NYC's New Initiative That’s Bound To Crush

NYC’s waterfronts have a crushing problem, and the Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering decided to solve it by… crushing. 

The waterfronts of NYC have over 800 neglected and derelict boats along the shoreline that have been sitting there for years. NYC’s Park’s Department announced a new initiative yesterday in which they’ll be crushing the abandoned boats along the waterfront to dispose of them. 

At the announcement event in Brooklyn’s Community College, Chief of Citywide Waterfront and Marine Operations Nate Grove said, “We're truly a city of water, and this issue of derelict, abandoned vessels and other marine debris — it's incumbent upon us to be more proactive in dealing with it. It's not only a navigational and an eyesore, but also a hazard to our environment. The leaking fluids, the microplastics that leach out of these fiberglass hulls. It’s an issue for our ecosystem, as well as for our recreational boating community.”

To demonstrate how one crushes boats, a worker on a bulldozer crushed an abandoned vessel with the tractor’s claws and dumped the pieces into a large dumpster to the cheers of city officials. 

Do you know someone who never outgrew crushing large things with toy trucks? This might be just the job they were waiting for.