Spring 2016 - page 1

N
atural
R
esources
P
rotec ve
A
ssocia on
Coali on Against Water Disposal of Contaminated Sediments
Post Office Box 050328
Staten Island, NY 10305
718-873-4291
A Publica on of the
Spring 2016
In this Edi on
Executive Director
Ida Sanoff
CAWD
Director
Tony Rose
Staten Island Sport Divers
Director
Richard Chan
NRPA
President
Jim Scarcella
NRPA
Friends of Clearwater
Vice President
Charles Perry
Protectors of Pine Oak
Woods
Secretary
Daniel Ingellis
NRPA
Assistant Secretary
Tony Rose
Staten Island Sport Divers
Treasurer
Membership
Newsletter
Richard Chan
NRPA
Assistant Treasurer
John Malizia
S. I. Yacht Club,
S. I. Tuna Club, FCA
TRUSTEES
Dr. Martin Schreibman
Brooklyn College AREAC
Dr. John T. Tancredi
Molloy College
Andrew Willner
NY/NJ Baykeeper
(Ret)
Cindy Zipf
Clean Ocean Action
Page 1-2 Litter Can Be Lethal!
Page 2 New Year’s Day 2016
Page 2 Winter Beach Walk
Page 2 Ani/Niac Member Photo Contest
Page 2-3 Shoreline Meeting
Page 3 2016-2017 Election of Directors Results
Page 3-4 Fresh Kills Restoration Nears Reality
Page 4-5 East Shore Ride
In Memory of Edward “Kerry” Sullivan
Page 5 Amazon Smile
Page 5 Combined Sewer Overflow
Page 5-6 Upcoming Events
Join NRPA Today
Meetings on the 1
st
Tuesday of the month
at Blue Heron Park
LITTER CAN BE LETHAL!
By Ida Sanoff
Plastic items have become part of our lives.
Practically every time you order takeout food,
plastic utensils are in the bag. Parents now
have the convenience of baby food in easily
transportable plastic pouches. Your steaming
hot latte probably has a plastic lid, contoured
for easy sipping.
OK, you dump your coffee cup in a trash can
like a good citizen, but the plastic lid blew
away. You drop the plastic cap of your water
bottle and it rolls under a parked car. You
throw your cigarette butt with its plastic filter
on the sidewalk, because you think that it’s
such a small item that it’s no big deal. You
walk your dog and carefully “scoop the poop”
into one of those brightly colored bags that
are in the convenient holder on your dog’s
leash. Then you carefully deposit it into “the
sewer” on the corner because you don’t want
it to sit in the corner trash can and stink up
the whole block. It’s your anniversary so you
and your significant other release a couple of
balloons into the sky to celebrate, laughing as
you wonder where they will finally come back
to earth. All of these simple actions just con-
tributed to one of the biggest problems affect-
ing the marine ecosystem: Plastic pollution.
The next time you walk along the shoreline,
take a close look at all of those little multi col-
ored plastic bits lying on the sand. They are
tiny pieces of bottle caps, toys, fishing floats,
fishing line, fast food containers, balloons,
plastic bags, etc. You might think that these
items were discarded by careless boaters or
beach goers. Well, some of them are. But
what you probably don’t realize is that every
rain washes trash from our streets into storm
drains, which empty directly into local water-
ways.
There is another type of plastic pollutant that
we never even think about: Tiny plastic scrub-
bing beads. These can be found in everything
from facial cleansers to toothpaste. Every time
we use one of these products, we are wash-
ing plastic particles down the sink and right
into our waterways. They are far too small to
be filtered out by sewage treatment plants.
To make matters worse, plastic items are vir-
tually indestructible. While they break down
into smaller and smaller particles, they never
really degrade. And chemical pollutants be-
come concentrated on the surface of plastic
particles.
It’s been known for some time that tiny plastic
particles can persist in ocean waters. In the
northern Pacific Ocean, there is a Texas sized
area called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
(or the Pacific Trash Vortex) that consists of
untold numbers of tiny plastic particles sus-
pended in the water, right below the surface.
A few years ago, a study was done on the bird
populations that inhabit Midway Island, locat-
ed near the Garbage Patch and well over a
thousand miles from the nearest land. Birds
that breed on the island are dying off, be-
cause they mistake the small plastic bits for
pieces
of
food:
http://
americablog.com/2013/02/1200-miles-from-
civilization-the-albatross-of-midway-are-dying-
from-eating-manmade-plastic-video.html.
But until now, no one has ever tried to figure
out how bad the plastic problem was in our
local waterways. NY/NJ Baykeeper recently
completed a “NY-NJ Harbor Survey Plastic
Collection Report” which you can find on their
website:
-
report/
.
They found that there are over a
quarter of a million plastic particles in every
square kilometer of the waters in New York
Harbor.
Fish ingest these particles along with
any toxins that adhere to their surface, leading
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