Nature access for all: The evolution of the Newburgh Wants a Park Campaign

When we launched the ECP's Regenerative Communities (RC) program in 2020, our intention was to recruit and train Hudson Valley Regenerators that not only would know how to grow free food for their neighbors, but would also know how to work collectively with others to turn their communities into healthier, more democratic, and more equitable places.

In 2020, the ECP leased city-owned property at Crystal Lake which Regenerators Anusha Mehar, Katie Collins, and Betty Bastidas have worked to turn into The Sanctuary through their vision, blood, sweat, love and laughter. Not only did the garden become a source of fresh, nutritious and free food for community members, but it has helped catalyze community awareness and use of the 110 acre city-owned property and created new energy to protect the lake and forest permanently for future generations.

Residents of Newburgh and ECP’s Jason Angell (back left) and Betty Bastidas (front row right) at the September 25, 2023 City Council meeting.

As residents of Newburgh, both Anusha and Betty knew first hand that protecting greenspace was a matter of deep equity for Newburgh’s low income, black, indigenous, and person of color (BIPOC) community. As a state designated Environmental Justice community, Newburgh residents bear negative environmental consequences like unsafe drinking water from PFAS contamination and exposure to pollution from industrial operations like the DuPont manufacturing facility, the Stewart Air National Guard Base, and the Danskammer’s fracked gas plant. At the same time, they both knew that community members were facing increasing health disparities (with Newburgh’s asthma rates more than twice the statewide average), high food insecurity, and disparities around access to nature.

After meetings that included City of Newburgh Executive Staff, the Mayor and Councilmembers, and Scenic Hudson, we realized that protecting Crystal Lake as a park and nature preserve might be possible with enough public support. Last winter, the ECP worked with Anusha and Betty to develop a campaign plan and raise seed funding to support the initial work. In March 2023 the ECP was awarded a $15,000 grant from The Conservation Alliance as a fiscal sponsor for the Newburgh Wants a Park campaign, staffed by Anusha, Betty and Jason.

We partnered with thread collective, a local urban design organization, to analyze City of Newburgh land uses and existing access to greenspace and to develop a policy brief to make the case for a new park. Among other critical findings, we’ve discovered that designating 110 acres of Crystal Lake as a new city park would achieve environmental equity for Ward 3, a predominantly Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) neighborhood that is the largest geographic ward in the city with the least access to city parkland within the ward (less than an acre). It would double the city’s parkland to better align with American Planning Association recommendations of 12.5% urban parkland coverage, currently at only 2.8% in Newburgh.

Armed with important data, we began to educate community members, build public support, and ask residents to help envision how a new park and preserve would best meet the needs of the community. To date we have successfully organized 22 community-based organizations that have signed on as campaign Community Partners, gained 900 petition signatures in support of designation, mailed 2,305 educational flyers to Ward 3 residents within a 15 minute walk of Crystal Lake, knocked on hundreds of doors, held three city-wide community events to gather input that attracted 111 participants, and had 250 residents complete a community survey to prioritize potential land uses and increase access.

Recently, all of this work and gathered solidarity culminated in over 90 minutes of public comment offered by Newburgh residents in support of Crystal Lake’s designation as a public park at the September 25, 2023 meeting of the City of Newburgh Common Council. At that meeting, Mayor Harvey and a majority of council members publicly stated that they supported a city local law that would protect Crystal Lake permanently. The Mayor requested that the City’s Corporate Counsel contact New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation to confirm what steps are necessary if the city acts to designate the space as a park.

With the help of all of our community partners, we have climbed the mountain…but there is still a great deal of work to do to win Newburgh’s largest greenspace for residents that already experience inequitable access to nature. The city has expressed concerns over how to pay for the ongoing maintenance of a park given never enough funds to meet the list of community needs in the city. We have begun to have conversations with community partners about the different options that might protect all of the 110 acres while addressing the city’s concerns over costs.  We must continue to do the community organizing work and complete and widely disseminate our written brief, with all of the campaign staff working on this effort without payment because they realize what an important victory this would be.

This is a story about how small things can become big things, how a small public food garden might just grow into the largest protected greenspace in Newburgh. Together we win.