City Awards Bid To Manage Plant Construction

By JORDAN MOSS

Even though the city does not yet know where it will build a $1.5 billion filtration plant for the Croton water system, it has already awarded a contract to a joint venture to manage the mammoth project.

According to an entry in the City Record, the city's Department of Environmental 
Protection awarded the contract on Dec. 12, 2002, to the firms URS Corporation Consultants and Malcolm Pirnie, which will jointly manage the project. The city is scheduled to decide on a site for the plant in April. The two main sites under consideration are along the Harlem River near Fordham Road, and on a plot of land the city owns in Westchester, known as Eastview. 

Charles Sturcken, chief of staff at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said the city was simply reactivating an old bid for management of plant construction at the Mosholu Golf Course, a site the state's highest court eventually nixed two years ago because the city failed to get permission from the state legislature. 

"They were the qualified bidder at the time we bid the Mosholu site some time ago," Sturcken said. "The idea is we don't have to re-bid that. They're as qualified as they were then. We have to have that award in place wherever we're going to build it." 

One veteran activist on the issue complained that the DEP was jumping the gun. Karen Argenti said the move makes it harder for the city to include a "no-build alternative" in its draft environmental impact statement. 

"All available options should be presented on the table," Argenti said. "The one with the least impact should be chosen. If one of the things is impossible to choose because you already bid out the contract to build a filtration plant, then the process is a fake. It's a joke. It's not a serious review and that will be thrown out by a judge." 

Sturcken said his agency can't consider a no-build alternative because the federal judge who made the city sign a consent decree agreeing to a strict deadline to build the plant won't let it. "They've [the federal government] got us in court because they're forcing us to build this," he said. "Why do you think they sued us?"

University Heights residents have mounted opposition to the plant (as those in 
Kingsbridge and Norwood did with previous sites at the Jerome Park Reservoir) because they fear its construction and operating will wreak havoc with the area's quality of life.

The Sierra Club, a large environmental member organization, which opposes building a filtration plant wherever the city decides to build it, is "concerned that they're [the DEP} moving very quickly with the whole process," said Bob Muldoon, an organizer with the group. A Sierra Club volunteer discovered the entry for the contract in the City Record.

According to the consent decree, the city must begin construction of the plan in 2005.

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