New outrage at Jerome Park

The Department of Environmental Protection wants to begin large-scale reconstruction at Jerome Park Reservoir, in a project that would go on for the next few years and would involve the arrival of cement trucks and the installation of another fence-like structure around the waterbody. 

The fence-like structure would support a system of wires stretching across the entire surface of the reservoir in taut lines. The goal is to deter birds from landing on the reservoir’s surface thereby reducing pollutants in the water before it goes for purification at the nearby Croton filtration plant. 

The bird barrier is part of a project scheduled to go for approval to the city’s Public Design Commission in January. The DEP presented its plans to Community Board 8’s environment and sanitation committee on Nov. 16, but the panel, appointed by the borough president, is merely advisory.

The plan met with an outpouring of criticism. 

The reservoir already has two fences surrounding it, including a powerful barrier supposedly designed to withstand the impact of a heavy truck crashing into it at high speed. Building a third barrier would add to a jumble of “competing fences, redundant fences,” Robert Fanuzzi of the environmental committee told the meeting. 

He minced his words even less when speaking to fellow panel members after the end of the official part of the gathering, summarizing the project thusly: “The design stinks.” 

Another concern is the effect construction would have on adjacent parks, particularly Harris Park Annex near Lehman College. Yet another is the prospect of the heavy traffic and exhaust fumes the trucks carrying concrete to the construction site would bring. 

With several schools adjacent to the reservoir, traffic in the area is already “a disaster,” Karen Argenti of the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality told the meeting. She urged the DEP to restore the reservoir as the publicly accessible recreation spot it had been in decades past, but city authorities have repeatedly shot down that suggestion. 

Instead, the DEP’s two-phase project includes pouring cement into the decaying tunnels of the Old Croton Aqueduct near the reservoir to prevent them from leaking muck, tearing down some of the gatehouses – brick and stone structures that hold valves for controlling the flow of water – and repairing the roofs and facades of others. The project also envisages replacing the reservoir’s interior 10-foot-tall fence with a four-foot one, and installing the bird-deterrent net. 

If approved by New York City’s design commission, construction would begin in the fall of 2017, according to the DEP. The first stage would be complete in the fall of 2020, and the second a year later. 

Bird wires

The system of bird-deterrent wires would not hurt the birds, but would make landing difficult, Alicia West, a DEP official, told the Nov. 16 meeting. The wires would be suspended from poles placed around the reservoir about 25 feet apart – an arrangement similar to an installation at Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, according to the department. 

Opponents like Anne Marie Garti, an environmental lawyer and leading advocate of preserving the historic reservoir’s scenic appeal, take umbrage at the comparison. The two water bodies, according to critics of the project, are vastly different in both their technological aspects and cultural significance.

Hillview’s water is not filtered after it leaves the reservoir, while Jerome Park’s goes for purification at the Croton filtering plant. Hillview is a largely utilitarian structure, with little claim to historic significance or architectural charms, while Jerome Park, along with its curvy surrounding streets, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who also designed Central Park, and features stone walls crafted by Italian stonemasons. The reservoir was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 and, on a good day, presents a blue expanse of water reflecting the sky and rippled by lapping waves, set amid landscaped parks – a cherished sight for many residents of houses and apartment buildings nearby and for commuters on adjacent roads. 

City officials “want to make it ugly and industrial. They can’t help themselves,” Ms. Garti told The Press, as she led a tour around the reservoir on Nov. 20 — one of a handful of days in a year when the DEP opens Jerome Park to the public. 

Ms. Garti had argued passionately against the planned bird-deterrent fence at the community board’s environmental committee meeting a few days earlier. If bird wires needed to be installed at all, the city could use one of the existing two fences to hold them, she and environmental committee members said.

But DEP officials maintain that the security fence was not equipped to support the bird wires, and a constant of the wires could damage it. 

There is no legal requirement to install the bird-deterrent system, but the DEP intends to go ahead with building it anyway, Eric Landau, a DEP deputy commissioner, told The Press after the Nov. 16 meeting. The reservoir only holds “raw,” or unfiltered, water, flowing from Croton Lake some 30 miles to the north. It has been serving the city for decades, and its water is filtered and purified at the nearby Croton filtration plant before going into New Yorkers’ homes and offices. 

“While the bird-deterrent overhead wire system is not required, it is part of DEP’s overall strategy of source-water protection,” a DEP spokesman said in an email to The Press. “Its installation will minimize pollutants (fecal coliform bacteria) from migratory and resident waterbirds, thereby safeguarding the water supply and allowing the plant to run more efficiently.”

None of the DEP officials who commented for this article gave any indication the department might consider abandoning the bird-wire plan, but the spokesman said the “DEP will take into consideration the community’s concerns about the look, feel and design of the wires.”

The Croton water-purification plant cost the city $3.4 billion to build, Mr. Fanuzzi said. If that does not cover equipment capable of filtering out bird-dropping contamination, then “$3.4 billion doesn’t buy you what it used to,” he added, jokingly. 

For Ms. Garti, this means that something could be out of whack at the Croton filtration plant or in the water-supply system — a hypothesis that DEP officials deny. 

“I think there is something wrong... something not working right at the [filtration plant],” she said. 

A DEP spokesman said the plant has “no problems,” although it was shut down earlier this fall, along with the reservoir itself, when algae grew in a water channel that feeds the reservoir. 

