BOTH SIDES NOW!

This is the third year of the Harlem River Festival, and the first time that planners come from both sides of the historic river.

"We see ourselves as uniting communities," said Chauncy Young, coordinator of the Bronx-based Harlem River Working Group (HRWG), a consortium of community organizations, government agencies and commercial stakeholders focused on improving the environmental quality of and access to the river. The HRWG organizes the Harlem River Festival each year.

This year's weeklong festival begins Monday, October 15 when schoolchildren in canoes push off from a dock at Roberto Clemente State Park (above) on the Bronx side, to explore the river with Wilderness Inquiry guides. On October 17, the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality and the HRWG will co-sponsor a conference, open to the public, from 6pm to 8pm, with scientists from US Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, NY State Department of Environmental Conservation and others to discuss the condition of the river.

The festival concludes Saturday, October 20, 10am to 4pm, with a six-hour outdoor celebration of boat rides, educational activities, food, music and entertainment. Watch for a parade of fireboats and kayaks, a log-rolling contest, and a Battle of the Boroughs Regatta featuring a Row New York (Manhattan, above) crew racing a crew from Harlem River Community Rowing (Bronx).

The Harlem River Working Group's enthusiastic grassroots work caught Washington's attention. About a year ago, the Urban Waters Federal Partnership (UWFP) selected the Bronx & Harlem River Watersheds as one of seven projects across the nation to reconnect urban communities with their waterways by improving coordination among federal agencies and collaborating with community-led revitalization projects. This past June, Harlem River advocates from community organizations joined representatives from city, state, and federal agencies on the EPA vessel Clean Waters and together they assessed the Harlem River corridor by water. "The vision is to develop Greenway paths and access points on both sides," Mr. Young told WaterWire.