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Driving innovation and sharing of best practices is one of HEP's major roles - based on this - what are some potential objectives and priorities for HEP and partners?

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Advancing monitoring and research is one of HEP's major roles - based on this - what are some potential objectives and priorities for HEP and partners?

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Our goal: To improve public access to the waters of the Estuary and the quality of experience at public spaces along the waterfront.

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Convening Estuary stakeholders is one of HEP's major roles - based on this - what are some potential objectives and priorities for HEP and partners?

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Through the lens of Public Access what are the current challenges our region is facing?

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This is your opportunity to share your thoughts regarding the goals and priorities of our new HEP Action Agenda. Please complete by Friday, May 31st.

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Parks in the region create a lot of opportunities for community science and engagement through science. In particular, more partnerships in National Park Service sites should be explored.

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Promoting Productive and Civil Dialogue: Crucial Conversations

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Promoting Productive and Civil Dialogue: Crucial Conversations

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Here is model about ways we can engage one another when stakes are high.

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Crucial Conversations Summary & Review (ANIMATED)

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Providing for community engagement in management decisions, especially by building capacity for the ongoing participation of disadvantaged communities is one of HEP's major roles - based on this - what are some potential objectives and priorities for HEP and partners?

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Promoting swimming as a use at access points, with variable imperfect water quality, and beach regulations that require near-perfection.

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Tracking decisions to be made, and informing participants / constituents about them in time for public comment periods.

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Lack of data/information to make decisions.

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There are some antiquated regulations and codes within the NYC Dept of Health and NYS DOH for creating more swimming beaches.

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Need to address what happens when we create waterfront access - it often leads to displacement of long time residents and gentrification.

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Feeling like the state government is opposed to direct access. In a city of 8 million people, how many people are going to get to go boating?

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Advancing and finding the

Balance between public access, water quality, and safety,

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Hard to know how to get from the sidewalk to the river.

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Challenges between competing uses of waterways, cost of access, and safety

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Infrastructure barriers - dilapidated areas along the waterfront that are incredibly expensive to update, especially very old regions.

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High need for life-guards/well trained staff

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Balancing the recreational needs of people and wildlife at existing public parks

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Unclear on the many regulations for boating. Do you need a permit? Are we allowed everywhere?

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Where it is located, whether its free, the kind of access (swimming, human-power boating, etc.), the demographic's desired use, and upgrades/changes needed imagined by the community that can also include resiliency features (i.e. location up in Troy has a launch site that isn't being utilized and not serving the community that can access it)

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Better communication to the public about where it is safe to swim, through signage, communication via internet, etc.

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Getting the word out about existing access opportunities and making sure that people feel comfortable using them

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Access points for fishing but the contradictions between regulations (WQ and Health) BUT also areas in Parks where you are not allowed to fish but regulations say its okay

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Competition between public access and commercial access, even for areas that are within a certain distance of commercial access.

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Not everyone wants to swim race, some just want to splash around. We need free and safe swimming access.

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Recognizing that it is a public space that people (should) have freedom to access/ address the challenges to that liberty by advancing non regulatory solutions

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Is gentrification a reason to not improve the waterfront? Can't let this stop improving the waterfront, especially in areas of need.

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Maintaining consistency with stakeholders - when you lose representation when someone changes a role.

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NYSDEC needs to own the responsibility of water safety. We don't expect towns to predict their own weather we shouldn't expect them to predict their water quality.

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Fish consumption advisories need to be made clear - and multilingual

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When there is a lot of representation in a region, but those organizations aren't communicating much with one another - HEP could help facilitate these more local stakeholder conversations.

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Coordinate NYC DHMH & NYS DOH & NYS DEC to create a streamlined process for establishing new swimming beaches

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State of the estuary conference and related events are great

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Include waterbourne transportation and businesses on waterfront, broader stakeholder base.

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create more in person events

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Ways in which people can think about engaging people in the public process for advocacy, engaging them at different levels, using technology that can also help drive the message. How to make it into a two-way platform for getting and gathering information? MAKE IT FUN!

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Engaging people around superfund clean up in the Passaic and other waterways. Important to bring

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bring back the cardboard boat race

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The importance of legislative work on projects - for the wider estuary area, there are likely legislative goals that someone could support with as a stakeholder. i.e. a working group focused on legislative issues

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Great way to make people aware of programming in overburdened communities.

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continue efforts to promote swimming in the upper harbor and make it accessible

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Include Population density in data analysis about access sites to get a sense of real availability to people. Swimming is included in access but there are different kinds of swimming - research the audience to get a better understanding of how to meet their needs.

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Support real time CSO notification by NYC DEP and others to inform the public

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It's hard for our partners to convene when you don't have facilities. Even a container, hose or sink.

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Great to say we added more water access sites, but we need to highlight and understand the trends in underserved communities. Spatial/Social landscape analysis

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How can we learn from research to apply into the estuary?

