On a typical Saturday leading up to the wet season, Owen Foote can be found at the dead end on 2nd Avenue in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. He’s there to pick up trash and remove other debris from the Gowanus Canal shoreline. Foote is the Treasurer one of the founding members of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, one of several groups in New York advocating for New Yorkers to make use of the immense access to water.
According to Foote, who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, “New Yorkers are island people,” something, he says, few of us truly understand. The city may not have a reputation as a bastion for aquatic activities, but it’s certainly not due to the lack of effort by the Dredgers and other community organizations such as the Long Island City Community Boathouse.
Ted Gruber, head of water activity for the Boathouse says his organization takes great pride in providing New Yorkers with free access to watersports, such as kayaking, and water education. “We are the coolest friggin’ thing in the five boroughs in the summertime,” Gruber says. Last season, the Boathouse launched 99 kayaking events including 21 trips (known as “paddles”) to Hallets Cove in the East River, six sunset paddles, and two daytrips where paddlers circumnavigated the island of Manhattan.
The Dredgers and the Boathouse are just two of several 501c3 non-profits providing waterfront access and free aquatic activities to the public. Since its formation, the Dredgers have helped launch aquatic activity clubs in other areas including the Boathouse, as well as Kayak Staten Island, and the Red Hook Boaters.
Michael Smalley, a third-year volunteer for the Boathouse, says when paddling down the East River people will often yell out to him and the groups he leads. “The most common thing I hear is, ‘Hey how can I do that?’ or ‘How much is that?’” he says. While the group’s excursions have been successful, Smalley says that in order to have enough boats and guides to support these programs, those in the organization are constantly working to increase their visibility.
“Right now it’s mostly word of mouth, yeah, but we’re trying to get a social media presence to bring people out,” he says.
An Iowa native who grew up canoeing and enjoying the water, Smalley says finding the Boathouse was a perfect fit for him. Smalley, who manages the Bareburger restaurant in Astoria, says he found himself dedicating his weekends to the water. “My friend was like this could be your thing,” he says.
Smalley first moved to the city in response to the 2008 recession and soon after discovered the boathouse. Smalley says he was surprised by the size of the New York’s kayaking and canoeing community. “It blew my mind that no matter what neighborhood I live in in New York City, I have a local boathouse I can go to.”
Foote founded the Dredgers in 1999 as a way to build environmental awareness about the city’s waterways. According to Foote, New York City was long viewed as irrelevant for water activities. “If you want[ed] to go to the river, you [would] go upstate,” he says. Foote believes this mindset is changing and has been over the last decade or so thanks in large part to the advocacy of groups like his.
One challenge groups like the Dredgers and the Boathouse find in increasing the public’s interest in utilizing the city’s waterways, is the stigma that surrounds the water itself.
Many New Yorkers don’t realize that when there is heavy rain in the city, the overflow of water is too much for the water treatment plants to accept. That means that the shower water, sink water, and toilet water, all of the waste that gets disposed of in the city gets flushed down the same pipe as the storm drain and dumps into the NYC waterways.
“The people who grow up in New York City, their parents have told them don’t touch the water, it’s going to kill you, it’s going to give you diseases,” says Smalley.
Today, the Department of Environmental Protection for New York City says that the improvements to sewage handling have lead to an increased water quality in recent years. According to their website, the DEP says the Harbor is “Harbor is cleaner now than at any time in the last 100 years.” The DEP says that its efforts have led to an increase in recreational activities on the water. Meanwhile, the National Park of New York Harbor and The National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy have partnered to meet specific goals for maintaining the city’s water resources. These goals include: “protect natural and cultural resources, improve access to the parks, expand programs for diverse audiences, raise public awareness, enhance funding and facilitate partnerships to support the above goals.”
Foote recalls biking around Brooklyn after moving there in 1991 from the Upper East Side and spotting water in the rivers with what looked like typhoid and cholera. “I wondered why wasn’t anyone doing anything,” Foote says. He joined a group but after deciding the right questions weren’t being asked, Foote and others decided to launch an organization that would allow for the types of educational programs and activities he had been exposed to at camp upstate, right in the waterways of the New York islands.
The mission of the Dredgers began in Brooklyn, but today the mission is to connect New Yorkers to all the rivers or as Foote calls them “the sixth borough.”
