    

About  as  soon  as  the  first  

part  of  the  facility  was  

completed  in  1986,  residents  

complained  of  smells  reeking  of  

rotten  eggs  coming  from  the  

newly  manufactured  industrial  

skyline.  Indeed,  community  

concerns  were  validated  when  

the  state  Department  of  Environmental  Conservation  found  the  plant  to  be  producing  28  

percent  higher-­‐than-­‐allowed  levels  of  hydrogen  sulfide,  a  gas  that  deprives  human  cells  of  

                                                                                                                         10  Miller,  “Planning,  Power  and  Politics:  A  Case  Study  of  the  Land  Use  and  Siting  History  

of  the  North  River  Water  Pollution  Control  Plant.”,  718  

Construction  of  North  River  Water  Treatment  Plant,  1986  

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oxygen11.  Although  this  particular  grievance  was  coming  from  a  source  new  to  the  

community,  the  problem  of  air  pollution  had  not  been  foreign  to  the  area  by  any  means.  

North  Manhattan  at  the  time  was  home  to  seven  of  the  eight  diesel-­‐powered  MTA  bus  

depots,  as  well  as  the  only  24-­‐hour  marine  garbage-­‐transfer  station  in  Manhattan.  Asthma  

rates  in  the  area  are  five-­‐times  higher  than  the  national  average,  with  31.4  percent  of  those  

under  13  afflicted  with  the  condition,  compared  to  the  6.3  percent  rate  nationally12.  In  

protest  of  this  latest  disregard,  a  group  of  West  Harlem  residents  blocked  and  shut  down  

West  Side  highway  on  Martin  Luther  King  day  during  morning  rush  hour  in  1988,  donning  

gas  masks  and  carrying  impending  placards  as  symbols  of  the  damage  being  brought  to  the  

area  by  the  plant.  Of  the  “Sewage  Seven”  that  were  arrested  for  their  civil  disobedience,  

two,  Peggy  Shepard  and  Chuck  Sutton,  would  go  on  to  found  West  Harlem  Environmental  

Action  Group  in  1988  

to  address  these  

issues.    

WEST  HARLEM  

ENVIRONMENTAL  

ACTION  GROUP  (WE  

ACT)  

West  Harlem  

Environmental  Action  

Group  (WE  ACT)  was  

                                                                                                                         11  Sze,  Noxious  New  York.,  83  12  Santora,  “US  Praises  Program  in  City  for  Children  with  Asthma.”  

Peggy  Shepard  and  Chuck  Sutton  of  WE  ACT  in  1988  

McGuire  8  

founded  in  1988  out  of  the  local  struggle  against  North  River  Water  Treatment  Plant  as  the  

first  African-­‐American  led  environmental  organization  in  New  York.  It  was  founded  on  

three  main  objectives:  force  the  city  to  fix  the  sewage  treatment  plant;  to  be  a  full  

democratic  agent  in  future  siting  and  planning  decisions  in  West  Harlem;  to  mold  the  

public  policy  agenda  by  placing  environmental  justice  as  a  primary  issue13.  

WE  ACT  took  its  first  major  action  when  they  sued,  jointly  with  the  Natural  

Resources  Defense  Council  (NRDC),  New  York  City  and  the  NYC  Departmental  

Environmental  Protection  Agency  in  1992  for  operating  the  North  River  Sewage  Plant  as  a  

public  and  private  nuisance  endangering  the  quality  of  life,  property  values,  and  health  of  

the  surrounding  community.  Although  city  lawyers  initially  argued  that  the  organizations  

had  no  right  to  sue  the  City,  when  the  issue  was  put  before  a  state  Supreme  Court  judge  it  

was  ruled  that  since  there  was  no  public  hearing  when  agreements  were  made  between  the  

city  and  state  DEP,  they  maintained  the  legal  right  to  sue.  Specifically,  the  lawsuit  alleged  

