the dam tour

Recently at Rocking the Boat the On-Water Job Skills Apprentices developed a guided a tour of the Bronx River's Dam, starting from the Bronx Zoo section to the Hunts Point portion of the River. The purpose of this tour is to expose people to the dams that still exist on the river, explain why theses dams were built, how they were used and how it relates to our work today.

Over the past thousands of years the Bronx River has jumped all over the water quality scale. Starting, with the pure water in the Native American times; to the river being called an "Open Sewer" in the mid 1800's. Since the 1600’s people have been using the river for their needs, creating dams and mills to power factories. Theses dam altered the river and polluted the water. But the dams on the river allowed people in the Bronx to grow and expand.

In the 1600’s the first European settlers came to the Bronx; in fact the Bronx is named after one of them Jonas Bronch. He came to New York City on a boat from Europe and began to build a life here. Before he and his fellow Europeans arrived here to the Bronx River (which was then called the "Aquhung", meaning river of high bluffs) was primarily used for gathering and irrigation by the local Native American. The Easterners brought with them a new way of thinking of the environment and a new way of life. The Europeans typically used the river for transportation as well as powering their mills. With this new "open" land more and more immigrants began coming here; eventually extinguishing the Native way of life.

In the 1700's the Bronx River was being used more and more by the local people, but it still wasn't half as bad as it was going to get though. There were 12 dams along the river, each producing various goods such as snuff, tapestries and wheat. The American Revolution had its effect on the Bronx. 1776 George Washington moved through the Bronx. During the American Revolution the Bronx stayed behind British lines. There was a neutral ground (a no man’s land) that nobody controlled. There were raids and counter raids. The Bronx River became the corridor for the raids. By the end of the 1700’s New York City officials actually wanted to use the Bronx River as a water source, describing it as “pristine”.

In the mid to late 1800's the Bronx began and finalized its transition from a suburban to an urban community. Between the years of 1800 and 1830 the population grew by nearly three thousand people, (most from Ireland escaping the potato famine), and the numbers exponentially grow thereafter. With the industrial revolution coming into play the Bronx River seemed to appeal to all of the young anxious men trying to start a business. They quickly bought land and built factories, dams as well as residential development. Because of the lack of environmental protection laws this companies were emitting any and all of their wastes directly into the river. By the mid1800’s the river was described as an “open sewer”. This was the indeed beginning of the "Pollution Revolution".

During the 1900’s Manhattan living space was becoming an issue. The invention of railroads and subways solved this issue because now people could travel a day’s distance worth in about a half an hour. The new found ways of traveling drove many families to move to the now available Bronx. The higher the population got the more pollution came to this area ultimately. By the mid 1900s a man named Robert Moses became the parks commissioner and the transportation commissioner and built many roads and highways that are still used today. Unfortunately Mr. Moses didn’t have any regards for the environment in which his building plans disconnected our society from the river with the creation of the Cross Bronx, Sheridan Expressway, Bruckner Expressway and the Expansion of the Bronx River Parkway. This added to the see no evil mentality that this area has adapted and nurtured in its bosom.

In the 1970’s, a woman by the name of Ruth Anderburg single handedly started to clean up the river, which to the organization called the Bronx River Restoration Project. This later evolved into the Bronx River Alliance, BXRA, which works closely to the Bronx River and Bronx environmentalist groups. The BXRA also has an amazing relationship with the community and is also an organization we work closely with as well.

Currently the Bronx River isn't that lush sanctuary of wildlife that people used to go to for comfort. It's more like the forbidden apple that looks so sweet but is bad beneath the surface. Our main goal is to educate as many people as well as ourselves on the nature of the issues at hand and what we can collectively do to fix these problems.

In 1812 the Bolton family built this dam to power their mill in order to run their bleachery. They were releasing their dye tainted water directly into the river and there is even a story of children coming out of the water in whichever color the factory was using that day. This bleachery overly affected the water quality of the river. One of our most consistent projects at Rocking the Boat is water quality monitoring. We have constantly taken samples and tests of the water quality here in the Bronx River. This bleachery marks the foundation of the polluted river that we know today. Rocking the Boat collects real data and sends it to real scientists, where the data is inspected and analyzed. We also continue to work with other organizations and environmentalists to develop ways of improving and continuing to monitor the Bronx section of the Bronx River and to encourage as much stewards as possible.

The Delancey family ran a huge farm that used slaves and mainly harvested apples. Peter and Elizabeth Delancey inherited the area around the dam. While Peter was away, Elizabeth ran the operation. Is not strange for a woman to run everything, but is a little weird to hear that a woman received recognition for her deeds. During one year it was unusually warm for January and the snowfall from the prior year was higher than normal. The snow melted as the temperature rose and caused a flood that destroyed other dams along the river and swept through the Delancey dam. The real incredible thing about this story is that every slave that worked on the Delancey’s land was saved by the townspeople. It is rare that you see common people stick there neck out for slaves at a time like that. This story sticks out in the Delancey dam history. This dam is the largest of the three and acts as the barrier between fresh water and salt water sections of the River. A special type of herring fish, called Alewife, use the fresh water sections of the Bronx River to spawn. The adults then return to the ocean, leaving behind millions of eggs. When the young alewife grows to be about 5 inches, they also swim in to the sea. After about five years their offspring is ready to spawn and they return to the fresh waters where they were born. However, because of the Delancey Dam they were prevented from entering their spawning site. Rocking the Boat has made it a point to not only re-introduce the Alewife to the Bronx River, but to also help them sustain life. We are planning to meet the first generation of young alewives as they return to the river at the dam and carry them over for their first year of spawning. Hopefully, by the time their offspring is ready to spawn there will be a stairway allowing them to swim across on their own.

This Dam was actually built to help sustain recreational use on the river. The idea was to back up water to make the river deeper and wide, allowing people more room to paddle, fish and swim. In relation, when the city was dredging a canal for large commercial boating traffic they chose to stop at the Weir out of sheer convenience. It would have been very difficult for the larger vessels to make it up the river past this point because of the weir and it just didn't make sense to dredge the canal any further north than it was already. It was also a way of assuring that the Starlight Park section would remain industrial free. This weir also marked the division point of oysters living in the water. Because they were harvested excessively, they have been extirpated from the Bronx River. Rocking the Boat has been trying to develop a system of oyster restoration that had longevity as well as security. In the summer of 2006 Rocking the Boat created an artificial oyster reef by collecting clam shells into mesh bags and then submerged them into the water on the benthic layer (very bottom) of the river. The idea is that the calcium emitted by the shells will attract oyster larvae to come and attach themselves to the shells, making an artificial reef. This process of selecting a permanent home for them is called spating. Because spawning only takes place in the summer months, we only monitor and revisit plan ideas during the summer. Due to the success of the 2006 pilot reef, Rocking the Boat was able to build a second even more successful reef in 2007.

One of our main focuses here at Rocking the Boat is water quality monitoring, it was important to us to relay exactly why we incorporate that project into RTB. As a result of the thriving industrial industry, and all the factories being built directly on the bank's of the river, the water became extremely polluted. Thus being the beginning of the need for river docents. Of course this didn't happen immediately; in fact it took about a hundred years until the monitoring began to effectively take place. Now that it has started there's no turning back! We hope to bring re awareness to the local and statewide community and hopefully restore the River's healthiness to a more livable and swimmable condition.