The underwater sensor-base research of Dr. Alan Blumberg in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary. December 22, 2004.

1. ID NAME: Nxxx,2004-12-22,B,004,Bs-BW,E1
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B4 N METROTHE NEW YORK TIMES WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2004
By JOHN HOLL
HOBOKEN, N.J.
O
N an unusually calm day on the Hudson
River, Alan F. Blumberg is standing on a
cracked concrete bulkhead scattered with
splintered wood and rusting pieces of metal. He is
paying close attention to a length of PVC pipe
with a black wire snaking from its top that is an-
chored in the water.
The object, one of 15 sensors located in water-
ways around the region, beams information to Dr.
Blumberg’s office every 10 seconds. There he is
able to monitor, among other things, pollutants in
the water.
“In the 1850’s, the biggest dangers you had
were from sharks swimming in these waters,”
says Dr. Blumberg, 56. “Now it’s the toxins in the
sediment. But things are getting better, and now
that the river is being cleaned up, the sharks
could come back.’’
For nearly three years, Dr. Blumberg, a pro-
fessor of ocean engineering at the Stevens Insti-
tute of Technology in Hoboken, has been using
sensors to track pollutants, water temperatures
and the salinity and speed of the water to create
forecast models, in much the same way the Na-
tional Weather Service creates meteorological
forecast models.
Dr. Blumberg considers himself a fortunate
man because, he says, “what I am good at and
what I enjoy went together so well.’’ His passion
for water stems from his years growing up in the
Panama Canal Zone, where he often spent his
days playing in the ocean. Now he is trying to fig-
ure out ways to undo decades of environmental
damage to local waterways. Much of his focus is
on the Hudson, where tons of pollutants — like
PCB’s, mercury, metals and other agents — were
legally dumped, then settled to the sediment,
where they are stirred up by ships passing above.
“It’s possible for pollutants stirred up right
here on the Hudson to find their way into the Long
Island Sound in about three hours,” Dr. Blumberg
says.
So, he and his colleagues are working on
ways to examine the water to better help environ-
mental groups and businesses maintain and pro-
tect waterways. Dr. Blumberg is optimistic about
fulfilling a pledge by Stevens’s president, Harold
J. Raveché, to build a beach, eventually, along the
college’s Hudson River banks.
Dr. Blumberg also is working with officials
from the Department of Homeland Security on
technology that can instantly provide wind and
other data to handheld computers to help the au-
thorities better direct people in the event of a ter-
rorist attack or a serious accident on the water.
He also is developing and testing new water-
craft that are less damaging to the environment.
In the basement of a nondescript building next to
the third-base line of the college’s baseball field,
Dr. Blumberg walks along a 300-foot long wave
tank, which was built in 1945 and was then part of
a secret Navy facility created to test the feasibil-
ity of seaplanes.
The tank, 12 feet wide and six feet deep, was
later used to test scale models of yachts that com-
peted in the America’s Cup. Now, the tank is used
by undergraduates to fulfill a physical education
requirement in scuba diving and by Dr. Blumberg
and his colleagues to test scale models of boats,
Bradley fighting vehicles and even new designs
for ferries that can reduce the size of the wakes
they generate.
“The wakes from boats, but ferries especial-
ly, cause damage,” Dr. Blumberg says. “If you
have a boat, or a wetland, a marina or beach, a
strong wake causes erosion of the sediment and
beaches, it can beat up pilings and piers. There
are a lot of negative consequences of wakes, and
we’re trying to change that.”
Researchers attach scale models of boats to
a harness hanging over one end of the wave tank
and then pull the models 300 feet in three seconds
to measure the resistance to water flow, the dif-
ferent motions of the boats and the wake they
produce. In some models, the faster a ferry trav-
els, the smaller wake it leaves behind.
N
O stranger to aquatic environments, Dr.
Blumberg feels comfortable working by
the Hudson, one of the fastest and most
complex waterways in the world. These days, in
addition to his work and research, he is on a cam-
paign to have more information about tides added
to daily weather reports and has approached
newspapers, including The New York Times, to
ask them to expand their reports.
