The Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association already has the story, so check it out.

http://www.fipna.org/2008/08/12/blasting-causes-rats/

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This scoping session was held in the rain on March 22, 2007. Guess we are never going to get any one from the NYC DEP to help us with public access and/or maintenance.
What happened to all the promises? Can we walk inside the fence? Will we ever have the Outdoor Urban Ecology Lab, aka the OUEL?

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This starts with Anne Marie telling the NYC DEP Facilities Monitoring Committee on April 17, 2008 about a letter from the DEP Commissioner to Amalgamated explaining the security reasons for not allowing people to walk inside the fence. We will find that the reasons were not true. The walking tour of Jerome Park Reservoir on April 18, 2008 to check for security and quality of life issues. It was a bright sunny day so I decided to go for a walk.

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Facilities Monitoring Committee 6/19 agenda:

Jerome Park Reservoir public access question, JPR Construction, Night Blasting at VCP

1. On May 30, 2008, I received a call from Martha Holstein (consultant to the DEP CWTP) that the DEP that they will not be discussing the public access to JPR at the next meeting. DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd told the DEP officials Lawitts and Canty that they she is going to set up a “working group” to do a study of why the agency would say they are against public access without looking into it. The results will not be quick, but would take 7 to 9 months. There will be no community partners, no outside entities, no agencies and no community representatives. They will try to clarify and understand why it is not possible to have public access at Jerome Park Reservoir.

The FMC members agreed by phone on May 29^th to remove this item from the agenda. Instead, the DEP will provide periodic reports to the FMC and will discuss the process for public participation. They will make this presentation at the meeting in June.

This is another stalling tactic. This is similar to the ploy in the Alienation Legislation to give due consideration to making Jerome Park into a park. When they did that internal study, the three former DEP Deputy Commissioners agreed that Jerome Park Reservoir could not be a park for many reasons, including security.

Last March the DEP and the FMC agreed that the DEP was going to present their case, and Anne Marie and Karen were going to rebut. We have spent hours working together on this, taking photographs, gathering information, planning on the power point presentation It is not clear yet, but I think we are off the agenda.

2. To replace the agenda item, the DEP is now proposing to add new topic. It is about time they thought of adding the tunneling and new meter chamber construction work at Jerome Park Reservoir. It is a new contract (although the work is started).

3. Finally, last week the FMC was notified about a two week potential (on or after May 23) for night blasting for the Raw Water Tunnel to the Filter Plant. The blasting will be 170 feet beneath Mosholu Golf Course, approximately 1800 feet west of Jerome Avenue.

This is a heads up. As the time goes on, there will be more info.

/Karen

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Karen Argenti and Dennis Nagle leading a group of community residents around the walk inside the fence of Jerome Park Reservoir.  We estimate the date around 1998-99.  People love to walk on the level circumference walkway near the water.

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A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct, by Charles King, New York, 1843

This is a great service of google.books (http://books.google.com/) where you can read this really old book online. It is an amazing description of the water system, how it was designed, and what it was modeled after.

The Title is: A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct Compiled from Official Documents: Together with an Account of the Civic Celebration of the Fourteenth October, 1842, on Occasion of the Completion of the Great Work: Preceded by a Preliminary Essay on Ancient and Modern Aqueducts By Charles King.

The link is:

http://books.google.com/books?id=FZ4OAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA146&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0#PPR1,M1

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