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Water quality matters

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Not easy to do but it would be interesting to see who is using the waterfront by collecting zip codes of waterfront users. Are they local residents? Or are they coming from outside the adjacent community?

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Would be great to put together FAQs for monitoring/research to help align data and collection standards (i.e. FAQs on water quality monitoring for citizen science groups).

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Don't want pointless WQ monitoring, that terrorizes children, unless there is a commitment to provide more access.

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Develop an open-source SOP to conduct a wide-scale survey/monitoring program that can be based on good science that everyone can use.

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Understanding the impact of sea level rise and increased storms on the tides of the river.

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Swim and water safety education is the key to increase access especially for disadvantaged communities. Find good models of this to emulate.

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Also how sea level rise will impact physical access to the water - beaches that will be underwater, pier pilings that need to be raised, boathouses that will flood, sites that might lose public bathrooms and potable water.

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better engage public access partners and support their engagement locally / focused on their local needs. How can local groups / tie into the larger effort.

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Relationship between public access and environmental justice issues. Are the people in the neighboring community using the access, or is it people coming from afar.

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Electrification of harbor fleet interests - great potential innovation opportunity.

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Is there more sophisticated testing for WQ? Is entero still the standard? Get innovations into the hands of citizen scientists

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Improve people's understanding of water uses and how can we get to a place that regulations don't restrict the use of the water on days that are safe.

NYC's WAIT app

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Need advanced technology in tracking water usage. People with clickers, don't cut it.

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collect information on how climate change adaption is impacting pubic access

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River pools and other alternative beaches.

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Bringing groups together that support/organize swimming could help us understand better practice (life guards and on water safety, how to alert public on water quality/cso concerns, etc.)

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What are the impact of SLR and coastal flooding on existing public access points?

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Helping disperse a design competition or dispersing grants that can generate innovative solutions to challenges faced at sites.

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How are groups in other parts of the world confronting similar issues, do they have innovative strategies we can learn from.

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How many existing access points are ADA compliant? Those sites that are not, how can we make them ADA compliant?

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Accessing the waterbody when it is safe to and how it can relate (or not) to the WQS/regulations.

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great to get an accurate count of people using the water. Good to get specific places but also recognize whole is great than sum of its part. Lots of energy for specific numbers.

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Bottom-up community based tech to share information.

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Getting success stories out there - sharing it to news outlets, conferences, story telling

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economic value of the estuary and recreational access

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Make it meaningful. Not just telling the public, though it's difficult. Educate public about the issues in understandable layman's ways before a comment period. No public comment periods shorter than a month during July, August, November, December. Public meetings in the evenings or weekends that include a kid activity or ways to cover childcare.

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There are technologies to monitor whether a CSO is discharging in real time. We should be installing monitoring devices.

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Best practices/guidance for how groups interested in developing boating on specific sites might go about their next steps.

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freight capacity / economics of the value

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Can we utilize opportunities to look at zoning/regulations to positively affect public access?

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tracking investment in public access and public parks /

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Yearly HEP meetings on boats!

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Sustain ongoing communication during times that the community can attend and be heard on how land use/access sites should be applied. Pay for community time in disadvantaged areas to make it equitable for them to be able to participate == Feedback loop, and thanking people for their time.

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Same voices are being heard. How can HEP work with our partners to hear from different communities that aren't as engaged?

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Real estate pressure usually results in visual access. Increase reasonable education access in restored wetlands protect the habitat but consider how to show their value.

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putting a value and making the case for maintenance and management concerns about natural areas along the water

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One challenge with public access in disadvantaged communities is that historical lack of access has led to discomfort with the water or lack of knowledge on how to swim. It's important to make these safe before putting people on the water through accessible swim lessons, etc.

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Should we engage with the motorboating jetskiing community?

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Host meetings at a waterfront access site (as we did last year at the Downtown Boathouse) once a year and get to know folks on the ground on their turf.

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Coordinate with other advocacy groups with overlapping interests to reach target audiences, ie, community groups near access sites.

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more time for people to interact at the conference . communications to the general public/ general ot

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Engage them, particularly jetskiers.

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Hold real estate developers responsible for the water access that they promised communities in exchange for being allowed to develop on the waterfront

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Foster collaboration between like-minded organizations and act as a liaison in the sharing of resources and ideas: the water connects us all.

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Use signage as a tool to collect data directly from users: paddlers, swimmers, etc.

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Lack of equitable access to the South Bronx waterfront

Health risks of coming into contact with contaminated water (CSOs, other contaminants) and the public’s awareness of risks

Development along the waterfront poses new challenges to water quality and public access, and affordability to current residents

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Climate change resiliency and preparedness in waterfront communities

Public engagement / public events that increase the communities' awareness to watershed issues

Realtime CSO notification by NYC DEP and others

Resource for policies / calls to action
“The importance of legislative work on projects - for the wider estuary area, there are likely legislative goals that someone could support as a stakeholder. i.e. a working group focused on legislative issues”