by Anton K. Nilsson

Another long meeting, and access still denied. 

Bronx residents engaged in the fight over the Jerome Park Reservoir failed once again to convince the Department of Environmental Protection to allow public access in the closed-off park. And in an ironic twist, the agency is mulling a plan to shorten the height of the reservoir’s internal fence to protect it from bio-terrorism.

But the DEP did throw the community a bone by announcing the planting of over 500 new trees near the reservoir next year.

Eric Landau from the DEP Commissioner’s office told an audience at the latest Croton Water Treatment Plant Facilities Monitoring Committee meeting that the 553 new saplings, which will be spread in “open spaces,” are to make up for some 152 chopped trees around the building site at the Jerome Park Reservoir last year.

A Parks department representative said that each tree will cost $1415 and have a caliber of at least “3.5, “to ensure survivability.” The trees should be planted by the spring, said Bronx Parks Commissioner Hector Aponte, “If we can find the right landscape people.”

Predictably, the promise of new trees did little to appease those community members who have been waiting for decades for public access to the Jerome Park Reservoir. The reservoir falling within Bedford Park, Van Cortlandt Village, and Kingsbridge Heights is now a desolate construction site with two chain-link fences cordoning it off from public view.

Access Denied
As for access, longstanding security concerns keep the DEP from allowing the general public to the reservoir, Landau said. The reservoir will contain “immediate drinking water,” Landau said, which only travels for 30 minutes before reaching taps in private homes. If anyone were to contaminate the water, the DEP argues, there would not be enough time to warn the public, and therefore full public access is deemed unsafe.

The internal, ten-foot fence sectioning off the reservoir could likely be replaced with a four-foot fence, according to Landau, who offered insight to the plan at Community Board 8’s Land Use/Sanitation Committee a day after the meeting. The DEP sees the potential project as a way of  protecting the drinking water.

But Gary Axelbank , a major critic of the gargantuan plant, sees that as a bogus excuse.

“If they would like to take the ten-foot fence and make it into a four-foot fence, how’s that going to protect us from terrorism?” asked Axelbank, referring to the DEP’s longstanding argument the fencing was installed to deter bio-terrorists. Axelbank called their claims on safeguarding the public from terrorists “baloney” since anyone with “drones, helicopters and anyone with a decent arm and a desire to pollute the reservoir can do so.”

Since 2008, when the reservoir was drained and the city began building the new Croton Water Filtration Plant beneath Van Cortlandt Park, residents have been unable to get close to the site.

Even the DEP’s claim that the Jerome Park Reservoir water is only half an hour away from taps in private homes has been challenged by local activists. According to a DEP report, which was quoted by community member Karen Argenti in an email to the Norwood News, “all water released [from the Jerome Park Reservoir] for in-city distribution will go through the Croton Water Filtration Plant.” This means, community members argue, that the reservoir-to-tap timeframe should be greater than 30 minutes.

After being questioned by the community, Landau admitted that there are no measures in place to detect toxins in the water—justifying the isolation of the reservoir from public access. Viruses and bacteria, however, are detectable at various points, a DEP representative said.

The DEP also announced there will be a pilot program where public schools will be able to go on supervised tours of the Jerome Park Reservoir. The program will begin after the water filtration plant is operational, which has no end in sight.