From the back of Bill Sepe's house you can see one end of a
1.3 mile railroad bridge over the Hudson River. It was abandoned twenty years
ago. In 1991, Bill began to wonder about turning it into a 35' wide walkway
and he approached Government Officials. They appeared interested but nothing
happened. Someone started the permitting process to demolish the bridge for
salvage, and so Bill formed a group to save the structure. Now, on Saturdays
and some weekdays in good weather, volunteers form work crews. So far, they
have constructed a walkway that goes a thousand feet out onto the bridge, and
a viewing platform.
Bill earns his living as a handyman, and then spends another 40 hours or so
a week on working the bridge. I asked him why he took the project on. "Why
does somebody pick up litter? I don't know. I walk out of my car from a parking
lot into a building, and if there is a candy wrapper there, sometimes I pick
it up and sometimes I don't. This is just a big piece of litter. Also, the first
time I walked on the bridge, I knew it was doable. And the bridge is an unique
experience. You experience the beauty of the mighty Hudson River and the majestic
views at your own pace. Without intrusions.
"This project is bigger than me, bigger than my limitations. It has taught
me a lot about human potential. For me, it is very much about personal growth.
The whole project is constantly on a razor's edge. It operates on belief and
not everybody can believe. That can hinder my interactions. When I get angry
or upset because someone can't see what I see, it shows my shortcomings. My
impatience gets in the way of their learning.
"At the same time, this project has helped me see that I am more of a person
than I have shown. This might be my one chance to contribute something of significance.
By taking what may look like the riskier choice, I am actually taking the more
living choice. The chance make a pass at life. The choice to live, as opposed
to be safe. I am finding that has great rewards. A lot of what we are afraid
of is a myth. I am glad I choose the way I do. Most of the time....
"The other part is honesty. I find that when I am truthful and honest,
I get truth and honesty back. And trust. Sometimes when I am dealing with lawyers
and corporate people, I lose touch with that. To me, our greatest asset is the
truth. When we have had problems, they inevitably are related to not having
the truth known by enough people.
"Our local utility owns the only relatively flat approach to the bridge,
and for a long time, we have been dealing with them to get access. (Since then,
someone donated the use of a backhoe, and created another access.) In the beginning
the utility told us if we got any media attention, it would slow negotiations
down. So we didn't tell the media anything. The media had been our best ally,
but we turned everything off. For three months, nobody heard anything from us,
and we got nothing out of the utility. I thought about that long and hard. There
were some obvious reasons they didn't want anything in the press. They would
look stupid and they know they would look stupid. The lack of communication
was dragging the project to a halt. I decided that even if it was detrimental
to us, I would still tell the press everything, just like I used to. So we're
again sending out press releases regularly."
Eventually, it should be the longest pedestrian/bicycle walkway over water in
the world, which is just the beginning of the possibilities, as Bill sees them.
"Perhaps someday the project will include a museum and educational center.
Perhaps we will build a second walkway underneath, inside the bridge itself,
so that people can see the engineering -- the girders, the rivets -- and the
chipped paint. Someday there might be an underwater room so that we can see
the river through a piece of glass. Maybe view the spring shad run.
"To achieve these things, the project depends on a wide base of volunteers
and support and participation. We could try to get some tax dollars, but since
the beginning, the project has been about giving. Not giving in order to get,
but just giving. So often in today's life, people give in order to get a benefit
back. Every degradation of our quality of life has happened because we haven't
participated. We've allowed other people, whether they are professionals or
officials or corporations or government, do things for us. I've discovered that
we don't need public funding if we don't have a timetable. The bridge is developing
at the natural pace detirmined by community support. If two hundred thousand
people own a chunk of it, that would constitute long term protection for the
bridge."
The group has raised and spent over a hundred thousand dollars so far and has
acquired a tax deed covering about a thousand feet of the bridge. The rest of
the ownership is unknown. The last recorded owner says he no longer owns it
and refers inquiries to a lawyer who refuses to comment further. There are $75
million in Coast Guard fines against the structure, plus acrued property taxes.
Bill explains, "Several times since we started on the project, we've had
to make a decision to forge ahead or forget the whole thing. Ownership was one
of those issues. If we were going to stay with the project, we had to go ahead
as if we owned it. When I told the board we were going ahead, one of the directors
said, `Well, that is your opinion.' I responded, `You can bring up a resolution
to choose a different course if you wish.' Nobody did.
"If the issue came before the board, we would have had interminable discussions
over liability and the thousand things that could go wrong. Originally, the
bridge included a strip of land ninety feet wide and fifteen miles long. That
land was foreclosed for thirty thousand dollars in unpaid taxes. If no one came
forward to claim that land, which was much more valuable, at a much smaller
price than the bridge itself, no one is likely to lay claim to the bridge. For
the same reason, we really don't want ownership. It is not like every layer
of government is our friend. In fact, one day, the Board of the Town of Lloyd
voted to sell us some land bordering the bridge and the next day they sued us
-- we had layed planking without a permit.
"Before getting involved in the bridge, I didn't realize how big the difference
is between someone who has been an employee all their life, and someone who
has run a business. Most employees are afraid of liability -- and yet this project
is very much about liability. Some real, but mostly imagined. This has really
struck home as I've worked with various board members. When I was an employee,
eight or nine years ago, I was accountable to somebody else. Like most employees,
I believed that I was limited by some authority somewhere. Entrepreneurs work
to create their own rights, their own existence. They have no right to a market.
It is mostly a self-assertion exercise. For twenty years intelligent people
said nothing could be done the bridge. They may be intelligent, but they were
also scared. We are scared too -- but still we've gone ahead. That's a big difference."
