PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION

In Reversal, Filter Plant Meetings Will Be Open

By JORDAN MOSS

Reversing a previous position, the members of a committee monitoring the construction of the filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park have decided to open the meetings to the public.

The public will be permitted to attend, though not to speak, at meetings of the Facility Monitoring Committee, which consists of members and appointees of the three affected community districts and Councilman Oliver Koppell.

There have been two meetings of the committee thus far, one in March and one in April. While Community Board 7 chair Nora Feury originally supported keeping the meetings closed, the Board voted unanimously to support opening the meetings. Feury then took that recommendation to the Committee on April 7.

Saul Sheinbach, a representative of Community Board 8 on the Committee who raised the issue, also supported the change. “As long as these meetings are kept closed, the public is going to think we’re doing secret things there that we don’t want them to know about,” he said.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) agreed to the change. “The decision is that they’re going to open up future meetings to the public,” said Charles Sturcken, a DEP spokesman. “They can listen and observe.”

Sheinbach said the Committee was going to try to have the meetings in the evening, so residents would better be able to attend.

Sturcken said there were also plans afoot to have a meeting soon where the public could ask questions of the DEP.

The Committee will not have a regular meeting in May, but will instead tour the construction site.

Future meetings will not necessarily take place on a monthly basis, as they have thus far, but only when new stages of construction warrant discussion. The Committee must meet four times a year.

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