“From coastal resiliency and sustainable green practices to the preservation of affordable housing, world-class public art, and vibrant, year-round programming in award-winning public spaces, Battery Park City leads the way in many of the measures that makes cities livable."

Raju Mann

President & CEO
  • 09/13
  • BPC People
  • Community
  • Environment

BPC PARKS HAPPENINGS: SEPTEMBER 2022

BPC Parks Happenings is a monthly “snapshot” of the Authority’s work in maintaining Battery Park City’s parks and public spaces. Scroll down to see what’s on tap for September!

Long, hot summer: Parks water features will remain activated throughout the month as the temperatures stay warm.

All the buzz: As part of Climate Week NYC 2022, join a presentation and talk led by Alveole beekeepers at the Battery Park City hive located at the Chambers Street entrance to Rockefeller Park. Learn about the importance of urban beekeeping and its benefit to sustainability efforts in BPC and throughout the city. So come meet the beekeeper on Friday, September 23 from 1:30-2:30PM.

Spotted: Ladybugs: The Nine-Spotted Ladybug, a native and endangered species, is the State insect of New York. To help to repopulate these ecologically-important insects that keep our flora healthy and safe from other plant-eating insects, and building on last year’s similar efforts, this month BPCA is releasing ladybugs throughout Battery Park City’s public spaces. This effort is part of the larger Lost Ladybug Project, a decades-long initiative led by Cornell University researchers to survey ladybug populations across New York State and determine the cause(s) of this particular species’ decline.

Spotted: Lanternflies: Our Parks Operations team will be checking Battery Park City’s Spotted Lanternfly traps weekly and monitoring their activity, dispatching a handheld vacuum for removal of the insects when large volumes of them are found.

Read more: Calling All Citizen Scientists! Use our iNaturalist page to document your findings.

– For the dogs: Battery Park City’s dog waste compost program continues with daily collection and processing of waste from our three dog runs. Since the start of the program, more than 4,600 pounds of dog waste has been collected and processed into compost, with the first fully-tested and cured dog waste compost applied along the West Street / Route 9A median earlier this year. We have now added an additional drop-off location on the BPC Esplanade, just south of Esplanade Plaza, to make participating in this program easier than ever.

– Winning with Zero Waste: As a decades-long leader in sustainability, BPCA is striving to divert 90% of what is sent to landfill! To continue helping toward our Zero Waste goal, we ask that you rethink what you are bringing into the parks, and if possible please recycle or compost items. For our part, we’ll keep watching and adjusting the recycling cans to ensure they are in the right places for optimal use and updating signage on landfill and recycling cans across our open spaces.

To that end, this month we’re conducting a parks and street waste audit, entailing the manual weighing and sorting of waste to determine its weight and composition. Waste audits help us to better understand how much waste these spaces are generating and how much of it is disposed properly (and diverted from landfill).

Read more about our Materials & Waste efforts as part of Battery Park City’s Sustainability Plan.

* Reminder: Wagner Park will be closing this fall as South Battery Park City Resiliency Project work gets underway. Read more here.

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