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As the Dust Settles

When Questions About an “Emergency” Rise from Paper to Air

Eleanor Rivers

Mar 6

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I have been blaming the cold.

The way the wind cuts across the river this time of year. The way older buildings hold heat but never quite hold air. I told myself that was why my chest felt tight again on certain mornings. Age, perhaps. Winter, certainly.

It had been worse once before.

Years ago, when the old Goldwater hospital came down and the land was scraped clean for what would become Cornell Tech, trucks lined up for weeks. The ground shifted. The air felt heavier. People mentioned it in passing. A cough. A residue. A fine gray film that appeared on windowsills by afternoon and returned the next morning as if it had never left.

I remember wiping my own windows and telling myself it was only dust. Progress has its own weather system. We adjust. We move on. Most people did. Construction ended. Buildings rose. The island congratulated itself on the future.

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My breathing eventually steadied.

I learned not to think about it.

Then the façade work began at The Landings. Scaffolding wrapped the building like gauze. Stone scraped. Surfaces sealed. The air shifted again, subtly. The gray returned, not dramatically, but faithfully. I found myself wiping the windows more often. I found myself pausing before a full inhale.

It is strange how rarely we think about breathing until we must.

Thinking about breathing

Lately it has felt less automatic. Something I have to notice. Something I have to manage. I hope it goes away again. I hope I return to the luxury of not noticing my lungs at all. At my age, hope is softer than confidence.

My granddaughter used to distract me from it. The joy of seeing her, the way she runs toward me without calculation, used to dissolve whatever cloud had formed in my chest. Lately even that has not quite done the trick. The cloud lingers.

This morning I was heading to the subway because Dr. Resnick closed his clinic a few years ago, and if you want someone to listen carefully to your breathing now, you must go into the city. I scheduled the appointment reluctantly. Just to check something. Women say that when something feels slightly off but not yet alarming.

I paused catching my breath in a way I did not need to years ago.

There are others on the platform now. Some unhoused. Some struggling. I try, quietly, to see them as people first. To imagine the shape of their days. To remember that no one arrives here without a story. And yet, when my lungs feel tight, I stand a little further away than I once did. I wonder if they notice me the way I notice them. I wonder if, to them, I am just another older woman hovering at the edge, already fading into the background. There is something intimate in that recognition. I do not know whether it comforts me or unsettles me more.

There is an irony in it that I cannot ignore. I have feared becoming fragile. Feared being overlooked. Feared becoming background. And here they are, already living in that space of near-invisibility. I worry about getting too close to the platform edge, about unpredictability, about my breath. But I am aware now that in the quiet arithmetic of progress, they and I may share more than I would have wanted to admit. We are both, in different ways, at risk of being forgotten.

Progress has a way of not caring for the weakest. The elderly. The fragile. The ones who move slower through turnstiles and elevator doors. I sometimes feel I must fight my way to the subway station simply to avoid becoming part of the background, like dust that settles and is later wiped away.

Sitting near the pigeon lady’s old spot on the center bench, it occurred to me that perhaps we are not so different. She was easy to overlook once she became routine. I, too, have become routine. The island changes around us. Buildings rise. Structures fall. Those who cannot keep pace are absorbed into memory.

People as problems to be solved

Later that evening, I watched the recording of the February 2 meeting of the Manhattan Community Board 8 Roosevelt Island Committee, the local advisory body that represents Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side on land use, city services, and development matters. It was held over Zoom and chaired by Paul Krikler.

The discussion turned to unhoused neighbors on the subway platform. Dan Sadlier spoke about affordability and systems straining under rising rents. Sharon Pope-Marshall expressed compassion. Others echoed concern. Rick O’Conor read an email from a parent describing her daughter feeling followed on the platform. The temperature shifted. It always does when someone mentions their child.

Safety and compassion sat side by side, neither dismissing the other.

Dan said something that lingered.

“We get weird when we treat people as problems to be solved.”

He meant it gently. And he was right.

But I could not stop thinking about air.

The Architect and the Excavation

When the agenda moved to the steam plant demolition south of the Tramway, the conversation lifted from the platform below ground to the space above it. Zora Boyadzhieva introduced herself clearly. Licensed architect. Twenty-five years of experience. A practitioner of adaptive reuse. A mother raising her children on this island.

She explained what buildings from the 1930s are made of: heavy concrete foundations, steel structures, masonry load-bearing walls. Strong bones.

Apparently the only fragile thing in the room was the timeline.

The building was decommissioned in 2013. It was maintained for years. The last structural review occurred around 2020. Then, beginning in 2023, violations began to accumulate. It quickly developed a condition called “sudden emergency violations.” Eventually, an emergency demolition order. I love how emergencies here have anniversaries. They wait patiently for the right calendar year.

She never said the emergency was manufactured. She simply laid out the dates like a row of dominoes and let gravity do the rest. It’s amazing how a structure can survive ninety years of weather, but not three years of administrative attention.

Residents asked for the structural report. For documentation of contaminants. For demolition plans. For testing results. Since December, she said, there had been silence.

Judy Berdy followed, urging formal action. Tibor Krisko confirmed that he and Zora had drafted a resolution to move to the full board. Paul guided the discussion deliberately, clarifying process, ensuring voices were heard, and preparing the committee for a vote.

Then Kalin Kresnitchki shared a photograph taken earlier that day from the Queensboro Bridge.

In it, excavation is visible. Oil tanks have been removed. Soil is exposed. Transparency, however, is still underground. The tennis bubble stands nearby. The sports fields are within view.

The emergency, once described in broad language, was no longer abstract.

It had moved from paperwork to earth.

Kalin noted that tanks installed decades ago often sit in contaminated soil. That excavation had already occurred. That whatever testing exists has not been publicly shared with residents. That remediation, if done later, could be costly. That children play tennis and soccer within sight of the site.

“Maybe we should postpone tennis,” he said. Roosevelt Island’s first sport where the opponent might be particulate matter. Then more quietly, Zora added, “But we cannot postpone breathing.” That’s the problem with air. It refuses to follow agenda order. Testing may exist. Sharing it, seemingly, is the real hazardous material.

I do not know what is in that soil.

I only know that my breathing has felt different lately. As it did during the last major excavation. As it did when the island assured itself that dust was temporary and progress permanent.

Zora was not an agitator. She was a professional asking technical questions. Which, on this island, can feel far more disruptive. And Paul was not a bystander. He was the conductor, making sure the questions were heard in full.

The committee advanced a resolution calling for a pause until sufficient transparency and documentation were provided. Paul guided the process calmly. Zora remained composed. The ground, however, had already been opened.

The full board would later vote unanimously to request that the work be frozen pending review. Even so, earth once moved does not return easily to stillness.

I hope I am wrong.

I hope this is winter. Age. Renovation dust that will settle.

But I would like to know.

Because breathing should not require speculation.

And progress, if it is to mean anything at all, should not ask the fragile to keep quiet while the soil is moved beneath them.

Some people move through the day without noticing their lungs at all.

I would like to be one of them again.

Editorial Note: The petition calling for a temporary pause of demolition pending full public disclosure of structural and environmental documentation can be found here. Residents are encouraged to review the language carefully and decide for themselves whether the request reflects their position.

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