Finally the report was provided in April, and discussion will follow in May at the FMC meeting on the 20th.  Report is on the CB 8 web page under the Croton Water Treatment Plant, Van Cortlandt Park, Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study
Van Cortlandt Park Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study Part 1
Van Cortlandt Park Pedestrian Bridge Feasibility Study Part 2

Letters of support are being sent to the Community Board 8.  Here are a few:

FIPNA Support Pedestrian Bridge 05182010

BCEQpedestrian_bridge_support05182010

Pedestrian Bridge Support Letter FVCP 051710

In March, Joyce Hogi and Karen Argenti wrote again. State_OPRHP_02162010 response 033110

In March, the OPRHP Commissioner responded with this note:  fax-6088808

In February, BCEQ wrote to the Head of the National Parks Service:  BCEQ NPS YS 02192010

In February, Joyce Hogi and Karen Argenti wrote a note to the State to get them to act in the public interest and demolish Yankee Stadium:  State_OPRHP_02162010 a

Here is the link to the Federal Court Decision from November 2006:  061115_Buchwald_Decision

Here is a note from the Parks Commissioner Benepe in August 2009: BenepeLetter082809

Last year, the Norwood News in the 2/5/2009 Editorial:  Tear Down the Stadium – Now! started a clock: http://www.norwoodnews.org/story/?id=1344&story=tear+down+the+stadium++now

——————

Soccer woes

Soggy fields at the Van Cortlandt Park Parade Grounds may have contributed to the ongoing sod and grass problems that have rendered the fields unusable this kiddie soccer season, according to representatives of the New York City Parks Department, at a Jan. 27 meeting for CB 8’s Parks and Recreation Committee.

“It’s not an exact science,” said Margot Perron, president of the Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy. “We don’t always know when something’s going to finish. Stuff happens.”

And one of the things that happened in the case of the Parade Ground was extra water inundating the growing grass, potentially overwhelming it during a fragile time.

“We have a wet situation,” said Steve Des- Noyer, design supervisor for Croton projects at the Parks Dept., adding that it might have been caused by water main breaks or more rain than anticipated.

The next step, Mr. DesNoyer said, will be test pits on the land in question. If groundwater is found, he said, the Parks Department will check for chlorine to see if city water is getting in.

“If that doesn’t get corrected it would have to be cordoned off,” he said. The over-watering was not anticipated, he said, adding that extra drainage would take care of the problem. All corrective work will probably have to wait until the spring, he said, though heavy rains could postpone that date again.

Still, it’s not just the extra water keeping the fields from being ready to use. The grass knitting is different from establishing the sod as ready-touse, Mr. DesNoyer said.

“It’s not just the knitting process, which can be done in four weeks,” he said. “We like to see things going through a full growing season.”

Since the new grass was planted last year, the full growing season would extend through the end of the spring, after soccer season is already over.

Letting the field grow healthily is important, agreed Traffic and Transportation chair Tony Cassino, who attended the Parks meeting, adding that it does not make it the best option for the Parade Ground fields.

“There’s a balance of wanting to preserve a gem we have right now … and, on the other hand, [are] all the leagues and teams who want to use the fields,” Mr. Cassino said.

The leagues that will be affected are the traveling teams and girls’ teams, said Bruce Silverman, president of the Riverdale Soccer Club.

Some teams will have shortened seasons and others will play on fields borrowed from neighborhood schools like the Riverdale Country School, Mr. Silverman said, adding that more than 200 girls between first and ninth grades might still have their season cancelled if they can’t find adequate field space.

“We still have to see what our options are,” he said.

This is part of the February 4, 2010 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

http://www.riverdalepress.com/full.php?sid=11362&current_edition=2010-02-04

The next Croton Facilities Monitoring Committee (CFMC) meeting will be held on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 7 PM in the DEP’s Contractor’s community office on 3660 Jerome Avenue, Bronx NY 10467 (across from the CWTP between 213th and Bainbridge)

1. Welcome, Call Meeting to Order
2. Consider, Adopt Minutes of    CFMC 4-30 (as revised) and 6-18 Meetings
3. DEP Report on Jobs & Hiring
4. Parks Dept Report on Jobs & Hiring
5. Status Report – Jerome Park Reservoir Public  Access Study
6. Croton Construction Update
7. Discussion, Set Next Meeting CFMC Principals

Topics should include questions concerning the below listed documents:

1.  Comptroller’s Audits

• DEP’s Oversight of Costs to Construct the CWTP, FR09-110A, 9/1/2009 – http://bit.ly/AI5Pr
• DEP’s Progress in Constructing the CWTP, FR08-121A, 9/1/2009 – http://bit.ly/1a4a3E

Community response  WaterBlogged.org » From Guest Pens: Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz – Croton is one of the Mayor’s worst failures http://bit.ly/3Xawfi

2.  Public comments in June and DEP response in September

June Public written:  Why_to_the_DEP_June_2009 (verbal comments in minutes we have not seen yet)

CRO-313-312OS Minor Mod RTC 07-24-09 v2

CRO_Design Commission Response_090728_FINAL

PDC Response 2 – Friend of VCP

3. Community’s response to the Design Commission

Deisgn_Comm_re_Parking_MGH_101309

As in the current national heath care reform mess, both the 2003 Croton Filtration and the 2005 Yankee Stadium Redevelopment meetings mangled an overlying issue with the project purpose — the taking of parkland (read: free land), when other alternatives existed to build said project. This mantra was encouraged by the so-called union-contractors and supported by union leadership and membership for selfish reasons – so contractors could make money; and union members higher pay and better benefits.

Just like some are confused about health care reform, few decision makers realized in 2004 and 2006 that alternative sites for each project would maintain union workers keeping their jobs and benefits, and would save the taxpayer billions of dollars.

Today, the message of health care reform is being purposely confused with “death trap for old people,” “increased in abortions,” or “socialistic medicine” for someone’s selfish agenda – like those $24 million per year health care insurance company CEOs, lobbyists tied to the health care industry, etc. Clearly, reform mean equal and better health care for all.

While those joint ventures of contractors and union leaders were initially successful, they ended with many corruption investigations, convictions and pleas, as well as with those same union workers left out in the picket line at the site of the Lehman College Science Building – across the street from the Jerome Park Reservoir!

Mayor Bloomberg & Friends are republicans; that explains the similarities to the national health care reform battle. Hopefully health care reform comes quicker than the long awaited park mitigation around the Jerome Park Reservoir and replacement parks around Yankee Stadium!

We need to learn from our mistakes; not make them over and over. The republican lobbyist spinners have selfish agendas. This is not a public relations campaign, this is our lives.  Health Insurance Reform is not complicated. The cost of inaction is immeasurable. President Obama’s program is clear:  he is not going to raise taxes, but cut the costs we all know exist.

I support the President’s Health Insurance Guarantees.

1. No Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions

2. No Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays

3. No Cost -Sharing for Preventive Care

4. No Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill

5. No Gender Discrimination

6. No Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage

7. Extended Coverage for Young Adults

8. Guaranteed Insurance Renewal

Join me. Take Action. Start the discussion.

A shareholder’s report on NYC, Inc.

As he campaigns for a third term as mayor, Michael Bloomberg portrays himself as a man above politics and as a savvy businessman who can get us through tough times by his careful management of our dollars.

Residents of the Northwest Bronx know better – or should. They have had years of bad news about the huge project that Mr. Bloomberg personally arranged to have dumped in their backyard – the water filtration plant under construction in Van Cortlandt Park.

When he made the deal in the back room of Bronx Democratic Party headquarters that brought the plant to the park, Mr. Bloomberg notoriously enticed legislators to vote for the project with a promise of $220 million in city funds to be spent on parks in their districts. But that was just a down payment.

Mr. Bloomberg may be able to finance his own campaigns, but for the others who sat around the table that day the real windfall was campaign cash from the contractors and construction unions that would build the plant. Our mayor waded waist-deep in the pay-to-play culture of city politics.

Let’s turn to the other side of the ledger, to Mike Bloomberg, the CEO of NYC, Inc. Let’s observe his Department of Environmental Protection in action. Seldom has there been more comprehensively- documented proof that a city agency is managed by a gang that can’t add straight or that its projections and promises are as evanescent as a spring shower that no sooner sprinkles the ground than it evaporates into thin air.

