When the city and local politicians tried to sell Norwood residents on a plan to build the massive Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, they offered two benefits in exchange for years of traffic interruptions, lost parkland, and increased air pollution – $240 million in Bronx park renovations and the promise of jobs for local residents.

The park renovations are under way now.

But what about all those jobs? Or, as Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said in an interview last week, “Where’s the beef?”

The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate in New York and one of the highest in the country.

After nearly two years, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is about to finish digging a massive hole in what used to be Mosholu Golf Course and complete the first phase of the filtration plant. In the process, the DEP has employed an average of about 100 workers, about 25 to 30 of them Bronxites.

Now, with phase two set to start in early 2007, the DEP is in the process of handing out the next fat filtration contract, which is worth in excess of a billion dollars and will create 600 to 700 new jobs.

Charles Sturcken, the DEP’s director of Public Affairs, says he hopes to see the agency approach the same percentage of Bronx hires in phase two as they achieved in phase one.

“I think we’ve done pretty well with [local] labor,” Sturcken said. “The next stage will be more difficult.”

Sturcken says the sheer amount of people that the new contractor will have to hire will make it difficult to guarantee that a large percentage of those jobs will go to Bronxites. He says contractors for the plant are bound by a project labor agreement to hire union workers first, wherever they may reside. The labor agreement says nothing about hiring people in a certain geographic area.

State Law

According to New York State General Municipal Law 103, it is illegal to require contractors to hire workers based on where they live. According to the city’s lawyers, “municipalities may not use contracts to advance social goals, however noble.”

Members of the Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee (CFMC) and others in the community expressed displeasure with the local job numbers during the first phase. Now, they are faced with the prospect of the DEP delivering possibly 25 percent or less during the second phase.

“During the [filtration plant siting] process, the [DEP] commissioner promised hundreds and hundreds of jobs,” said Dinowitz, whose district is being affected most severely by the plant.

Dinowitz said he and the community feel duped. “I’m not sure they ever intended to deliver those jobs,” he said. “It was a big fat lie.”

“All we are trying to do is hold the DEP to the promises they and the mayor made,” said local activist and former CFMC member Lyn Pyle. “Over and over they offered ‘good jobs for Bronx residents.’”

With the new contract being handed out sometime in the next month, Pyle and current CFMC Chair Greg Faulkner are trying to ratchet up the pressure on the DEP.

At the last FMC meeting, two young men seeking full-time employment — one with a child to support, the other, a student at Monroe College — expressed their frustration with the lack of opportunities being provided by the filtration project.

Two weeks later, three unemployed Norwood residents walked to the DEP Community Office on Jerome Avenue (adjacent to the plant site) after being alerted by Pyle that the office was only 10 minutes away. The Community Office was designed to help local residents find jobs (at the plant or elsewhere) and provide information about the project.

“We had no idea the [Community Office] was even here,” said Isac Gil, 24, who shook his head and shrugged when asked about job opportunities in the Bronx. “There’s nothing,” he said.

Raymond Rodriguez, 25, summed up the employment situation in the Knox-Gates section of Norwood, where he and Gil live. “You see them all on the corner, right? Nobody works on Mosholu.”

Applying for Apprenticeships

At the office, DEP staffer Robert Barnes gave the unemployed three employment inquiry forms and highlighted some of the apprenticeship programs and upcoming job opportunities. “We’re here to help,” he told them. “I know how it is growing up here in the Bronx.”

Faulkner and Pyle want to put the onus on the DEP and the unions to produce for the community, whether they are legally bound to or not. They want the DEP to help the unions step up their apprenticeship programs and give local residents who have completed apprenticeship programs a portion of the filtration plant jobs.

“The unions have to say ‘yes’ we’ll give them a portion,” Faulkner said. “We don’t expect them all to go to new union members, there are seniority issues. We’re just saying, ‘give us a piece.’”

Several unions involved with the filtration plant project were contacted for this article, but none returned calls seeking comment.

For its part, Sturcken says the DEP’s job efforts during the first phase put five people into union apprenticeship programs, while 20 others are going through the interviewing process to join a program. He says five others recently graduated from the city’s STRIVE Construction Skills program and that 45 people were put to work on CUNY construction projects. The DEP did not say where any of those people were from.

In October, the DEP is setting up a free GED program for local residents looking to become members of the union (you can’t get into a union without a high school diploma or GED). They are also working with the city’s small business agency on creating a workshop for local businesses on how to bid on contracts and subcontracts for city construction projects. Up to this point in the plant’s construction, $17 million has gone to Bronx businesses, according to the DEP.

Those numbers don’t impress Faulkner. This time around, with jobs for carpenters, plumbers, electricians, laborers, elevator installers and more up for grabs, Faulkner says he wants more than empty promises. He wants jobs. If nothing happens and the DEP and unions continue with the status quo, Faulkner plans on making it difficult for anyone to work.

“If there’s no progress, you’ll see a parade of angry protesters marching down Jerome Avenue and I’ll be leading the pack,” Faulkner said. “If this plant gets built and it doesn’t change the community at all for the better, we should hang our heads in shame.”