“All the reports give you is the time of the
tides; it doesn’t say how high,” Dr. Blumberg
says. “The water goes up and down in response to
more than just the movement of the moon and the
sun. The wind blowing can affect the piling up of
water, among other things. You can’t get that
from the tide tables in the paper, but you should.
It’s important, and more people care about it than
you might realize.”
Dr. Blumberg’s forecasts are available
online at www.stevens.edu/maritimeforecast,
which is popular not only with researchers, but
also with competitors in local sailing races seek-
ing tidbits on currents and wind speeds.
Dr. Blumberg left Panama, where his father
was a civil engineer who worked in the Canal
Zone, to go to Farleigh Dickinson University in
Teaneck, N.J., before earning his master’s and
doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore. He planned to become a physicist,
but changed his mind at Johns Hopkins. “I de-
cided I did not want to chase elementary particles
around anymore,’’ says Dr. Blumberg, who has
also taught at Princeton. “The ocean environment
is a wonderful place to work. It is so diverse and
interesting, I cannot imagine doing anything
else.”
PUBLIC LIVES
“What I am good at and what I
enjoy went together so well.”
ALAN F. BLUMBERG
Watching the Water and Reading the Ripples
Keith Meyers/The New York Times
There Goes Our Last Chance
To Talk to Mary Tyler Moore
“God bless you for wanting to talk
to a writer,” said JAMES HERZFELD at
the Los Angeles premiere of “Meet
the Fockers” on Thursday.
Clearly, Mr. Herzfeld was a movie
writer; a newspaper writer would
have known that the week before
Christmas a reporter will talk to any-
one:
Seriously ill children flown into the
country for medical treatment;
E.M.S. workers who leap into a half-
frozen river to rescue a puppy; the
passengers of a plane that loses
three out of four engines, but who are
safely brought home — after the pilot
suffers a heart attack — by a preg-
nant woman whose child is subse-
quently delivered by a firefighter.
These are the ones preferred. Es-
pecially, of course, if the passengers
say, “It’s a miracle anyone sur-
vived,’’ which luckily they always
say.
But in the slow news days of the
holiday season, really anyone will do.
Anyway, the big stars of the movie,
a sequel to ‘‘Meet the Parents,’’ had
yet to arrive.
So we tried to get some inside stuff
from Mr. Herzfeld about BARBRA
STREISAND and DUSTIN HOFFMAN, who
play a touchy-feely West Coast cou-
ple, and BLYTHE DANNER and ROBERT
DE NIRO, who play an uptight East
Coast pair.
Did you enjoy writing the sex
scenes for Mr. Hoffman and Ms.
Streisand?
“That was interesting,” Mr. Herz-
feld said. “I actually did a rewrite of
that section. I did write the massage
scene with DeNiro and Streisand be-
cause Ms. Streisand requested a
scene with just her and Bob. There
was no real reason for that scene to
exist other than a request from a
very powerful actress.”
Oops, excuse us. An Instant Mes-
sage from OHENRY@otherside.com:
I could not help but notice that
your list omits young women with
pneumonia, living in cold- water flats
in the Village.
Drat! And now there’s one from
CDICKENS@otherside.com:
Wrong, so wrong! The best holiday
subject is a small, sickly boy who is
unable to walk.
O. Henry: That’s comes under the
rubric of “seriously ill children,”
which was already mentioned. Use
your eyes, you mawkish, overrated
hack.
C. Dickens: Embezzling jailbird
lush!
Where were we? Oh, yes, at the
“Meet the Fockers” premiere in Los
Angeles.
Ms. Streisand, looking very happy
as a married lady, appeared on the
red carpet on the arm of her hus-
band, JAMES BROLIN.
She wore a gray fur capelet over
an ankle-length gray pleated dress,
waved to her screaming fans, and
graciously stopped to answer our
questions.
Of course, when you have a film
with a lofty title like ‘‘Meet the Fock-
ers,’’ your questions must be suit-
ably highbrow.
What was sex with Mr. Hoffman
like, we asked.
Ms. Streisand smiled.