Algae growth

In September, the water of the reservoir developed “green streaks” of algae, Ms. Garti said. It was the first such incident she recalled in her many years of monitoring the reservoir, and another possible indication of water problems, she said. 

DEP officials attribute the growth of algae — which a spokesman said “occurred at dozens of lakes, ponds and reservoirs throughout the state” — to a long spell of hot and dry weather. 

The growth of algae prompted the DEP to drain the reservoir for cleaning ahead of opening it to the public for two days this weekend. The public tours had originally been planned for October, but were postponed until mid-November because of the draining and clean-up work.

“Members of the Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee and Jerome Park Reservoir Taskforce were offered the choice of holding the event in mid-October (with no water) or mid-November (with the south basin filled) and they chose the mid-November,” the DEP spokesman said. 

Water or cement?

When the DEP opened the gates of Jerome Park to the public this weekend, the southern portion of the reservoir was brimming with fresh-looking water. But across a cement barrier cutting through the middle of the reservoir, the north basin only held a shallow few inches of water. 

“They put a little water” in the north basin for the duration of the public tours, Ms. Garti said, as she led a tour group on Nov. 20. But whether the water will remain for much longer – or whether the north part of the reservoir will turn into an empty concrete basin – remains uncertain. 

On Nov. 14, the DEP’s Mr. Landau told a meeting of the Croton plant monitoring committee that his department may drain the north basin and keep it as an emergency receptacle for any overflow from the water-supply system during heavy rains, according to DEP officials and to Ms. Garti, who attended the meeting.

If that is the DEP’s plan, it seems to contradict the department’s pledges made 12 years ago, when construction of the Croton filtration plant was being negotiated. 

“The Jerome Park Reservoir (both the north and south basins) would be used as a raw water reservoir,” said a July 16, 2004 statement signed by then-Commissioner Christopher Ward of the DEP. 

“Jerome Park Reservoir offers residents panoramic views and opens the community to light,” the DEP said in another document, titled “Final supplemental environmental impact study for the Croton water treatment plant.” 

It would be difficult for the DEP to backtrack on its written promises, Ms. Garti said. The DEP seems to recognize the difficulty: Following the Nov. 14 meeting with the Croton monitoring committee, Mr. Landau told her he spoke with the commissioner and the plan was being reviewed, Ms. Garti said. 

According to her account, Mr. Landau had originally told the Nov. 14 meeting that the north basin would “never” be filled with water, except when containing overflows. But the DEP maintains he had “made no such definitive statement,” according to the spokesman. 

Mr. Landau “explained how the reservoir is an active reservoir for water supply and decisions are based on operational need, and that having water in only one basin allows for greater flexibility when managing the complex system,” the spokesman said, adding that the DEP “will further review all documents, and concerns, pertaining to water in both basins.”

Public access

In its early decades, Jerome Park Reservoir was open to the public as a park and recreation spot. The government closed it off during World War II for military training — and has never reopened it since, Ms. Garti said. 

Officially, the government’s concern is that the reservoir — part of New York’s water-supply system for more than a century — could become a target for terrorists. Unofficially, city authorities seem worried that if they reopen the reservoir for public access, they would never be able to take it back from the people again, according to a hypothesis advanced by Ms. Garti. 

But terrorism concerns mean that opening up the reservoir to the public would require cutting it off from the water-supply system — thus rendering the pricey Croton filtration plant useless. 

“They would have to undo $3.4 billion worth of contracts” that went into building the plant, Mr. Fanuzzi told the Nov. 16 environmental committee meeting, dismissing the prospect of public access as an unlikely scenario. 

But for a couple of days a year, the DEP opens up the reservoir. No cameras, cell phones or bags are allowed past the gates, which were guarded on Nov. 20 by DEP police officers armed with automatic rifles. 

In an age of swiftly spreading technologies, a potential hazard could also come from drones flying over the reservoir. There have been a couple of those during the past year, but people flying them were doing it for recreation, not malicious intent, the commanding officer of the 50th police precinct, Deputy Inspector Terence O’Toole, told The Press. 

About 100 people visited the reservoir on each of the two days it was open to the public, according to the DEP. Despite gusts of frigid winds on Nov. 20 and temperatures that had plunged to the mid-30s overnight, the tour that Ms. Garti led around the reservoir drew more than two dozen of people, some of them coming from miles away. 

“She’s a great historian,” said John Conti, who drove from Pawling, about 60 miles north of Riverdale, to join Ms. Garti’s tour. 

Campaign plans

Despite objections by Community Board 8’s environmental committee to the DEP’s construction plans for the reservoir, the board has no power to strike down the project. The committee will, however, vote on a resolution expressing its views on the plan when the panel convenes for its next meeting in December, environmental committee chairwoman Laura Spalter said. 

The resolution, which would take place before the project comes up for approval at the city’s Public Design Commission, could help sway the authorities’ decision, Ms. Spalter and her fellow board members hope. 

The resolution could support some parts of the project – such as repairing the asphalt on the paths around the reservoir – and oppose others, such as the bird-wire installation, Community Board 8 chairman Daniel Padernacht said. 

A few days after the meeting, Ms. Spalter emailed the DEP a list of questions about its plans, she told The Press on Monday. 

Since there are no laws or safety regulations that require the installation of a bird-deterrent system, the questions included one that Ms. Spalter had repeatedly asked DEP officials at the Nov. 16 meeting without getting an answer: “Who is forcing you to do it?”