The South Bronx is surrounded by water, but for all practical purposes, it is a landlocked country.

This once seemed to be unchangeable in the face of the bulk of the Major Deegan and Bruckner expressways, which Robert Moses built at ground level along the water, the Harlem River Train Yards, and the slew of industrial lots that have taken up what is prime waterfront real estate.

But now community activists and city planners are trying to reclaim the waterfront between an area just beyond the Third Avenue Bridge to the East River, about a two-mile stretch encompassing the area known as Port Morris. The ultimate goal will be to create a contiguous greenway from Hunts Point on the East River all the way to Yankee Stadium on the Harlem River.

Elsewhere, in Hunts Point just to the north, the community sees encouraging signs.

On March 9, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the master plan for the 690-acre Hunts Point Peninsula, which includes the $110 million Hunts Point Fish and Produce Markets, where the Fulton Fish Market will soon move in. The planned Barretto Point Park, at the southern end of Tiffany Street, will offer waterfront access on the peninsula’s western shore. Riverside Park, which is under construction, will offer a link to the Bronx River.

A day later, on March 10, the city council rezoned Port Morris to stimulate housing development there. Now the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, the city’s Economic Development Corporation and its planning department, and other groups are beginning work on proposals to add to the green space in the area, though those plans have not been disclosed.

On May 24, the city allocated $220 million to be spent on parks development throughout the borough as part of a settlement that will clear the way for the construction of a water filtration system in Van Cortlandt Park. Community groups are hoping some of that money will go toward development of the Port Morris waterfront.

“If it’s going to happen in Hunts Point, it has to be like a horse and carriage. It has to be done simultaneously,” the chairman of Community Board 1, which includes Port Morris, Mott Haven, and Melrose, George Rodriguez, said. “The waterfront is crucial. It has not been developed but it has a lot of potential.”

Mr. Rodriguez added what has become a tagline of the community’s efforts to sell the waterfront as something bigger than the community that lives there. “We are the gateway to the mainland.”

That statement also underscored how far the community has to go to create the waterfront of its dreams. Dominating the landscape now are the 96-acre train yards owned by the state Department of Transportation, which incorporates a waste management facility where a steady stream of garbage trucks dump their payloads throughout the day. Twice a day – in the early morning and late evening – a train rumbles through the neighborhood to take much of the city’s garbage away. On the East River, less than a mile away, two General Electric substations built for temporary use are sandwiched between an old ferry marina and a pier.

Though much has been made of the new “SoBro” – with its SoHo-cum-Williamsburg artist lofts, row of antique stores and smattering of new bars – the majority of the current South Bronx resembles the old poverty-entrenched South Bronx. In 2000, the median family income was $16,000, compared to $30,000 in the borough and $42,000 citywide, according to census data. In the years since, the neighborhood’s median income has risen about $2,000, the community design program manager at New Yorkers for Parks, Pamela Governale, said.

“They’re not going to the Hamptons or the beach, so waterfront access is really important,” she said of the community in Community Board 1.”With their involvement, this will be something that comes to fruition.”

Even though the Bronx has the most park space of any borough, only 2% of Port Morris real estate is made up of parks or open space. Nonetheless, community groups have identified several spaces that could be developed, they say.

Last night, New Yorkers for Parks had its first meeting with members of the community to discuss ways a small spit of land just beyond the Third Avenue Bridge on the Harlem River could be turned into a small waterfront park. A community group pushing for its redevelopment and working with New Yorkers for Parks, Friends of Brook Park, already offers kayak and canoe rides on the river. Though hemmed in by the Bruckner Expressway and a railroad line, the less than 1-acre plot of land is one of the few unobstructed riverfront properties that is undeveloped and owned by the city. It has a grand name: Harlem River Waterfront Park. But it is also called “Garbagia Land.”

“Like Disneyland but more nitty gritty,” the director of Friends of Brook Park, Harry Bubbins, said. The name refers to the waste management site and the train tracks that carry the garbage away.

The most ambitious, though as yet undetailed plan, is being called the South Bronx Greenway, and both the city’s planning department and economic development corporation are working on proposals. Both agencies said their ideas were in their infancy and offered no details. Much like other greenways, though, the goal is to create a contiguous piece of land along the waterfront, beginning from an area east of where the Triborough Bridge crosses from Randall’s Island to the Bronx and moving along the East River waterfront north to Hunts Point.

The area in Port Morris along the East River is a combination of private and public land, including the two GE power plants and an old pier that had, in the early 20th century, a floating bathhouse filled by water from the East River. Mr. Bubbins said he has been pushing city officials to restore a ferry marina, along with its rusted old gantries, into an environmental education center. The ferry used to transport passengers to the former tuberculosis sanitarium of Brothers Island.

“That’s what we’d like to do rather than have it be target practice for police,” Mr. Bubbins said, referring to the area’s current part-time use.

Curtis Eisert would one day like to sell his swatch of pavement that abuts the East River next door to the dilapidated ferry building.

“Cling! Cling! I’d be retired,” he said. “I’d be sitting on a beach with those umbrellas counting the money.”

Mr. Eisert, whose yard stores tower cranes, doesn’t suspect change will happen anytime soon, however. The overwhelming need, as industrial storage space declines in the area, is for a place to store equipment.

“There’s no place else to unload from the water,” he said. While that may be an encouraging sentiment to the ears of residents and waterfront planners, the reality is a bit further away. A two-story warehouse across the street from Mr. Eisert’s yard is an “artists’ loft,” he said, but the closest he has come to participating in the new SoBro is storing multimillion-dollar sculptures by the artist Richard Serra. One piece, a wide band of curved and rusting iron that sold for $2 million, sat on a flatbed truck waiting delivery. To hear Mr. Eisert tell it, the sculpture’s owner had, like so many people these days, found a hidden gem in his waterfront property.

“He says, ‘I love the way it rusts in the salt air.'”