CON EDISON WORKS ON CRITICAL PART OF GREENWAY

With boaters cheering all over the city, Con Edison has begun to dismantle the unused concrete conduits that block passage on the Bronx Kill. The waterway should be navigable by the end of the year.

"Local Bronx boating activists, our elected officials and supporters like Professor Rob Buchanan, Al Butzel, Esq., the NYC Water Trail Association and others played a major role in this collective success," said Harry Bubbins, director of the Friends of Brook Park, an environmental organization based in the South Bronx that rallied boaters with this letter in 2008 to Mayor Bloomberg and Seth Pinsky of the NYC Economic Development Corporation. "We look forward to improved landing and launching sites on both coasts of this vital waterway and to progress on the South Bronx Greenway for a perfect synergy between green and blueways here in the South Bronx."

Con Ed spokesperson Chris Olert explained that the conduits could not be removed until a structure housing new electric feeders was constructed. "We also had to wait for the City Fire Department's fiber optics [to be] in place in the new structure," he said.

Next year, the EDC will break ground on a walkway/bikeway atop the new Con Ed structure, and a new path connecting it to 132nd Street. This will be the Randall's Island Connector, part of the South Bronx Greenway, a huge revitalization project begun six years ago that reconnects residents to the waterfront in the Hunts Point Peninsula. Phase 1 improvements are mostly complete, with the most recent project to open -- Hunts Point Landing, late last month -- providing a new waterfront space with a fishing pier and kayak launch.