“It was very funny,” she said. “We
went to acting school together and
Dustin was dating my roommate. At
the time he was the janitor at the
school to pay for classes, and I was
baby-sitting for my teacher in ex-
change for classes. Working with
him is really fun — because we both
like to improvise — like musical
riffs, instruments playing around the
melody.”
(O. Henry: The Penniless Janitor
and the Destitute Baby-Sitter with
Pipes of Gold! I’m loving it! Now
there’s a holiday story!)
Then we chatted with the movie’s
director, JAY ROACH, who said Mr.
Hoffman and the character he plays
in the film were in “perfect syn-
chronicity.”
“Dustin has no personal space is-
sues whatsoever,” Mr. Roach said.
“He will eat the food off your plate
and you can eat the food off his. ”
(C. Dickens: If only he had a
Christmas goose, poor fellow! The
great themes never change! Sorrow,
privation, human longing!)
The movie was about to start. Ms.
Danner waved to the press and kept
walking, but Mr. Hoffman stopped
for us.
What did he enjoy most about the
movie?
“Being able to goose Barbra,” Mr.
Hoffman said, with a naughty grin.
(C. Dickens: Oy vey!)
What was he doing for the holi-
days?
“Goosing Barbra,” Mr. Hoffman
said, continuing a theme.
O. Henry: This is shocking. They
didn’t put this stuff in the newspaper
in our day! And may I add, Charles,
that I apologize if I seemed a little
harsh. I’ve always loved your
worked.
C. Dickens: And I’ve always loved
yours. We should collaborate one
day, perhaps for this squalid column.
O. Henry: We couldn’t do worse
than that ill-mannered hawk, PALE
MALE.
C. Dickens: (Chuckling) I’d rather
like to work with that fowl. I see him
in a Christmas story. Broiled.
With David Jay Lasky
in Los Angeles
BOLDFACE NAMES/Joyce Wadler
Lottery Numbers
Dec. 21, 2004
Midday New York Numbers —
770
Midday New York Win 4 — 1875
New York Numbers — 157
New York Win 4 — 9366
New York Pick 10 — 7, 9, 13, 15, 16,
18, 20, 25, 30, 34, 35, 38, 42, 44, 51, 57,
61, 67, 74, 76
New Jersey Pick 3 — 106
New Jersey Pick 4 — 3445
New Jersey Cash 5 — 1, 3, 7, 33, 37
Connecticut Mid-Day 3 — 766
Connecticut Mid-Day 4 — 0786
Dec. 20, 2004
New York Take 5 — 2, 19, 20, 36, 39
Connecticut Daily — 610
Connecticut Play 4 — 8136
Connecticut Cash 5 — 3, 7, 8, 20, 29
By BRUCE LAMBERT
RIVERHEAD, N.Y., Dec. 21 — The
prosecution is challenging the truth-
fulness and motives of many wit-
nesses testifying here on behalf of a
Long Island man seeking to overturn
his convictions for the 1988 murders
of his parents.
To discredit that testimony, the
Suffolk County District Attorney’s
Office has called other witnesses to
show what it calls inconsistencies,
memories dimmed by time and
fogged by drugs, and bias motivated
by greed, jealousy, hatred and re-
venge.
But as the hearings in the case of
Martin Tankleff recessed on Tues-
day, his lawyers argued that the
prosecution had failed to undermine
the core of their new evidence, which
they say shows that other suspects
committed the murders.
The Tankleff lawyers also said
that the prosecution had threatened
some defense witnesses with other
charges, while helping prosecution
witnesses, including one twice-con-
victed felon who they say has been
released without bail three times on
other charges since August.
“Apparently he has a ‘get out of
jail free’ card,” said one of Mr. Tan-
kleff’s lawyers, Bruce Barket. The
prosecution has denied playing fa-
vorites.
Judge Stephen L. Braslow, who
has presided over about 18 days of
hearings since they began in July in
Suffolk County Court here, scheduled
the final testimony for Jan. 18. Final
briefs will follow.
At the start, the Tankleff lawyers
presented evidence to show that the
murderers were ex-convicts acting
at the behest of Jerard Steuerman, a
partner with Mr. Tankleff’s father,
Seymour, in a chain of bagel stores.
