Barges Would Be Identified Under New Rules
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Elected officials are calling for stricter rules for construction companies that “abandon and sink” their barges in the city’s waterways once their work is complete.
Council members David Yassky and Eric Gioia and Assemblyman Joseph Lentol are proposing new state and city laws that would require visible identification and contact information on all barges to discourage owners from leaving them to rust and eventually sink.
At a press conference in Lower Manhattan yesterday, the lawmakers singled out Pile Foundation Construction Co., saying the state Department of Environmental Conservation has ordered the company to remove or clean up its rusting barges in recent months.
In September, the company was fined and ordered to dredge up two barges that it sunk in Jamaica Bay, and this year it was issued a summons for trash that floated up from a barge in the East River.
Residents and environmental activists in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn have also complained that the company abandoned a deteriorating barge in Newtown Creek.
“The city and the state have got to do more to make sure that this ‘abandon and sink’ practice is absolutely stopped,” Mr. Yassky said yesterday.
The owner of Pile Foundation Construction Co., Anthony Rivara, said in an interview that his company has not forgotten about its Newtown Creek barge and that it is making plans to remove the barge and sell it for scrap.
Mr. Rivara said his barges “cannot sink” under normal circumstances and blamed children who cut holes in the barges at Jamaica Bay for those vessels’ sinking.