" What about bringing some urban activity down to the water's edge? "I'm not entirely opposed to commercial activity in the park, the way Marci Benstock is. I was for the proposal to keep three of the piers money making, to help support the park. I would also hope that more maritime activities get associated with the piers. To be perfectly honest, clean air and clean water are not really the issues that drive me. But I feel deeply about wanting people to have the capacity in this city to connect with the world of water around them. To experience the river." MARCI BENSTOCK has been characterized alternately as the heroine who slew Westway, an inspiration to environmental activists everywhere-and a paranoid zealot who does not know when to stop fighting. Marci, as everyone, friend or foe, calls her, is a youthfullooking, attractive woman in her early fifties, whose blackish shoulderlength hair is cut with trademark bangs cut straight across the forehead. The day we met, she wore a black sweater with a necklace of red and black carved stones, and a full, flaring houndstooth skirt. I explained that I was not an investigative journalist, but thought her viewpoint was invaluable nonetheless in any discussion on Westway and fbe Hudson River Park. She corrected me: "It's not a park. I call it the Hudson River eelopment Project. We're not just talking about what happens on the • It s what happens under the surface of the water that matters for astal systems. It's simple: you don't put structure in floodplains. The Hudson River is the ocean estuary part of a floodplain. Why don't they place their development in underutilized or vacant parts of the city inland' It makes no sense. Besides, water has such a destructive effect on a building's foundations; you have to keep repairing." "So why do they want to do it?" I ask blandly, accepting for the moment her conspiratorial "they." "It's an enormous boondoggle. Hudson River 'Park' and Route 9A are part of a longrange development scheme to turn the river into real estate They'll do it by building out into the water, they don't care how-platforms, piers, floating platforms, landfill. The Army Corps of Engineers has already issued permits for major construction in the river as part of the Hudson River Park Trust and Route 9A." "I was under the impression state legislation prohibits building in the Hudson." "I've seen the permits! You have to know how to read them. I've had thirty years' experience and training. I have copies of them in my purse," she said, pointing to a rather large black handbag. As she did not offer to take them out, I did not ask to see them. Anyway, the moment was not right to interrupt her flow. "As further proof, the Army Corps has authorized the wholesale rebuilding of fortyodd piers with public funds. However nice an experience it may be to wander out into the water, you don't need more than five or six walking piers in Manhattan. Certainly not forty." "I agree.