American Scene

Not this summer.

When the spigots are turned on Thursday, four mammoth waterfalls will spring into existence, freestanding cataracts roaring down into the East River and New York Harbor in a multimillion-dollar engineering feat designed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson.

“Here in New York, water is everywhere. We take the water for granted,” Mr. Eliasson said in an interview. “I want to suggest now, it’s not about the land, now it’s about what’s between the land.”

“The New York City Waterfalls” is the city’s largest public art project since 2005, when artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, adorned 23 miles of Central Park’s paths with thousands of saffron drapes. The artificial cascades will be up through Oct. 13.

Cable firms win Verizon fight

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was on the losing end of a vote for the first time in his tenure when his colleagues sided with the cable industry in a dispute over marketing practices.

Late Friday night, the commission voted to reverse a staff decision and uphold a complaint that Verizon Communications Inc. had violated privacy laws, according to an agency official who asked not to be named because the decision had not yet been made public.

When a customer switches from one service provider to another, the existing provider is required to allow the customer to keep his or her phone number, a practice known as “number porting.” The cable companies claimed that when Verizon received a request to “port” a customer’s number to a competitor, it would try to convince the customer to stay, offering discounts and American Express reward cards.

Agency enforcement staff originally dismissed the complaint. But by a 4-1 vote, with FCC chairman Kevin Martin the lone dissenter, the commission upheld the complaint and sided with the cable industry. The initial complaint was brought by Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable and Comcast Corp.

• From wire dispatches and staff reports