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Eco-Minded Annual Event Promotes Recreation on the Water

Oversized sky blue arrows pointed the way toward that Saturday’s activities at Governor’s Island National Monument. One led participants to kayaks made of cardboard, another to boat tours of New York Harbor, and still others to paddle-boarding and assorted water sports. Those were some of the activities slated for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance’s City of Water Day 2013.

“To be on the water is really very special… There’s a lot of history,” said Adine Pusey, 47, who lives in Brooklyn’s waterside Gowanus neighborhood and attended Water Day with her husband. They had just finished a boat tour of Lower Manhattan, Ellis Island and, from there, a bit of the water’s edge in New Jersey.

Six years ago, the alliance designed the day to promote recreation on the water, awareness of the waterways and the impact that human activity can have on them.

“We don’t turn our backs on the water and forget that the water is a resource we can use,” said Cortney Worrall, the alliance’s chief operating officer.

“It’s important for economics and… health,” Water Day participant Pusey said. “It’s important to keep our water clean and safe.”

Twenty kayakers founded the alliance, which now has 600 members. In addition to hosting the annual Saturday event, members advocate for an affordable and convenient system of ferries serving all five boroughs, improvements to the area’s water ecology and other proposals outlined in Vision 2020: New York City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. It was released in 2011.

More than 700 businesses and non-profit organizations sponsored the most recent Water Day, Worrall said. Its free activities included fishing, boat tours and a race in cardboard kayaks glued together with, among other items, waterproof tape.

“My guess is that it started at engineering schools where the students are trying to built a great boat,” Worrall said. ” We thought this would be a really fun way of showing how fun the water can be along parts of the harbor.”

While fun was on the agenda, Water Day attendees such as Johnny Jones, 39, said he understood the serious side of the alliance’s work. “I think we’re smashing up everything, aren’t we? Covering it up with concrete,” Jones said. “It’s nice to save the world… you know, for the kids, the next generation.”

Anastasia Krasnoslobdtseva, 27, agreed that it’s important to preserve waterways. “There are chemicals and negative things that potentially can impact our water,” she said.

Samantha Berlan gave an 11-year-old’s perspective on the need to protect waterways: “Because if it wasn’t there, I mean, it wouldn’t be there.”

What the alliance is doing is a “generational effort,” Worrall said. “It’s going to take generations for the waterfront to become what it can be, to live up to it’s potential.”