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Council Poised To Approve Plant
Lawsuits to Come

By JORDAN MOSS

The City Council is expected to vote on Sept. 28 on a deal that will allow the city to build a water filtration plant in the Norwood section of Van Cortlandt Park in return for spending over $200 million on Bronx park improvement projects.

If the attitude of many of the Council members who attended a hearing of the Council Committee on State and Federal Legislation last week is any guide, the city should have an easy time of getting the Council's approval.

Only Councilman Oliver Koppell, who represents the district the park is in, and Gale Brewer, a Manhattan member who asked pointed questions of those who testified, aisapproved; all other members who spoke expressed their support of the controversial facility. 

"As I sit here, I can't even imagine how anyone would want to take it out of the Bronx," said Council Member Madeline Provenzano, whose district is in the east Bronx. Queens member James Genarro also registered his support as did Helen Sears, another Queens member. 

Koppell, for his part, called the deal a "Faustian bargain,"and in a press release elaborated. 

"What the city has offered the Bronx officials is a legal bribe," he said. "The parks 
projects should go forward, and their approval should not be dependent upon the 
community exchanging park improvement for park and community destruction." 

On Sept. 28, the Council will be voting on what is known as the MOU  --  or memorandum of understanding  --  a document that delineates which park projects will be completed with $200 million in water bond money. The Bloomberg administration  promised the borough's Assembly delegation the money in return for their support of the project. The city cannot proceed with the project until the Council signs off on the MOU. 

Several of the proposed park projects are in our area, including $15 million for 
Williamsbridge Oval Park; almost $10 million for the Harris Park ball fields; $7 million for Aqueduct Walk; $3 million for Devoe Park; and $5 million for St. James Park. 

The hearing aired many of the same arguments for and against the plant that have been heard at dozens of hearings and meetings about the plant over the last decade. 

Union officials argued in favor of the facility, which will be buried in a giant hole the city blasts at the Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park along Jerome Avenue. They said it should be built in the Bronx, rather than a city-owned site know as Eastview in Westchester, because it will provide jobs to city union members and Bronx residents. There is, however, no project labor agreement in place to ensure Bronx residents would get the jobs. 

The project's opponents, who are mostly residents of the area, believe that construction of the project, which will take several years, will increase traffic and exacerbate air and noise pollution in an area already hit hard by asthma. 

Opponents have been meeting with Council members in recent weeks, and even toured a few of them around the Eastview site in Westchester, seeking to secure the support of enough of them to defeat the plan.

But it seems now that the only arrows left in the quiver of plant opponents are lawsuits.Four lawsuits are likely to be filed as soon as the full Council votes. 

The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, an advocacy group, has indicated it will sue the city on the grounds that the park has not been properly zoned for the facility. Bronx Environmental Health and Justice, a new coalition of residents, has enlisted the help of the Environmental Law Clinic at Columbia University, which is considering a suit on environmental justice grounds. The Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition, which mainly consists of upstate residents who believe that building a filtration plant will embolden developers in the watershed and give them an excuse to pollute, also plans to sue. And the latest entry into the legal battle is the Westchester town of Eastchester which claims that it should have been consulted since building the plant in the Bronx will require the town to build an expanded pump station and chemical filtration facility next to its middle school and high school.

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