The Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee will cap off a year of increasingly spirited monthly meetings with a Dec. 21 finale that will feature DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd.

Charles Sturcken, the DEP’s director of public affairs, is calling the meeting a “year-end wrap-up” and says the “whole crew will be there.”

Community anger over the DEP’s failure to secure more jobs for local residents will undoubtedly be a lively topic once again, especially with the bulk of construction set to begin early in 2007.

The DEP, union leaders and several Bronx politicians pushed to site the filtration plant at Van Cortlandt Park on the dual premises that the project would produce jobs to Bronxites and that it would be cheaper.

So far, 25 percent of the project workforce has been made up of Bronx residents (to the the chagrin of activists) and the filtration plant is now on pace to be a billion dollars over budget.

Over the course of the past year, community activists and the monitoring committee, chaired by Greg Faulkner of Community Board 7, have consistently ratcheted up the pressure on the DEP to deliver on its promises.

The DEP appears to be responding. In addition to serving up its commissioner, the agency is also unveiling a new jobs program collaboration.

The DEP is teaming up with Councilwoman Maria Baez and Bronx Community College to offer a training program called Project H.I.R.E., which will prepare job seekers for a future in the building trades. Project H.I.R.E. has existed for 21 years, but starting in 2007 it will offer a 20-week course specifically for those who have registered with the DEP’s Community Outreach Office on Jerome Avenue.

More than 600 local residents have signed up for jobs at the outreach office.

“We are encouraged with what we’ve accomplished so far,” said Lloyd in a statement, “but we need to do more.”

Faulkner said the job program “is a great first step,” but added that much more needed to be done.