Mr. Steuerman owed hundreds of
thousands of dollars to the elder Tan-
kleff and was resisting demands to
pay up, according to testimony in the
original case. Mr. Steuerman was at
the Tankleffs’ waterfront home in
Belle Terre for a high-stakes poker
game on the night of the attacks and
was the last player to leave. He has
sworn that he left before the mur-
ders and had nothing to do with them.
Seymour Tankleff and his wife, Ar-
lene, were bludgeoned and slashed in
their house in the early morning.
Mrs. Tankleff was found dead; Mr.
Tankleff died later in the hospital.
The police never investigated Mr.
Steuerman, who now lives in Florida.
Instead, within hours they arrested
Martin Tankleff, then 17, based on
statements he made that the police
say amounted to a confession. He
made the statement after the police
lied to him, telling him his father had
regained consciousness and identi-
fied him as the attacker. Though Mr.
Tankleff never signed the statement
and immediately repudiated it, it
was introduced at the trial. A jury
found him guilty in 1990, and he has
been in prison ever since.
Crucial in the new evidence are
statements from Glenn Harris that
he was the getaway driver who took
Joseph Creedon and Peter Kent to
the Tankleff home the night of the at-
tacks. Mr. Creedon was a criminal
associate of Mr. Steuerman’s son,
Todd, a convicted drug dealer who
sold narcotics from the bagel stores.
Three other new witnesses also said
that Mr. Creedon told them that he
was there or was involved. In court,
however, Mr. Creedon and Mr. Kent,
who is an ex-convict and admitted
drug user, denied any role.
Several witnesses in Mr. Tan-
kleff’s appeal are prison inmates or
ex-convicts. Their records under-
mine their credibility, said Leonard
Lato, the assistant district attorney
who is fighting to uphold the murder
convictions. Some events described
in the testimony go back as far as 16
years, raising questions about the ac-
curacy of the recollections, he said.
Many witnesses also had been drug
users or had emotional problems, he
said.
“Fifteen minutes of fame is a rea-
son” for dubious testimony, Mr. Lato
said in one hallway news conference.
“Financial inducement is a reason.”
So are love, jealousy, hate and re-
venge, which he attributed to various
witnesses.
But one of Mr. Tankleff’s lawyers,
Barry Pollack, said: “The D.A. is not
rebutting any of our evidence, so he’s
just trying to distract from it by at-
tacking our witnesses.”
In court, Mr. Lato made much of
the Tankleff defense’s paying about
$2,700 in motel and car rental and
$4,000 to reimburse lost pay for a wit-
ness from Florida, William Ram. Mr.
Ram testified that Mr. Harris, Mr.
Kent and Mr. Creedon came to his
house the night of the murders and
tried to get him to join them in an at-
tack on an unnamed bagel store part-
ner. Afterward, he testified, they al-
luded to the incident. The Tankleff
lawyers reported Mr. Ram’s reim-
bursements in court, citing rules au-
thorizing such payments.
Mr. Lato called Mr. Kent to the
witness stand, and he said that Mr.
Ram tried to lure him to testify for
Mr. Tankleff with a promise of
$50,000. The Tankleff lawyers, who
are handling the case at no charge,
said they made no such offer. Mr.
Lato has also reported that after tes-
tifying, Mr. Ram returned to drug
use, lost his job and went on a rob-
bery spree in which he shot himself
and was also shot by the police.
Witnesses Assailed in Bid
To Void Murder Conviction
Convicted of killing
his parents in 1988, a
man tries to win
freedom.
lion. It also reflected a new level of
urgency from the chairman, who has
been pressing for more state help for
the system, toward the governor,
who controls the authority and ap-
pointed Mr. Kalikow.
Mr. Pataki has declared his sup-
port for various capital plans, includ-
ing a rail link connecting Kennedy
International Airport to Lower Man-
hattan, but neither the governor nor
the leaders of the Legislature have
gone along with a package of tax in-
creases that Mr. Kalikow proposed.
The proposed expansion projects ac-
count for about $10 billion in the capi-
tal plan. The core capital program
would pay for new subway and rail-
road cars, station maintenance and
rehabilitation and other continuing
improvements.
