Good morning. Today we’ll find out about a new designation that recognizes how much cleaner the waterways around New York City are than they once were. We’ll also get details on an appeals court ruling that temporarily blocked questioning of a former prosecutor about the investigation of former President Donald Trump.

“We’re going to have a party later,” the marine biologist Judith Weis said.

Just before Earth Day, which is tomorrow, she was talking about how the New York-New Jersey harbor estuary had been named one of 151 “hope spots” around the world by Mission Blue, an environmental group. The 160,000-acre expanse of the estuary stretches south from the Mario Cuomo Bridge in Westchester County and west from the Throgs Neck Bridge in Queens to the Atlantic Ocean at Sandy Hook, N.J. It includes the Hudson River and the East River (a river in name only — technically it’s a tidal strait) as well as the Hackensack, Passaic and Raritan Rivers in New Jersey.

The designation “doesn’t give legal protections that didn’t exist before,” Weis said, “but it is a recognition for all the people who have worked so hard for decades to make this place so much better than it used to be.”

Weis, a professor emerita at Rutgers University and a former president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, nominated the estuary. Mission Blue named her and Rob Pirani, the director of the New York-New Jersey Harbor and Estuary Program at the Hudson River Foundation, “champions of hope.”

“I keep getting emails, congratulations. from people in the marine biology world,” Weis said. “That’s not the people I was hoping to reach. I was hoping to reach all the other people who live nearby who are crossing it in their commute from one borough to another or New Jersey to New York who never give a thought to what a wonderful place it is. ”

Sylvia Earle, the marine biologist and oceanographer who started Mission Blue in 2008, said the estuary “is not a place that you would think of normally as a reason for hope, but a transformation is taking place.”

But Pirani said work remained to be done. “We haven’t met the goals of the Clean Water Act,” he said. “It’s still not fishable and swimmable everywhere, and that’s the goal.” He said the estuary was showing effects of the global biodiversity crisis, with some species of fish declining, such as American shad.

“The spring runs of American shad up the Hudson River were once legendary,” he said. “Now it’s just a fraction of what it was.” He said the same was true of herring and other migratory fish.

The pollution in the Hudson has been well documented in the decades since the first Earth Day, in 1970. At that time, the city was dumping some 200 million gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson every day, and industrial pollutants like PCBs were also going into the Hudson. (General Electric, which from the 1940s to 1977 dumped PCBs into the Hudson, a spawning ground for striped bass, paid $7 million to fishermen who lost income in the 1980s, when the state banned fishing for striped bass.)

But sewage overflow during big storms continues, and Hurricane Sandy raised new concerns about devastating coastal flooding.

Saying she wanted people to understand “how far we have come,” Weis, 81, recalled an incident from a research outing early in her career. The site was on a bridge over a tidal creek that flowed into the Arthur Kill from Linden, N.J.

“One day one of my grad students was out there collecting,” she said, “and a grizzled old man, he’s on the bridge. He asks, ‘What are you doing?’ My grad student says, ‘Collecting shrimp. We’re doing research on pollution.’”

“The old man said, ‘Pollution, I can tell you about that. I used to work in that’ — he gestures toward a factory. ‘My job was to pick up the sluice gate and let everything out into the marsh and into the creek. And then one day the government came around, the state environmental department, and told the bosses they can’t do that anymore. They put me on the night shift.’”

Weather

Expect increasing clouds and temperatures near the high 60s. At night, prepare for fog and drizzles, with temps dropping to the mid-50s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

Suspended today through Sunday (Eid al-Fitr).

The latest New York news

Rent increase: A New York City panel may allow rents to rise in roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments. But increases as large as those discussed by the panel — up to 15.75 percent on two-year leases — are unlikely.

Assault charge: A battered teenage sister and brother were held captive in a Bronx apartment since January. A 34-year-old man — who the police said was the victims’ brother — was charged with beating and whipping them and threatening them at gunpoint.

Delayed state budget: Nearly three weeks have passed since the April 1 deadline for a state budget, and leaders in Albany still seem to have a ways to go.

Adams criticizes Biden: In a speech, the mayor blamed the White House for not doing enough to help New York City deal with the influx of migrants or helping them find work.

Parking garage collapse: The fatal collapse of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan, originally built in 1925, came less than nine months before the city’s first deadline for such structures to be inspected for hazardous conditions.

Seeing the aftermath of a horrific mass shooting: The crime-scene investigators are the ones who document, and remember, the unimaginable. This is what they saw at Sandy Hook, Conn.

Appeals court delays an ex-prosecutor’s appearance over the Trump investigation

Lawyers for the Manhattan district attorney and for a former prosecutor who worked on the investigation of Donald Trump are to submit arguments today to an appeals court that temporarily blocked congressional Republicans from questioning the former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz.

Lawyers for Representative Jim Jordan — the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has subpoenaed Pomerantz — have until tomorrow to file their arguments with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which granted a temporary stay of an interview with Pomerantz that had been scheduled for Thursday.

The appeals court issued the stay after a federal judge in Manhattan, Mary Kay Vyskocil, declined to block the committee’s planned closed-door session with Pomerantz, saying it had a constitutional right to question him. Pomerantz and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, both appealed her order.

Jordan issued the subpoena for Pomerantz shortly after Trump was arraigned on felony charges. A statement from the Republican-controlled committee said Pomerantz’s “public statements about the investigation strongly suggest that Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump is politically motivated.” Bragg denies that it is.

The Judiciary Committee had asked Pomerantz to appear voluntarily, but he refused. Ted Wells, a lawyer for Pomerantz, said on Wednesday that Pomerantz was pleased with the Second Circuit’s order and hoped that it would block the interview altogether.

The stay from the appeals court delayed the Republicans’ attempts to impede Bragg, whose prosecutors continue to work on their case against Trump, who they say orchestrated the cover-up of a hush-money payment to a porn actress in fall 2016. The Judiciary Committee held an unusual “field hearing” in Manhattan on Monday that took aim at Bragg, saying he had ignored street-level lawlessness to focus on the Trump case.

METROPOLITAN diary

Valentine’s Day

Dear Diary:

Heading for my Metro-North train home on Valentine’s Day, I saw many people with bouquets for their loved ones. My husband had planned ahead, and I already had beautiful flowers waiting for me at home.

As I settled in for the ride, the conductor’s voice came over the speaker.

“I have good news and bad news, passengers,” he said.

I sighed, preparing myself for the possibility of a delay.

“The bad news is that many of you will leave your beautiful flowers on the train today,” he continued, “despite our reminders to check for all of your belongings before departing the train.”

“The good news,” he continued, “is that my wife will be very happy tonight.”

— Martine Bass. Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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