A judge has dismissed one of the four lawsuits brought by opponents of the filtration plant planned for Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park.

On Dec. 3, State Supreme Court Judge William Wetzel, dismissed a suit filed by the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, which argued that the city failed to rezone the parkland for industrial use.

In a terse, three-page decision, Wetzel said that the city’s 4,000-page environmental impact statement “negates any possibility that any relevant issue was overlooked or given anything other than a ‘hard look.’”

The suit also argued that the city broke the law when the deputy mayor wrote a letter authorizing an “override” of the city’s zoning laws. But Wetzel shot that down as well.

“…[T]he zoning override was a legally permissible alternative and made eminent good sense,” Wetzel wrote. “Furthermore, the suggestion that the zoning override was a means to avoid giving any review opportunity to the City Council is puzzling since this project has in fact received the approval of the City Council.”

But advocates were quick to point out that the Council has only voted on the distribution of  $243 million in mitigation funds that will be used to improve Bronx parks.

“The City Council has not ever reviewed and authorized the zoning change of creating an industrial site of larger than nine football fields in a park, and immediately adjacent to residential buildings, community health facilities and schools,” said Elizabeth Cooke-Levy, a Friends board member.

Levy also assailed the judge’s reasoning on the zoning override issue.

“He implied that if the city and the community went through a ULURP [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure], you’d force the city to go through a process and nothing else would change,” she said. “And we feel that the zoning review, in and of itself, would provide opportunities for a public review, and even a possible modification of DEP’s [Department of Environmental Protection] plans, that we have never been able to have.”

As an example, Cooke-Levy cited the worker parking lot that will be built on the site. “Why does DEP need a parking lot for its own employees when there’s a municipal parking garage across the street?” she said.

Karen Argenti, a veteran opponent of the plant, said the judge’s handling of the zoning issue has disastrous implications. “The idea that the city doesn’t have to follow zoning and can simply override it with a memo threatens the whole democracy of the New York City Charter,” she said. “It goes to the heart of whether the public can participate effectively in their governance.”

At press time, the Friends and their lawyers had not yet decided whether they would appeal Judge Wetzel’s decision. The DEP did not return a call requesting comment.

Meanwhile, three other groups filing lawsuits agreed to a city motion to consolidate their cases in Queens Supreme Court, according to Jim Bacon, an attorney for the Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition. That group believes that the city failed to consider new filtration technologies that could make the plant significantly smaller and less expensive for water rate payers.

The town of Eastchester in Westchester County has also filed suit, saying that it will need to build its own filtration facility if the plant is built in the Bronx, rather than upstream in the town of Mt. Pleasant. The town says the city never consulted with them about this.

And a group of local residents coming together under the banner Bronx Environmental Health and Justice (BEHJ), aided by the Environmental Law Clinic at Columbia University, maintains that the city was discriminatory in choosing a densely populated minority community for the project, rather than the more isolated Eastview site in Mt. Pleasant.

BEHJ held a meeting attended by about 70 residents at the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center on Dec. 4, followed by a candlelight vigil and procession to the plant site.