While repair work on the collapsed portion of Sinatra Drive North is expected to continue until May 2011, questions remain about the condition of the underlying pier supports for the rest of the roadway, which runs the almost the entire length of the city’s riverfront.
Hudson County is responsible for Sinatra Drive from 12th to 14th street where the collapse occurred on Oct. 8, and has begun a $1.7 million project to replace the timbers supporting the road surface. The wood pilings may have been weakened by erosion, shipworms, and weathering. County officials are hopeful that replacing the timber with concrete pilings will limit these problems uptown, but the municipality is responsible for the rest, the biggest section of the road.
What about the rest of the waterfront?
Corporation Counsel Mark Tabakin said Wednesday the city plans to look into the entire waterfront and the condition of the wood to determine if any of it is in danger of future collapse.
Pier A and Pier C are not considered endangered by shipworms because the pilings are concrete and less susceptible to the damage the creatures can cause.
“People have been replacing wood with concrete, but that’s not perfect either.” – Dr. Thomas Wakeman III, deputy director of the Center for Maritime Systems at Stevens Institute of Technology
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“As the City’s new engineer, Boswell Engineering is conducting an evaluation of the entire waterfront by boat at low tide,” according to a city release.
“Going forward, I am taking a proactive approach,” Zimmer said. “We’re in the process of establishing a comprehensive evaluation system. The engineers are looking at how the other agencies operate. This will be vetted through our corporation counsel within the next month or so.”
Shipworms here for over 300 years
The Hoboken waterfront has received its share of attention throughout the years. In 1917, martial law was enacted on the Hoboken waterfront by the United States Army while soldiers prepared for World War I. In 1954, it was featured in the classic film about mob violence, “On the Waterfront.” Now, the waterfront is attracting attention and concern once again, but this time the threat to the waterfront is no longer saboteurs, corruption or crime, but tiny sea creatures.
They’re referred to as naval shipworms, and they disrupted the passages of Christopher Columbus when they lived in the wooden ships of the famed explorer. Most recently, the species known as teredo navalis has disrupted the Hoboken waterfront. In addition to weathered timber and erosion, the creatures were a contributing factor to the collapse on Sinatra Drive North on Oct. 8.
“They certainly were here 300 years ago,” said Dr. Thomas Wakeman III, deputy director of the Center for Maritime Systems at Stevens Institute of Technology. “That was before we started dumping our sewage and industrial products into the water around the harbor. When they started cleaning the water in 1972, they started cleaning municipal waste [from the river], which carries lots of stuff, including storm water and industrial waste.” The pollution in the Hudson River during the industrial era kept the shipworms away because the creatures couldn’t survive in those conditions.
“They cleaned up the Hudson even further, which has really promoted the recovery of the estuary in the mid-90s,” Wakeman said. “But that was the time the Port Authority started having problems [with shipworms]. They had the problems on the Brooklyn side, and they had to put in concrete as part of their projects.”
Ironically, as the river becomes cleaner, it becomes easier for the shipworms to multiply. The creature burrows into submerged wood, and lives inside, almost like an underwater termite. The creatures can leave wooden structures riddled with holes. In the years before they threatened piers, the teredo navalis would be an annoyance to sailors, because they would burrow inside and consume parts of the wooden ships. They can live up to six weeks sealed in the wood. The individual shipworms typically live between one and three years.
“Yes, we have learned our lessons from our roadway,” said Jim Kennelly, spokesperson for the county. “We can’t rely on the shop timber. We were told we could, but the painful story is 17 years later, we can’t. It appears that this timber underwater construction is not doing so well.”
Mayor Zimmer said she appreciates that the county is taking a comprehensive approach to fix the road, but would like to see the timeframe cut down.
“We can’t raise taxes, so we may have to put off other projects,” Kennelly said.
The reason the walkway is still in good condition is because it has not had to withstand the pressure of trucks and vehicle traffic, compared to the joggers and walkers which usually travel the walkway, according to Kennelly.
Alternatives
Previously, creosote, a toxic disinfectant, was used to keep the shipworms away. However, environmental groups said that this was not the correct solution. Even though the creosote, which coated the wooden piers, would kill the creatures, it was also dangerous for humans because the fish that are gathered for consumption could have been infected, in turn hurting those who eat the seafood.
Wakeman said the answer to the problems will have to be “innovation,” a hallmark of Stevens Institute of Technology.
“People have been replacing wood with concrete, but that’s not perfect either,” Wakeman said. Wakeman, citing the global economy and the supply and demand for steel, said steel pilings would be a great answer to the problem, but would be extremely expensive.
Who knew what?
Political opponents of Mayor Zimmer claim she was warned about the bad conditions on the waterfront last September, but did not act. At Wednesday’s City Council meeting Councilman Michael Russo asked for a written explanation from the mayor’s office detailing what she knew about the situation uptown, where a portion of the roadway owned by Hudson County collapsed on Oct. 8.
“When Michael Russo asks what did the mayor know and when did she know it? He is asking the right question, but he is asking the wrong mayor,” Zimmer said. “Under Mayor [Anthony] Russo and [Dave] Roberts, the repair for Frank Sinatra North was done with marine grade plywood and with me it is going to be concrete. They used marine grade plywood on top of deteriorated shipworm-eaten 100-year old wooden deck and wood piles. Unlike these two prior mayors, there is no way I could have known Frank Sinatra North road was built on rotting wood. Now that I know part of the roadway is built on rotting wood, I am making sure it is fully repaired for the long term with concrete as it should have been the first time. The picture being provided as ‘evidence’ is laughable. The charges being made are malicious and false.”
Russo insists Zimmer knew about the dangers.
“I’m disappointed that she didn’t alert who she needed to whether it be the county or the city engineers,” Russo said. “Beyond all of that, I’m just sick and tired of the constant lies not only to the council but also to the public.”
One former city employee who may have other reasons to criticize the mayor and wished to remain anonymous said that in September 2009 the mayor and a few city officials inspected the uptown walkway on the north side of the Tea Building, and then walked toward the area near the current collapse and discussed the dangers of the wooden pier.
“We all took a road trip up there [uptown] and noticed that the walkway was being compromised [near the Tea Building],” the source said. “We subsequently went back to the whole waterfront and we were actually right at the 14th Street pier, and I remember looking under it and seeing there were some pilings there that could be compromised, very specifically the gazebo we saw there, and said there could be some problems in the future.”
A second former city employee said the meeting uptown took place on Sept. 24, 2009.
“What she didn’t do was try to make any public notice of it or make anybody aware,” the second source said. “It was my opinion at the time, and I told her this, that she was rolling the dice here, and I don’t think that’s the right policy.”
“I will state once again clearly and for the record that neither I nor any member of my administration had any knowledge of any potential dangers with respect to the roadway on Frank Sinatra North,” Zimmer said in an e-mail statement. – RS
Ray Smith can be reached at RSmith@hudsonreporter.com.