Press Conference Showcases New Allies
in Filtration Fight By JORDAN MOSS AND GARY PANG
Veteran opponents of the project joined with new allies on the steps of City Hall for a press conference that denounced the city's plans as prejudicial against the largely minority community that surrounds the park and predicted a nightmare for local quality of life during several years of construction, including blasting and digging through bedrock.
Until recently, few area merchants have complained about the plant, which the city wants to build under Mosholu Golf Course. But Anthony Rivieccio, a member of the Bainbridge Avenue/204th Street Merchants Association and a member of Community Board 7, made the trip to City Hall to protest the park site. Rivieccio said that, if his group were acting solely in its own interest, it would support the project since it may be detrimental to the businesses surrounding the park on Jerome Avenue and Gun Hill Road."The destruction of the Jerome-Gun Hill BID would bring us business," he said. "But we believe in the growth of Norwood, not just our [group]." Activists were particularly pleased with the involvement of the Williamsbridge Branch of the NAACP, which has gone on record opposing the plant after meeting with members of the COVE, a Norwood community organization. The Woodlawn Taxpayers Association is also a relatively new but vocal conscript to the battle against the plant. The press conference also allowed local activists to showcase new supporters from outside the Bronx. Former New York Civil Liberties Union head Norman Siegel has joined the call for the city to change course and choose Eastview, a city-owned industrial property in Westchester, as the site for the facility. "There's a perception that working people, especially working people of color, do not matter in this town," Siegel said. "But we have power and we will use it." Also present at the hearing was Council Member Charles Barron of Brooklyn. He and Council Member Oliver Koppell were the only city lawmakers at the event. Barron said that turning the park into an "industrial plant" was a dangerous precedent. "Jobs is a separate issue from environmental justice," he said, referring to the city's contention that building the project in the city will mean more jobs for city residents. Koppell addressed that issue as well. "They say it [the plant] will increase jobs for the people of the Bronx," he said, pointing out that there were no job guarantees for Bronx residents. "I say it's bunk!" As the Norwood News reported earlier this month, local residents recently formed a new umbrella organization called the Bronx Health and Environmental Justice Committee.The group has teamed up with Columbia University's Environmental Law Clinic to study the possibility of suing the city on environmental justice grounds if the city chooses Mosholu over Eastview. Lawyers with the clinic have written to the city's Department of Environmental Protection to complain that the agency's review of the two sites is biased because it only studies the impact of the project for a half-mile around Mosholu while it looks at a full mile around Eastview. Foes of the city's plans say it is unconscionable to put the facility in the park where 26,000 people live in the surrounding half mile when it has the option of Eastview, where only about 3,000 people live in the surrounding mile. Plant opponents say they will wait until the city formally chooses Mosholu Golf Course in its final environmental study to be released on June 30 before they announce whether or not they will sue. "Stay tuned," Siegel said.
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A coalition of Bronx community organizations and citizens gathered at
City Hall last week in a last-ditch effort to derail the city's plans to
begin building a water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park in August.
While Norwood residents were well represented at the press conference,
the event also brought forth people from other communities, including the Bronx High
School of Science, where students fear the interruption of their studies from
related underground work at the Jerome Park Reservoir. Student government president Jessica Yu said that 300 students are on the
school's medical emergency list. "How many more people will be put on the
list due to asthma when construction starts?" she asked, adding that the reservoir is
surrounded by several schools.