Mr. Kalikow’s comments were the
latest twist in the tortured history of
the Second Avenue subway, a dream
of urban planners ever since the
same avenue’s elevated line was de-
molished in 1942. Construction on the
line was abandoned during the city’s
financial crisis in the mid-1970’s.
To pay for the authority’s capital
needs, Mr. Kalikow has proposed tax
increases that would provide the au-
thority with about $850 million a
year, enough to pay annual debt
service on new bonds that would be
issued to fill the capital financing
gap. But the state would have to au-
thorize those increases in business,
real estate, motor vehicle and fuel
taxes.
The authority’s current five-year
capital plan expires next week, on
Dec. 31. The proposed plan for 2005 to
2009 is now before the Capital Pro-
gram Review Board, which includes
representatives of the governor, the
leaders of the two chambers of the
Legislature and the mayor of New
York City.
Mr. Kalikow has warned that the
next year could be similar to 1975,
when a financial crisis forced the au-
thority to halt spending on basic
maintenance. The system hit its na-
dir in the winter of 1980-81, when sub-
way service was crippled by wide-
spread equipment failures.
“If we don’t have the full $17 billion
core program, you can write down:
‘2005 is the day the system reached
its zenith, and is now starting its de-
scent,’ ” Mr. Kalikow said.
The person given the most credit
for the system’s recovery is Richard
Ravitch, the authority’s dynamic
chairman from 1979 to 1983, who per-
suaded Gov. Hugh L. Carey and state
lawmakers to pay for a general revi-
talization of the system.
“Everybody in government in the
early 80’s had lived through the 70’s
and knew how really bad it was,” re-
called Mr. Kalikow. “Our problem is
that there’s a whole generation of
New Yorkers that has now grown up
and used the system that don’t re-
member when it was horrible.”
He said that increasing taxes, as
the state faces major increases in
education and health care spending,
would require political will. “We
need to remember that the leaders
we have today are no less able, are
no less bright, are no less visionary,”
Mr. Kalikow said. “We need to get
them to say, ‘Not only do we think it
needs to be done, but if there’s politi-
cal capital to be expended, we’re
willing to expend it.’ ”
The authority’s board approved a
package of fare and toll increases
last week, but that measure affects
only the system’s operating budget,
which is projected to run large defi-
cits starting in 2006. The authority
has mounting debt obligations be-
cause of a wave of borrowing for cap-
ital projects from the 1990’s, when
the state and city all but eliminated
their contributions to the capital
budget. Mayor Michael R. Bloom-
berg’s four representatives on the
board voted against the increases.
Mr. Kalikow suggested that he was
frustrated when Mr. Pataki and the
Senate majority leader, Joseph L.
Bruno, said they were unwilling to
raise taxes to pay for the authority’s
capital program. “I was disappoint-
ed, but not surprised,” Mr. Kalikow
said, “because I know the governor
pretty well and I know his abhor-
rence of taxes.”
Mr. Kalikow said he and authori-
ty’s executive director, Katherine N.
Lapp, had been meeting with busi-
ness leaders to explain the impor-
tance of the transit network to the re-
gional economy. “The system is very
delicate, and if we don’t support it
with these capital plans, it will de-
teriorate, and it will deteriorate very
quickly,” he said. “A result of deteri-
oration is rider falloff, and rider fall-
off in a city of this economic vibran-
cy will cause havoc on the streets.”
Robert D. Yaro, the president of
the Regional Plan Association, an ur-
ban planning group that supports ex-
pansion of the region’s transporta-
tion network, said he was struck by
the forcefulness of Mr. Kalikow’s re-
marks about the mass transit sys-
tem’s needs. “This is a cri de coeur
from Peter,” Mr. Yaro said. “He
came forward with a very bold fi-
nancing strategy, and he hasn’t
heard a response from Albany,
which isn’t atypical.’’
M.T.A. Chief Says Rail Expansion Plans Are in Jeopardy
Continued From Page A1
Angel Franco/The New York Times
Peter S. Kalikow, chairman of the
transportation authority.