The Bronx River Was Healing. Now The EPA Cut Its Funds.
Last Thursday night, my phone buzzed. It was the editor of a local Bronx journalism outlet.
The following morning, six Bronx environmental non-profits and Congressman Ritchie Torres were gathering for a press conference at Starlight Park, a 20-acre green space that straddles the Bronx River, the city’s only freshwater river.
They were there to announce and denounce that the Trump administration has frozen $2.8 million in Environmental Protection Agency funds that Congress approved for these organizations. The news hadn’t broken yet.
The next morning, I biked up through the Bronx, riding along the Bronx River.
I usually describe biking in this borough as chaotic.
I often have to weave through cars, eye-down drivers who I watch about to cut me off, and find a swerve through obstacles from idling cops in bike lanes to potholes.
As I reached Hunts Point and the Bronx River, the ride transformed. Rush hour honks turned into birds chirping.
Instead of riding with traffic, I had a bike path with bright white lines. I felt my blood pressure drop, my breath deepen and relax, and my nose inhale with cool, clean air.
I slowed down, strolling past residents doing their morning runs. I turned my head as I saw a gaggle of geese (yes, that’s he official plural term).
I heard the rush of the water going over rocks, a pull to pause and stare at the river.
A few minutes later, I crossed a blue bridge and arrived at the press conference site. It was outside the headquarters of a non-profit called the Bronx River Alliance.
There, I saw black Parks Department signs for the new Starlight Park. The Bronx River Alliance spearheaded the park and the river’s transformation over the past decade.
The eager journalist I was that day, I arrived early and chatted with those who gathered.
“This park is amazing,” I said, making small talk to a group of three.
“A few decades ago,” one woman told me, “it was so polluted that you could light the river on fire. Now we have a kayak dock.” She smiled and pointed to the bottom of a hill I hadn’t noticed, where a dock floated, awaiting warmer weather for kayakers.
I learned their work ensured both the Bronx and Westchester County would have enough freshwater in the coming decades. I learned how restoring the river and its banks would help protect the borough from future floods.
I felt the benefits for myself as I cruised through the park on my bike. I breathed in that fresh air that’s not easy to find in this borough, which has the highest asthma hospitalization rates in the country, a direct consequence of air pollution.
Of the $2.8 million in frozen funds, $1.5 million was marked for the Bronx River Alliance, $1 million of which they would work with other groups to disperse throughout the Bronx.
Leaders from various groups spoke out about how these cuts would impact their work: half-finished projects put on hold, internship programs for Bronx youth canceled, staff layoffs, and entire projects halted.
I could feel the sadness and the frustration.
After the press conference, I biked back down the park along the river to a coffee shop in Hunts Point, so I could be the first to report on the cuts.
My piece for the Hunts Point Express covers the facts: where the funds came from, how the non-profits are suing, and what they had to say about it.
Unrestrained by editorial guidelines, I wanted to share more reflections on this experience.
As I have shared, since I moved back to New York, I have volunteered with community gardens and environmental groups.
I have seen with my own eyes how the South Bronx Waterfront, instead of accessible park spaces, is industrial: highways, 4-lane bridges, power plants, garbage processing, even a truck driving school, all on what could be prime waterfront land.
On Manhattan’s west side, new parks like Little Island attract people to the water, but the Bronx’s Waterfront is a repellent, a toxic stew of concrete and diesel fumes.
The contrast has struck me for how obviously wrong it is.
Yet, on that day in Starlight Park, I felt the alternative.
For everyone there, that press conference was about what was being lost. I also saw what they’d gained through decades of work.
Of all the speeches that day, the one that left an impression on me was by Bronx River Alliance’s executive director, Sid Sanchez. He tied together the past and future. “Starlight Park represents a success of government working with community groups to transform what was a toxic waterway into a clean, vibrant resource.”
He continued, sharing how $62 million in federal funding has gone into restoring the waterfront, wetlands, and nearby park space.
Government, Like Each of Us, Is Neither Good nor Bad.
I streamed the whole press conference on TikTok and went on a TikTok live talking about it afterwards.
When I cut through the crap that is most of any TikTok comment section, I saw a reasonable critique of my outrage: the federal government shouldn’t spend money restoring Bronx air or New York water quality. These geese, many argued, are New York City’s job to take care of.
There’s a valuable debate here. The history of the Bronx illuminates the nuance.
After all, the Cross Bronx Expressway is part of I-95. It’s a federal road. The government paid and pays for it, even though it bulldozed homes, severed communities, and still pollutes the air.
Yet, it’s also the federal government, under Biden, that awarded a $500k grant to collect air quality data on this highway. Trump froze that grant, and they can’t access the funds.
Government is neither an inherent force for good nor evil. It depends on how the humans who have power wield it, and how we co-create the systems that assign that power.
Sanchez reminded us that the government, when working with local groups who understand their needs, can fund and achieve positive change.
A Lesson From Chess: Think Concretely
Regardless of where you stand philosophically on the role of the government, I can’t help but be present here in this park.
As the TikTok comments rolled in, I shared something that chess teacher grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky says. With each chess position, “you have to think concretely.” You can’t force your ideas of one chess position onto another. The winning move in one position is a blunder in another.
Concretely, I clench my fists at what this $2.8 million now won’t accomplish.
The Bronx is Blooming and the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance will invite fewer Bronx locals to intern with them and learn how to plant trees and steward parks. These trees would have, as they grew over decades, created a tree canopy throughout the Bronx and cooled off the increasingly hotter summers.
The Bronx River Alliance will not be able to take the success of Starlight Park and team up with other groups to restore as many once pristine waterways, clean air, restore wildlife, provide park space, and prepare for floods.
Nos Quedamos will have to halt much of their green jobs programs.
Cutting these funds, for the Bronx, the city, the nation, for all life on earth, is a loss I can’t help but mourn. It is a blunder on the chessboard where the stakes are people’s lives.
The Regime is Coming For All Our Communities
After the hurricanes last fall, I heard the saying that the impacts of climate devastation “will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”
When the editor called me, I thought of that line. Now I was the one filming the front line battles. I felt a sense of a fight I haven’t felt before. Regardless of what happens next, this fight will continue. These groups will continue fighting for the right to breathe clean air.
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