PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION

Despite State OK, Filtration Fighters Return to Battle

By JORDAN MOSS

The state legislature and Governor Pataki dealt opponents of city plans to build a filtration plant at Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park a severe blow when both signed off on the proposal over the summer.

But at a hearing last Monday on the draft scope of work for a supplemental environmental impact statement, which is to study and compare three potential sites (the legislature made the study a condition of their approval), there was little sign of a community throwing in the towel.

In fact, many veteran filtration fighters, who beat the city back in their plans to build the plant at the Jerome Park Reservoir several years ago but receded from the battle when the city moved to Mosholu, were back in action at full throttle at the Sept. 29 hearing held by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in Lehman College's Lovinger Theatre.

That's because, as part of the Mosholu project, the city has identified several related "upgrades" it needs to make at the Jerome Park Reservoir, including reconfiguring the valves at several reservoir gatehouses, building a police facility on Goulden Avenue, and installing a new chemical storage and mixing facility at Gatehouse 5.

Anne Marie Garti, a Van Cortlandt Village resident and member of the Jerome Park Conservancy, said the city should study the impact of the changes at the reservoir separately rather than "scatter" them through the impact study. "It's clear to me [the reservoir is] an auxiliary site for the filtration plan and should be listed as a site," she said.

Garti also encouraged her neighbors fighting the Mosholu proposal to keep fighting. "If it wasn't for this process, this plant would now be in operation at the Jerome Park Reservoir," she said.

Teachers and students from the Bronx High School of Science also emerged to question the impact of the reservoir work on the school.

Speakers demanded more detail in the SEIS. Jeffrey Dinowitz, the sole Bronx Democratic assemblyman who voted against the plan, blasted the DEP for providing so few details to the state legislature before it voted.

"I haven't even seen a map of the site," Dinowitz said, chastising his Assembly colleagues for voting without specifics. "No one can say with absolute certainty where this plant would be were it to be built in Van Cortlandt Park."

Ed Yaker, president of Amalgamated Houses, and a veteran of the battle at the reservoir, stepped back into his role as an opponent of the project.

"Everything in here screams Jerome Park Reservoir," he said.

Lyn Pyle, a member of the Knox-Gates Neighborhood Association, urged the city to consider in the SEIS a fourth site -- under the Major Deegan at 233rd Street -- an idea that gained some local support just before the legislature voted on Mosholu.

Perhaps the angriest testimony of the evening was presented by Council Member Oliver Koppell, who was clearly more strident in his opposition to the plant than he had been around the time of the vote in the state Assembly. Koppell trained his fire on Mayor Bloomberg, who he said would lose "votes from Riverdale" unless he "abandon[ed] this ill-conceived plan now." Koppell added that he had just been at a Woodlawn meeting with the mayor and that residents told the mayor they opposed the project.

Koppell also chastised DEP commissioner Christopher Ward for not attending the hearing. "He may think this issue is behind him, but it's not at an end, not by a long shot," Koppell said.

Asked about his tone as he left the hearing, Koppell said he had "grown disillusioned with the process." The city had resisted doing the environmental review and only relented when it became clear they had to do it to take the necessary votes, he said, adding that it occurred to him that the city would never get away with building the plant in Central Park. "I saw how they used steamroller tactics politically [to get the legislature's approval]. They never would have dared to use political influence to do this in Central Park."

Koppell also said that it made much more sense to construct the plant in Westchester at the Eastview site, a formal industrial plot further from residents.

The city has said it would cost less to build at Mosholu, but Koppell and Dinowitz both said the city had not documented that cost savings. Koppell insisted that the SEIS must include "an evaluation of comparative costs." "If [the Mosholu site] isn't the cheapest alternative, there's no excuse whatsoever," for building the plant there, he said. The city will release its final impact study and select a site by summer 2004.