The DEP’s most recent broken promise is its pledge to excavate in the vicinity of the Jerome Park Reservoir without resorting to blasting. Its decision to dynamite after all needs to be viewed in the context of its sorry record of miscalculation and misstatement. Here’s some of that record:

• The DEP’s inability to comply with the schedule it set itself has cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in fines.
• When the agency’s own draft environmental impact statement showed that our water bills would be lower if the plant were built in an industrial park in Westchester, the price tag underwent an unexplained $200 million increase. The new estimate in the final environmental impact statement was just enough to wipe out the potential savings and blunt an argument against building in Van Cortlandt.
• With years of construction still to go, the project has already exceeded its budget by more than $2 billion.

The only question that remains to be answered about the filtration plant is whether the decision-makers were knaves or fools: did they deliberately lie about the cost and consequences of building the plant in the park, or were they too dumb to figure out where to put the decimal points when they estimated the price?

The evidence is mixed.

The DEP did lie to cover its tracks when it upped the estimate for building in Westchester. A spokesman said town officials had negotiated a monetary trade-off for the inconvenience of hosting the plant. Not true, the town supervisors told The Press.

What about what the DEP characterizes as the “minor modification” of using dynamite? It’s tempting to conclude that it kept plans to blast in its back pocket, but there’s no way to know.

As to the DEP’s inability to contain costs, its track record argues for incompetence rather than dishonesty. It has been almost as wrong about the ultraviolet water treatment plant it is building in the Westchester industrial park as about the filtration plant. The cost of building the UV plant has ballooned from $597,000 to $1.6 billion.

Duplicity or ineptitude: either way, this sorry history has had real consequences. It has cost the residents of Norwood their tranquility, and now threatens the tranquility of Van Cortlandt Village and the schools along Education Mile.

And it has contributed to a rise in water rates that threatens the ability of non-profit organizations to maintain thousands of affordable apartments in the Bronx and elsewhere.

Is the mayor who boasts of his businesslike approach accountable for the performance of his agencies? Or is the CEO of NYC, Inc. like those other CEOs, of banks and insurance companies and automobile manufacturers, we have come to know recently, reaping the bonus of re-election for presiding over a failed enterprise?

http://riverdalepress.com/full.php?sid=8617&current_edition=2009-05-14

Less than nine months after telling a judge it would not use blasting on a Bronx water tunnel project, the city has gone back on its word – possibly lighting the fuse on a new lawsuit.

Land Grab

The city is trying once again to tack on another new and loathsome component to its already disastrous filtration plant project.

It proposes to snatch a chunk of parkland used by local kids to build a parking lot for the new golf course right next to Sachkerah Woods Playground, the only neighborhood benefit of what is shaping up to be the biggest boondoggle in Bronx history.

Because it’s technically for a park use, the city says it isn’t alienating additional parkland.

Maybe so, but after a litany of monumental screw-ups — not least of which is a tripling of the original price tag to around $3 billion —  you’d think they’d shy from riling the community yet again and show a little sense.

And while golf is a recreational purpose, it is barely one that benefits this community enough to warrant slapping down more asphalt. After all, the parking lot is obviously for people who live far away from Norwood.

The city should stick to its original plan and keep the parking lot on the north side, where it is now and was originally slated for after the project’s completion.

But we’re not naïve. We know this will take another push by advocates and elected officials to get the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to do the right thing — like when they stopped the agency from blasting at the Jerome Park Reservoir.

Maybe after taking another drubbing, the DEP will focus on finishing the plant and think twice before springing anything like this on the community again.

We can dream, can’t we?

http://www.norwoodnews.org/story/?id=1303&story=land+grab

THIS IS THE PDF
cwtp-above-ground-facilities-mgc-jpr-120408

THIS IS THE FULL POWER POINT
cwtp-above-ground-facilities-mgc-jpr

THIS IS A LETTER FROM ASSEMBLYMAN JEFFREY DINOWITZ
Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz letter to Design Commission

THIS IS DURING DRY WEATHER

THIS IS DURING A DRIZZLE


Sound is forthcoming . . . wait until you hear it!

The DEP Strikes Again

An annoying tendency regarding the filtration plant project is that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is inclined not to listen to the ratepayers and citizens who are funding all of this.

Concerned residents, some of whom have become experts on the issue, turn up at hearing after hearing and tell the DEP important things.

Agency officials don’t really listen; they just “explain” why they’re right, as if all it would take for the community to agree is to have it explained in words we poor foolish citizens can understand.

Click on the link below to continue to read the article and comment to their blog, and/or return to our page for more chances to comment.

http://www.norwoodnews.org/story/?id=641&story=the+dep+strikes+again