Would you believe me if I told you that once upon a time some of the cleanest water was found right here in this very city?
Can you guess which borough, the Bronx! The Bronx river used to be an industrial neighborhood before it was torn down to build a water preserve in the late 1900’s. After reconstruction and digging up the oil. The city designed the river with the intent to have it used for a clean source of drinking water for New York city. This attempt had failed when the city failed to build a proper filtration system. Therefore the bronx river turned from being the cleanest water to the dirtiest water. There was tons of sewage backed up in the water that the conditions became unlivable.
Today, the Bronx river alliance has made it their mission to foresee that the bronx river never experiences devastating living conditions again. In one way we see that today there is a trash boom located at the end of the river that connects with the ocean. This is to prevent trash from entering the ocean. Then the city comes once a month to dig up that trash.
On February 26th, I took a dive into history at Starlight park. Where I got to watch the light come back into this very city since the 1900’s. One of the ways I got to observe that, was through watching the animals that once left, return to our city. At this winter bird watching nature event, I saw Mallard ducks swimming in the river. I also got to experience a couple of “lifers.” Lifers is when you see a new species of bird for the first time. I saw red cardinals with their bright red feathers. The female cardinals don’t sing but the male was making his mating call. I learned that birds that take the same parental role in their species tend to be difficult to differentiate between male and female. As the European starling flew over my head and I saw its iridescent feathers. The leader of the event told me that these birds were brought by a man, who wanted to bring these birds in the place of our great writer shakespeare. NYC Audubon and the Bronx River Aliance are doing things everyday to maintain the upkeep of the park. They have designed an area for native plants to benefit the environment by contributing to the food chain. They also are testing the water qualities of the river frequently to track progress. So far, they have discovered that we are seeing some progress in the water properties. I interviewed the leader of the event and he said,
“We had dolphins visit us from the ocean because they were chasing the fish, proving that we have some wildlife coming back to our river. I see a positive outlook for the future of our river.” – Christian Murphy
