Aurora Pond's Namesake

In my previous column, I discussed how Aurora Gareiss was riding a wave of public sentiment and scientific understanding that provided a favorable context and impetus to her efforts when she set out to save Udalls Cove in 1969.

During that year, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required for the first time in history that government decision makers consider the environmental impacts of major projects before embarking on them.

Known as NEPA, this law is the source of the now ubiquitous Environmental Impact Statement, which lists positive and negative environmental effects of proposed projects.

The federal law was soon copied by many states, including New York, and even by some municipalities, such as New York City. 

NEPA took effect on the first day of 1970, starting what is often known as the “environmental decade,” a period actually extending 11 years to the end of 1980 during which every major federal environmental law was enacted. 

On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated and tens of thousands of citizens participated. NEPA was soon followed by the federal Clean Air Act, which was first enacted in 1963 but significantly amended in 1970. 

Thanks to that law, our motor vehicles today are more than 95 percent cleaner than they were in 1970. And despite geometric growth in population, energy demand and vehicular travel, our air today is much cleaner than it was 40 years ago.

In terms of wetlands preservation, the most important moment was when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. That law established a national system of regulating discharges of pollution into our nation’s water and established limits on the filling of wetlands. 

New York State followed suit in 1973 with its own law to limit filling of tidal wetlands (those in salt water ecosystems) and soon thereafter with another law governing the filling of freshwater wetlands. 

It was into this fertile soil that Aurora Gareiss planted the seeds that would eventually grow into the Udalls Cove Park and Preserve, affording permanent protection to the remaining undeveloped wetlands and wooded uplands of the Udalls Cove watershed.

She envisioned a tract of open space extending south from the edge of Udalls Cove – which is the eastern arm of Little Neck Bay between the Douglaston and Great Neck peninsulas -- all the way to Northern Boulevard. 

On the east side of this tract, the protected marshlands extended along the Long Island Rail Road tracks nearly as far as the Great Neck station. To the west, the salt marsh snaked along a narrow corridor between the houses of Douglaston and Little Neck and then changed from salt to freshwater wetlands near a small pond nestled on Sandhill Road (known locally as “the back road”) at the foot of the LIRR tracks between the two northeast Queens neighborhoods.

On the south side of the tracks, the wetlands gave way to woods in the steep-sided ravine through which flows Gabler’s Creek. 

Today, Aurora Gareiss’ vision has become a reality as all but four acres of that swath of wilderness has been purchased and protected by state or local governments. And the pretty pond near the boundary of the salt and freshwater ecosystems now carries her name - Aurora Pond.

I’ll write more about the pond in a later column.