“intentional,  unreasonable,  negligent,  reckless  and  abnormally  dangerous  siting,  design,  

construction  and  operation  of  the  plant”14.  And  in  1993,  WE  ACT  and  NRDC  was  awarded  

$1.1  million  to  be  put  toward  a  new  North  River  Fund  for  the  purposes  of  community  

health,  the  environment,  and  service  delivery,  along  with  an  agreement  calling  for  strict  

enforcement  and  monitoring  of  environmental  standards.  The  settlement  jointly  reached  

by  WE  ACT  and  NRDC  was  the  first  in  the  City’s  history  to  successfully  sue  for  a  nuisance  

relating  to  smell,  and  would  lay  the  legal  groundwork  for  years  to  come  in  third-­‐party  

environmental  lawsuits.  

                                                                                                                           13  Shepard,  “Issues  of  Community  Empowerment.”  14  Sze,  Noxious  New  York.,  84  

McGuire  9  

 

 

CREATING  POLITICAL  COMMUNITY  AROUND  ENVIRONMENTAL  JUSTICE  

The  strategy  WE  ACT  adopted  was  an  ideological  struggle  over  what  Sze15  speaks  of  

as  an  ‘imagined  political  community’,  not  unlike  the  intellectual  frame  developed  by  

historian  Benedict  Anderson  in  his  now  legendary  treatise16.  By  creating  a  narrative  of  

what  the  residents  of  West  Harlem  were  facing  through  the  language  of  environmental  

racism  and  justice,  taking  from  the  best  of  both  Civil  Rights  Movement  imagery  and  the  

traditional  environmental  movement’s  vision  of  utopia,  WE  ACT  was  critiquing  popular  

notions  of  marginalized  communities  as  disempowered,  while  in  the  process  asserting  their  

being  as  viable  political  agents  capable  of  self-­‐determination.  The  success  this  organization  

achieved  depended  in  large  part  on  their  development  of  a  coherent  narrative  of  why  their  

community  was  being  targeted  as  “sacrifice  zones,”  and  actively  contrasting  that  to  the  

corporate  narrative  denying  any  ‘discriminatory  intent’  when  the  topic  of  disparate  

conditions  of  community  environments  come  up.  Much  of  this  vision  can  be  found  in  WE  

ACT’s  “8  Indicators  of  a  Healthy  Community”:  clean  air;  affordable,  equitable  transit;  waste,  

pests,  and  pesticide  reduction;  toxic  free  products;  good  food  in  schools;  sustainable  land  

use;  open  and  green  space;  and  healthy  indoor  environments17.  

Given  their  model  as  a  community  organization,  WE  ACT  continues  to  build  on  the  

awards  granted  from  the  City  that  created  the  North  River  Fund  by  using  legal  advocacy  to  

push  for  greater  environmental  health  measures  and  furthering  the  political  goals  of  

                                                                                                                         15  Ibid.,  chapter  1  16  Anderson,  Imagined  Communities.  17  “WE  ACT’s  ‘8  Indicators  of  a  Healthy  Community.’”  

McGuire  10  

environmental  justice.  Today,  WE  ACT  also  furthers  its  goals  by  educating  and  mobilizing  

residents  of  Northern  Manhattan  on  environmental  justice  issues  affecting  their  quality  of  

life  by  building  coalitions  like  the  Campaign  for  New  York’s  Future  and  Faith  Leaders  for  

Environmental  Justice.  The  organization  is  also  heavily  invested  in  working  toward  issues  of  

transportation  justice  through  initiatives  like  New  York  State  Transportation  Equity  Alliance  

and  The  JustGreen  Partnership.  

So,  from  this  account  of  the  factors  leading  to  the  genesis  of  Riverbank  State  Park,  

what  lessons  can  we  learn  from  this?  Perhaps  least  controversial  among  them  would  be  the  

continued  need  to  focus  on  environmental  justice  work.  From  the  specific  framework  WE  

ACT  developed,  we  find  the  need  to  assert  the  primacy  of  community  input  in  city  planning,  

as  well  as  a  critical  analysis  of  who  benefits  and  loses  from  ‘development’  of  our  collective  

human  environment.  

