Everything about The Bronx River totally explained
The
Bronx River, approximately 24 miles (38 km) long, flows through southeast
New York in the
United States. Its
Native American name was the
Aquahung before the arrival of European colonists, like
Jonas Bronck, for whom the Bronx and its river are named, in 1639.
It rises in the
Kensico Reservoir, in
Westchester County north of
New York City. It flows south past
White Plains, then south-southwest through the northern suburbs, passing
Edgemont,
Tuckahoe,
Eastchester, Westchester County, New York, and
Bronxville. It divides
Yonkers from
Mount Vernon, and flows into the northern end of
The Bronx, southward through
Bronx Park and through urbanized areas of the Bronx. It empties into the
East River, a tidal
strait connected to
Long Island Sound, between the
Soundview and
Hunts Point neighborhoods.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the river became a natural sewer into which
industrial waste was being poured every day. An early mill on the industrialized river was the Lorillard Tobacco Mill, preserved in the grounds of the
New York Botanical Gardens. With the decline of
manufacturing in the area, the river continued to receive effluent from the communities that lined its banks. Recently action has been taken by different environmental groups, including the
Bronx River Alliance, to return the river to its original state as a clean waterway. The river became a pet project of
U.S. Representative José Serrano, who secured US$14.6 million in federal funding to support the rehabilitation of the waterway, into which some Westchester towns continued to discharge
raw sewage intermittently, in
storm drain overflow, as late as 2006; under a
28 November 2006 agreement the municipalities of
Scarsdale,
White Plains,
Mount Vernon and
Greenburgh agreed to stop dumping sewage in the Bronx River by
1 May 2007. Local
Alewife, from a coastal
tributary in nearby
Connecticut, were released in the river in March 2006. The alewife were expected to
spawn in the river's headwaters. Their offspring would spend the summer in the river, migrate out to sea in the fall, and in three to five years return, like all
anadromous fishes, to their spawning grounds. Stocking was intended to be repeated annually for the following five years, to build up the new resident population. The fishes, among a group called "river herring", feed low on the
food-chain and help reduce
eutrophication.
Along much of its length in Westchester County and the northern Bronx the river is paralleled by the
Bronx River Parkway and its associated bicycle path from
Bronxville to the
Kensico Dam plaza. A project, the
Bronx River Greenway, proposes a unified management plan for the narrow ribbon of riverside green spaces in the eight-mile stretch of river that passes through Westchester County and The Bronx, as part of the
East Coast Greenway.
In the southern Bronx, the river has become a popular destination for urban
canoeing in New York City. It also bisects the
Bronx Zoo. A
tram built in the late 20th century takes Zoo customers over the river to an exhibit of Asian animals on the left bank, with a narration presenting the river as the
Irrawaddy.
In February 2007 biologists with the
Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Zoo, spotted a
beaver in the river. "There hasn't been a sighting of a beaver lodge or a beaver in New York City for over 200 years. It sounds fantastic, but one of the messages that comes out of this is if you give wildlife a chance it'll come back," said John Calvelli, a spokesman for the Society.
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