BRONX, N.Y. — After driving for a few minutes through the southern portion of snowy Pelham Bay Park, and a little bit of a walk, there it was. A 40-foot graffiti covered boat that had been abandoned along the shores of the park on Eastchester Bay.

What You Need To Know

  • The Parks Department is leading the charge to remove abandoned boats from NYC shorelines

  • The abandoned vessels can cause safety, environmental and navigational hazards

  • The City has a contract with a company called Custom Marine, which uses a 72-foot Military landing craft vessel for the removal operations
  • The Parks Department has taken the lead on the removal of 350 abandoned vessels in the last five years through a series of federal grants, that's more than 4,000 cubic yards of debris.

"We don't know if it was dumped here intentionally, if it had come loose during a storm, we are still pursuing whoever it might have belonged to, but in the meantime, before it becomes more of a hazard, we want to get it out of here," said Nate Grove, Chief of Citywide Waterfront and Marine Operations for the NYC Parks Department.

The boat is one of three in the park that the Parks Department is having hauled away through a contract with a company called Custom Marine. With 520 miles of shoreline in the five boroughs, 160 miles under Parks Department stewardship, abandoned boats like this are a problem. Not only are they an eyesore, but also a potential safety and environmental hazard.

"There's fluids in there, there's oils, there's gas, if this were ever to sink, that could really get into our waterways and hurt the ecosystem," said Grove, who added that it can also be a navigational hazard on the city’s waterways.

The vessel Custom Marine uses to do the job is pretty unique. It’s 72-foot Military landing craft. Picture the ones that were used during the D-Day invasion in World War II. Custom Marine Owner Dwayne Reith says the removal operation can get pretty tricky sometimes.

"It was a very hard challenge because we physically had to jack it, get underneath, and do some repairs to the boat before we could get it off the rocks because we couldn't get close enough with the crane, so we basically had to float the boat and get it out repairing with patches and pumps," said Reith, who grew up not far away from the park in the Country Club section of The Bronx.

The Parks Department has taken the lead on the removal of 350 abandoned vessels in the last five years through a series of federal grants. That's more than 4,000 cubic yards of debris removed from local shorelines. The boats at Pelham Bay Park and a fourth one near City Island are being removed with the help of funding obtained by City Councilman Mark Gjonaj.

"When you have boats that littering our shorelines for decades, enough is enough," said Gjonaj.