Klein: I'll Play Role in Plant Negotiations By JORDAN MOSS Assemblyman Jeffrey Klein said he will play a role in hammering out the details of the Croton water filtration plant project before it is built. "Most people don't realize this," he said in a telephone interview. "I've been saying it now for three months. Before anything is built, it still has to go through the legislature for the MOA [Memorandum of Agreement]." Though Klein and all other Bronx Democratic members of the Assembly except for Jeffrey Dinowitz voted to allow the use of Van Cortlandt Park for the plant - a process known as alienation - Klein insists it was not a blank check for the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to build whatever it wants, however it wants. Klein said there were some surprises in the draft environmental impact study released in December. "I'll be honest," he said. "The new proposal raised a lot of questions which were clearly not apparent when we voted for the alienation bill. . . We never knew that there was going to be work around the Jerome Park Reservoir area." Klein said he is in the process "of putting together individual community meetings within my district" with officials from the city's DEP present to explain, "what's exactly going to happen, how it's going to pose a burden." Klein said he hoped the DEP would be able to lessen the impact of the plant on the community. Asked what should happen if that's not possible, Klein said, "Then maybe we have to look at an alternative site." But Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said his colleagues could not undo their vote of last summer through the MOA, a document that will have to be signed off on by Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and the leaders of the Assembly and the state Senate. "To whatever extent there's a legislative [role], it's basically to attempt to have input into dividing up the $200 million in bribe money," said Dinowitz, referring to the amount of funding the city promised to pour into Bronx parks in return for the support of the borough's Democratic Assembly delegation for the Van Cortlandt site. "The vote happened already -- The legislature has done its thing and the people who voted yes on the legislation, as far as I'm concerned, took a very unequivocal stand in favor of building a plant in Van Cortlandt Park." But Klein, who is close to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, insists he will play a significant role in determining the final nature of the project after the city formally announces which of three sites it plans to build on at the end of June. "I'm going to play a prominent role and the speaker assured me that I would," he said. The controversy could shape the race for the state Senate in the 34th District (see story on p. 3). Klein is running for the seat, which covers two communities -- Woodlawn in the Bronx and Eastchester in Westchester -- that are beginning to take strong stands against building the facility in the Bronx. (A separate filtration facility would not be necessary in the town of Eastchester if the city built its Croton plant at the Eastview site in Mt. Pleasant.) Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman, another potential candidate in the Senate race, also voted for the alienation legislation last summer.
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