PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION

Work Resumes on Plant
First Monitoring Mtg. Planned

By JORDAN MOSS

Work resumed on the Croton filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park two weeks ago after an appellate court lifted a lower court’s temporary restraining order on the city. The lower court, presided over by Justice Marguerite Grays, has yet to issue its final decision.

The lawsuit, brought by Bronx Environmental Health Justice, charges that the city failed to conduct the proper environmental reviews before choosing the park site. The organization, which is being represented by the Columbia University Environmental Law Clinic, argues that the city’s environmental impact study minimized the impact in the largely minority community of Norwood in order to avoid building the plant in the more remote, industrial Eastview site that the city owns in Westchester.

Edward Lloyd, director of the Columbia law clinic, said Justice Grays said on Tuesday, during a hearing on the introduction of an affidavit, that she had read through about one-third of the paperwork in the case and that it was going to take her “a little while” to get through it all.

Meanwhile, a Queens Supreme Court justice denied a motion to consolidate several lawsuits regarding the plant into one. Lloyd said he requested that the motion be denied.

In other plant-related news, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that the first meeting of the Facility Monitoring Committee (FMC), which includes area officials and community resident Lyn Pyle, would take place in early March at the Croton Community Office at 3660 Jerome Ave. A DEP letter sent to participants in the committee inquired as to their availability for different times on March 1, 2, and 3.

According the letter, the meeting is not open to the public.

“The meeting, which will discuss format and protocols for the FMC, will be open to FMC representatives and alternates only,” states the letter from DEP Acting Commissioner David Tweedy.

DEP spokesman Charles Sturcken said it would be up to those attending the first meeting as to whether future meetings would be public.

“It’s an organizing meeting,” he said. “They will decide then amongst the participants how they want to proceed as to the public nature of the meetings. They’ve got to do business and figure out how they want to do business.”

Back to News Index Page