Ferry operations are expanding extremely rapidly in New York Harbor and beyond. With the temporary loss of PATH train service to the World Trade Center since September 11, 2001, New York Waterway has become the largest private ferry operator in the nation with its average weekday ridership increasing from 32,000 to 65,000. While ferries are an attractive component of the transportation system, they can also be environmentally damaging: air emissions from ferries can be hundreds of times greater per passenger mile than buses or cars; ferry wakes (which vastly exceed those of all other boats in size, energy and frequency) damage shorelines, wetlands, bulkheads, floating docks and other marine infrastructure; and ferry navigation can interfere with recreational vessels, particularly the growing contingent of hand-powered boaters which use our public access waters.

Riverkeeper and a San Francisco-based environmental group, Bluewater Network, have organized a NY/NJ Clean Ferry Coalition of local environmental groups. In December 2002, we submitted a comment letter to DEC and New York City calling for greater environmental review and mitigation of the air pollution, wakes, and navigational conflicts before the Pier 79 (W 39th St in Manhattan) ferry terminal and other facilities are expanded.

In July 2003, Bluewater Network released a groundbreaking new study which concluded that ferries operating in New York Harbor are 100 to 1,000 times more polluting per passenger than cars, buses or trains. As a result, rapid ferry expansion in New York Harbor is worsening the region’s unhealthy air and threatening public health. Riverkeeper has joined Bluewater Network in calling on New York policymakers to require use of cleaner fuels and technologies before new ferries are put on the water. The main problem is that ferries operate on uncontrolled diesel engines.