Top state lawmaker tours Bayswater amid blistering heat wave
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Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie toured Bayswater Point State Park in Rockaway on Friday along with Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato, local environmental activists and workers. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
It was one of the hottest days in recent memory in the Bayswater section of Far Rockaway on Friday during a visit by one of the state’s top officials – and that may have been the point.
As Queens and the city deal with the effects of an intense heatwave, State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie toured Bayswater Point State Park on Friday alongside local Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato to discuss the future of the park and the effects of climate change on it and other areas in New York City.
“We gave him a big perspective of Jamaica Bay to get to the size of it, to know that it's the jewel of New York City,” said Pheffer-Amato, who brought Heastie down from his Bronx district to the Rockaways for the second time in his elected career last week. “This time, we wanted to kind of bring it down to the street level.”
“Jamaica Bay is very very important from a climate point of view,” she added.
The tour, held with the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, a group that does environmental work in and around Jamaica Bay, highlighted the habitat of Bayswater Point State Park, a small peninsula on the peninsula.
They also highlighted the work of JBRPC’s fellowship, where teens have been able to learn and participate in taking care of the habitats along Jamaica Bay.
“Our fellows were out removing invasive plants, habitat care here at Bayswater, they also did a shoreline cleanup this morning, and just overall made improvements to this little gem of a park,” said JBRPC Director Terri Carta. “This is a great habitat for wildlife and also a really welcoming and beautiful place.”
The fellows removed large pieces of wood and moved a large milk snake as part of the clean up.
Although a pleasant park, it was not a pleasant day on Friday, as the heat pushed into the 90s and humidity levels neared 50 percent. Mosquitoes nipped at the legs of elected officials and environmental workers alike. But the heat did serve to remind attendees of the purpose of the visit.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato walked the paths of Bayswater Point State Park on Friday. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
“The planet is becoming hotter and hotter and hotter,” Heastie said. “Everybody has to start to pitch in to make some change. Because if not, these floods and storms, they're just going to become more and more frequent than they already are.”
Heastie recently returned from a legislative fact finding mission in Denmark, where state electeds went to learn about how the Danes manage climate change and renewable energy. There, he said, it seemed like a nationwide effort.
“The entire country, it was a buy in, and I think that we have to get to that point,” he said. “People are going to have to understand, in order for us to get to fighting climate change or getting us to be more climate resilient, it's going to take some sacrifice.”
“I think that's the one thing that I saw when I went to Denmark, the country's mindset on dealing with climate change was across the board – but I don’t think we are there yet,” he added.
To get there, Heastie says the U.S. needs to commit to decarbonization, and stop the things that are causing the Earth to get hotter and make legislative park tours a bit more sticky than usual.
“We all are continuing this mindset of wanting to deal with climate change, even though this may seem small in the grand scheme of things of what's going on say in terms of the environment, it's big to this community,” he said of Bayswater Point.
Around the bay, constructed wetland habitats are becoming increasingly more common, with multi-million dollar projects going into building wetland islands which absorb unhealthy carbon and also lessen wave intensity.
“When you think about climate change, and the ability of the natural environment to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” said Carta. “There's new research coming out that suggests that wetlands can actually sequester up to about 30 percent more carbon than a forest habitat of the same size.”
At the more local level, local elected officials and groups like JBRPC are trying to draw more attention to the environment’s benefits, and particularly in Rockaway, turning from the popular ocean side over to the bay side.
JBRPC has done the work for years in Rockaway, and is just coming off their annual Jamaica Bay Festival where environmental education is exhibited through events encircling the entirety of the bay.
“One of the ways to bring more attention to the bay side of Rockaway is in terms of habitat, as we talked about, but also in terms of workforce development and jobs,” said Carta. “Our young people who are out here today are kind of learning about and living a viable career path.”
For Pheffer Amato, who grew up in Far Rockaway not far from the park, it's also about showing off the community, and bringing more attention to work she wants to do in her district.
“When people think of us, they think of the ocean, right?” said Pheffer Amato. “When [Heastie] sees that it brings that perspective when he's meeting with Congress or other people, he now understands what we're talking about.”
