Straddled among apartment buildings and shopping squares sits Aqueduct Walk, a sectional strip of green paths, basketball courts, and playgrounds.

The walkway cuts through Morris Heights and Kingsbridge, ideally offering a place for bike rides, jogging, and peaceful strolling. But during a typical trek through the five-acre walkway, the Norwood News spotted hoards of household trash, junk piles, overgrown weeds and foliage, and used syringes. Public urination and drug use were out in the open.

Despite efforts by local officials and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Aqueduct Walk remains plagued with all the physical signifiers of institutional neglect.

This week, the city announced new plans to install boxes throughout Aqueduct Walk to dispose of used needles, as part of an attempt to secure green spaces throughout the Bronx. Along with offering safer ways to dispose of needles, the city also plans to collaborate with local outreach groups to help educate drug abusers.

Not everyone is convinced the needle disposable program will be good for the walk.

“It’s gonna attract more. They’re already doing it,” said Michelle Rivera, sitting on a bench in Aqueduct Walk Plaza. “Now they’ll be like, ‘let’s sit by the park and do it more.’ It’s so sad,” she said.

Remnants of drug use are commonly seen abandoned throughout the walk, according to local resident Leon Sutherland.

“Yesterday, as I was moving my car, I had to move a syringe. That’s actually been an issue,” Sutherland said. “I don’t think I would want something to put syringes in. It’s more about fixing the problem of drug abuse.”

Sutherland also pointed to the trash problem that’s plagued the park. The issue of cleanliness was touched on at a recent Parks Committee meeting at Community Board 7, which covers a portion of the greenway. Joseph Magneri, the administrative Parks and Recreation manager, said efforts to keep the park clean have fallen short representing the latest in a series of questions over what to do about the walk’s ongoing waste problem.

“We did a cleanup on a Thursday, so I have what it looked like on Thursday. And then on a Saturday, what it looked like,” said Magneri. “It was like we didn’t do anything.”

Aqueduct Walk’s increasing crime rate should also alarm local officials. In 2016, there were two felony assaults at the walk compared to eight crimes in 2017, a 300 percent increase. The nature of the crimes has also changed, with steep upticks in robberies and grand larceny.

Aqueduct Walk is constructed above the Old Croton Aqueduct, an archaic viaduct that moved water from Westchester to Lower Manhattan during the 1840s. After the waterway was replaced by the parallel New Croton Aqueduct, the city absorbed the old aqueduct line, converting it to public greenways and playgrounds.

Parts of the walk are elevated, much like Manhattan’s High Line, the popular tourist attraction. But, unlike the High Line, the Bronx’s leafy thoroughfare is less than picturesque.

Like all city parks, the cleanliness, structural and environmental conditions of the walk are rated through the Department of Parks and Recreation’s Park Inspection Program (PIP). Periodic inspections of Aqueduct Walk have produced the same observations: excessive litter, graffiti, weeds and unkempt grass, along with broken pavements and sidewalks, which contribute to the walk’s consistent ‘unacceptable’ PIP rating.

In a statement to the Norwood News, Councilmember Fernando Cabrera of District 14, which covers the entire Aqueduct Walk, says the impending rezoning of Jerome Avenue will include $10 million in funding to continue renovations of the park.

However, current revitalization plans for parts of the walk, including projects at Aqueduct Walk Plaza, and the construction of a comfort station on 182nd Street, are behind completion goals, according to the Parks Department’s Capital Tracker website.

“We need people from the area to get involved. That is what we need,” said Barbara Stronczer, chair of CB7’s Parks and Recreation Committee. “There doesn’t seem to be any interest among people to try to pitch in and do something.”

The walk remains largely insulated from public streets, opening the door for anyone to dump trash at the site. Indeed, the main problem that continues to result in the walk’s ‘unacceptable’ rating is the overwhelming amount of trash visible everywhere. Miscellaneous car parts, Ramen Noodle cups, a broken seven-foot basketball hoop stand and roving trash bags were just some of the observations logged by the Norwood News.

Stronczer also suspects Aqueduct Walk has another source of garbage: lazy neighbors dumping their trash through the window. “Evidently, people just dump their garbage. I don’t know if some of the garbage is coming out of windows, because there’s quite a bit of apartments with windows that face the walk,” Stronczer said.

During the summer, safety and cleanliness at most public parks decline since more people are spending time in the parks.

Stronczer believes the solution is to create a community group specifically tasked with maintaining the walk.

“I’ve said all along that we need a group called the ‘Friends of Aqueduct Walk,’ what they’ve done in other parks,” Stronczer said. “Be able to get a group of friends, who have some interest in it, who’ll put up some signage from time to time. We’ll have clean up, talk to the area residents, people who live there, and say, ‘give us a hand.’”

Additional reporting by David Cruz. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.