The Purchase of the Udalls Cove Watershed

Last time, I explained how Aurora Gareiss and her newly-formed Udalls Cove Preservation Committee enlisted support from a wide array of government officials and citizen activists, resulting in the December 1972 establishment of the Udalls Cove Park. 

But while this signal success had been achieved in just three years, it was only the first step in what would be a four-decade long mission that continues to this day.

In 1973, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced plans for a public housing project near Water Mill Lane in Great Neck that would be built on filled Udalls Cove marshland.

That same year, the Belgrave Sewage Treatment Plant, which serves Great Neck and is located just east of 255th Street in Little Neck, sought to expand by filling in more of Udalls Cove’s marsh. 

And the new Udalls Cove Park approved by New York City on its side of the Nassau/Queens border extended south only as far as the Long Island Rail Road. It did not include the Ravine tucked between 243rd Street in Douglaston and 247th Street in Little Neck, which extends south from the railroad all the way to Northern Boulevard. 

Aurora understood that the ravine was an essential component in what was left of the Udalls Cove ecosystem and that it needed to be added to the new park.

In mid-1974, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which had been created just two years earlier, issued an extraordinary ruling under the newly enacted Tidal Wetlands Act. That law affords protection to saltwater marshlands as well as adjacent areas, which were defined as a 100-foot wide buffer strip inland of a marsh area. 

In what would prove to be a unique decision, the DEC’s commissioner ruled that the entire Udalls Cove Ravine would be designated an “extended adjacent area.” As such, no construction could take place in the ravine without a state wetlands permit, even though the southern end of the ravine is thousands of feet from the actual tidal wetlands. 

In 1974, the DEC took further action to protect the area, denying permission to the Belgrave Sewage Treatment Plant to fill in more of Udalls Cove’s marshland. And HUD – based, in part, on information presented in a newly required study called an Environmental Impact Statement – eventually dropped its plans to fill marshland for that public housing project.

But it was in 1975 that the preservation of the Udalls Cove watershed began in earnest.  In May, Mayor Abraham Beame authorized the purchase of the wetlands areas north of the LIRR for incorporation into the new park that had been authorized two years earlier.

And in July, 1975, a bill sponsored by state Sen. Frank Padavan and state Assemblyman Vincent Nicolosi was signed into law to authorize the purchase of land in the Udalls Cove watershed and to appropriate money for the purpose from the Environmental Quality Bond Act of 1972.

It would take many years to carry out the land purchases. But, at last, the process was formally underway and the first funding made available.