NEW YORK — New York City is placing 50,000 oysters in Jamaica Bay – on beds made with the porcelain from 5,000 recycled toilets.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Environmental Protection said Tuesday that the project is the largest single installation of breeding oysters in New York City.

The northeastern director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation says the project will buffer New York from storms while cleaning the water and creating wildlife habitat.

The 31-square-mile Jamaica Bay is part of a 142-square-mile watershed that includes parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County.

The project is being done in partnership with the Harbor School’s Billion Oyster Project, which aims to seed a billion oysters around a hundred acres of reefs by the year 2050. The project has seeded 17 million oysters so far, according to its website.


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