CB 8 panel approves Jerome Park Project

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The environment and sanitation committee of Community Board 8 has voted to endorse a plan to rehabilitate Jerome Park Reservoir, after the Department of Environmental Protection has revised it to heed some of the community’s concerns. 

Members of the committee adopted a resolution at the Dec. 21 meeting to endorse what is known as the second phase of the project. The plan is also scheduled to go before the Public Design Commission in January for preliminary approval of the first two phases of the 4-year construction plan.

The plan, as first announced by the Department of Environmental Protection, had caused some uproar both on the board’s environment and sanitation committee and among local residents.

One of the reasons had to do with public access to the reservoir. At present, a 10-foot fence keeps members of the public from getting near the 93-acre body of water, which can hold up to 773 million gallons of water in its role as part of the Croton Watershed system. A second, security fence runs around the reservoir on the outside. 

The DEP said it would replace the internal 10-foot fence with a 4-foot one, prompting concerns that the authorities would then take extra efforts to keep the public away from the reservoir and its new low fence. But in a Nov. 21 letter to committee char Laura Spalter, DEP Deputy Commissioner Eric Landau said that his department would not reduce public access to the reservoir. The waterbody has been closed to the public since World War II, but the DEP allowed limited access for a couple of days this year and last, and plans to also allow tours next spring.  

Another public concern arose over a plan by the DEP to install bird deterrent wire above the reservoir. Mr. Landau said in a Dec. 7 letter that project had been scrapped from the plan.

Still, members of the committee expressed concern the DEP had not been sharing all its plans with the committee and wanted to include those concerns in the resolution. 

The board endorses the construction plan “with the condition that DEP, its contractors and agents work with Bronx Community Board 8 to mitigate issues including but not limited to traffic, construction, delivery of materials, construction staging, noise, street closures and concentrations of concrete pouring trucks, and that DEP return to report on a regular basis and as requested by the Board in the 4-year construction period,” the resolution read. “Be it further resolved that DEP conduct any reviews that are required by law.”

Robert Fanuzzi, a former environmental committee chair, said at the meeting he was concerned the DEP was purposely omitting information about the future of the rehabilitation plan, and said those concerns should be expressed to the Public Design Commission.

“I think we are being kept in ignorance,” he said. “I think they are not doing that for a reason and I don’t think that we can approve something using that as a condition.”

Ms. Spalter, however, declined to comment on the environmental processes of the agency. 

“I feel like we are working with an agency that has removed the bird wires, which was the big, big thing, and I think that we are asking that they do it the way we have it,” she said. “We’re approving this project,” she said, adding that the project “is going to happen because it’s been approved.” 

The committee agreed, however, to pass an amended resolution and to further look into the construction plan in 2017.

Bronx Community Board 8, Jerome Park Reservoir, Croton Aqueduct, Department of Environmental Protection, Anthony Capote

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