Secondly,  for  both  planning  

and  humanistic  purposes,  we  

should  understand  our  built  

human  environment  as  

inscribed  through  social  

struggle.  This  principle  can  be  

firstly  read  as  prescribing  a  

sensitivity  to  the  structural  

placement  and  arrangement  

of  entities,  as  in  the  case  of  the  

North  River  treatment  plant  

Zuccotti  Park,  New  York,  2013  

McGuire  11  

being  built  in  Harlem  rather  than  its  original  Upper  West  Side  site.  Yet  social  struggle  can  

also  be  erased  from  the  very  environment  to  which  it  can  attribute  birth,  as  in  the  apparent  

absence  of  any  positive  material  memory  of  Occupy  Wall  Street  at  Zuccotti  Park.    Thirdly,  

we  might  find  a  curious  irony  in  the  fact  that  West  Harlem  residents  might  not  have  got  a  

Riverbank  State  Park  had  it  not  been  for  the  North  River  Water  Treatment  Plant.    

For  these  reasons,  and  many  more,  the  struggle  for  environmental  justice  continues  

to  be  fought  deep  and  wide,  and  its  leaders  must  quickly  grapple  with  its  implications  for  

global  climate  change.  Riverbank  State  Park  and  North  River  Water  Treatment  Plant  are  

but  one  example  of  environmental  racism;  it  is  incumbent  upon  us  to  disrupt  the  

reproduction  of  the  present  in  the  future.      

South  Riverbank  State  Park,  right  next  to  the  track,  2014  

McGuire  12  

   

Riverbank  and    the  Hudson  River,  February  2014  

McGuire  13  

WORKS  CITED    Anderson,  Benedict.  Imagined  Communities:  Reflections  on  the  Origin  and  Spread  of  

Nationalism,  Revised  Edition.  Revised  edition.  London ;  New  York:  Verso,  2006.  Crenshaw,  Kimberle.  “Mapping  the  Margins:  Intersectionality,  Identity  Politics,  and  

Violence  against  Women  of  Color.”  Stanford  Law  Review  43,  no.  6  (July  1991):  1241.  doi:10.2307/1229039.  

Miller,  Vernice  D.  “Planning,  Power  and  Politics:  A  Case  Study  of  the  Land  Use  and  Siting  History  of  the  North  River  Water  Pollution  Control  Plant.”  Fordham  Urb.  LJ  21  (1993):  707.  

Omi,  Michael,  and  Howard  Winant.  Racial  Formation  in  the  United  States:  From  the  1960s  to  the  1990s.  2  edition.  New  York:  Routledge,  1994.  

“Principles  of  Environmental  Justice.”  United  Church  of  Christ  Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  475  Riverside  Dr.  Suite  1950,  New  York,  NY  10115,  1991.  http://www.weact.org/Home/PrinciplesofEnvironmentalJustice/tabid/226/Default.aspx.  

Pulido,  Laura,  and  Devon  Peña.  “Environmentalism  and  Positionality:  The  Early  Pesticide  Campaign  of  the  United  Farm  Workers’  Organizing  Committee,  1965-­‐71.”  Race,  Gender  &  Class  6,  no.  1  (January  1,  1998):  33–50.  

Santora,  M.  “US  Praises  Program  in  City  for  Children  with  Asthma.”  New  York  Times,  January  14,  2005.  

Shepard,  Peggy  M.  “Issues  of  Community  Empowerment.”  Fordham  Urb.  LJ  21  (1993):  739.  Sze,  Julie.  Noxious  New  York:  The  Racial  Politics  of  Urban  Health  and  Environmental  Justice.  

MIT  Press,  n.d.  “WE  ACT’s  ‘8  Indicators  of  a  Healthy  Community,’”  May  2014.  

http://www.weact.org/Projects/CleanAir/tabid/602/Default.aspx.