by Shayla Love
A pin oak tree lives on Jerome Avenue, where it meets 213th Street. The roots of this tree go deep. They extend under the cement sidewalk and into the soil of the Bronx’s past, before the words “filtration plant” had ever been uttered.

At the April 10 Community Board 7 (CB7) Transportation Committee meeting, residents voiced concern for this tree and its future. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said that it has to remove the tree to build a second entrance to the construction site of the Croton Water Treatment Plant (CWTP).

The entrance was approved by three community board chairs last year and is expected to be completed in June. DEP said it will be used by construction vehicles until the plant is completed, then be redone as the permanent entrance for the restored Mosholu golf course. Adjacent to it will be a parking lot for golf course visitors.

The pin oak stands on the stretch of sidewalk where DEP will remove a section of wall and pave over the ground. When asked if the tree would be replaced, Shane Ojar, the Director of Community Affairs from the DEP said no, not by them.

“The agreement that we have, is that we can replace [the tree] of like and kind at another location,” he said. “Or you can have a monetary exchange between the two agencies. It was agreed upon that we would just provide money to them.”

A voice piped up, “How much?”

Ojar said that the DEP will pay the city Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) $32,000 for the tree.

Board member William Francis asked why a tree replacement wasn’t pursued outright. He said that by asking the DPR if they want money, or a tree— the obvious answer is money. But if the DEP asked the community, they would prefer a tree. According to Francis, once the money goes to the DPR, the likelihood of CB7 getting a new tree is diminished.

“I’ll put it bluntly,” Ojar said. “We don’t particularly care what happens, how the tree is put back or if it’s money. So we defer to Parks and we negotiated with Parks and we said this is what we have to do. What do you want?”

Francis was quick with a reply.

“In your further dealing with this community, we would appreciate it if you’d think tree first,” he said. “I understand that you don’t care, but we live here. And we do care. And that’s very important to us.”

Further Suspicion
The heated exchange over the outcome of a single tree reveals the longstanding tension between the DEP and the community. The CWTP is a saga of community versus city agencies, stretching back to 1998. Residents and groups fought the plant’s existence, then the location, followed by the method of filtration. They lost on every count.

The second construction entrance may seem minor, but lately there are suspicions of any modifications relating to the plant.

Bob Bender, the chair of the Parks and Recreation committee of Community Board 8 (CB8) heard about the entrance at the March Croton Facility Monitoring Committee (CFMC) meeting. He said he was surprised to hear about it and that CB8’s Parks and Recreation Committee had opposed it one year ago. He’s concerned about an undisclosed purpose for the land.

“In my experience, when you add a driveway, some other agency will find a use for it,” Bender said.

Bender said that the DEP has repeatedly lied to the community, citing the long overdue pedestrian bridge over the Major Deegan Expressway and trees owed at Jerome Park. He is going to keep a close eye on the new entrance, to ensure it’s being used for golf course parking and traffic only.

“It should be clearly stipulated that this is the only permissible use for this driveway and that if the clubhouse were ever to close or relocate, the driveway would be demolished and the parkland restored,” Bender said. “Unless those conditions are agreed to, I will ask every elected official as well as the CFM committee to oppose the driveway by every legal means possible.”

A History of Deceit

Gary Axelbank, host of BronxTalk and long-time opponent of the CWTP, remembers the day that Chris Ward, ex-commissioner of the DEP, resigned. Axelbank stood on the steps of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, protesting the vote that would build the plant in the Bronx instead of city-owned land in Westchester. After demonstrators heard that the vote had been passed, word came down that Ward had cleaned out his desk.

“As soon as the project passed, he resigned,” Axelbank said. “He got a job— a temporary job— for one year, to bypass the city’s conflict of interest rules. Then, he got a job as the head of the contractor’s association that lobbied the strongest for the plant. He’s the same guy.”

In 2007, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, whose district overlaps with the project, wrote a letter of complaint to the NYC Department of Investigation, wondering if Ward was “serving two masters when he was commissioner.”

The project’s massive budget and delayed completion have added to the speculation about the project’s beginnings, and whether the plant ever had the community’s best interest at heart.

“The problem is, over the years, they have said one thing and done another,” Axelbank said. “They have said one thing, and had plans they never revealed. So there is absolutely no trust between the community and the DEP. Zero.”

Axelbank said the original Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) stated there would be no blasting at the reservoir, until they filed a modification that required it. Axelbank still wonders about the necessity of the blasting.

He recollected a proposed “force main”, that required digging a trench from Bainbridge Avenue to Hunts Point, through five community boards. The DEP insisted it was necessary. It would have cost $18 million. Then, when old, buried trolley tracks made the project nearly impossible, Axelbank said they easily found a way to do without.

“Now you tell me who’s telling the truth?” he said. “Their objective has not been to build the most cost effective, most efficient plant. Their objective has been to give projects that would work for contractors.”

Under comptrollers John Liu and Bill Thompson, the Independent Budget Office (IBO) studied the plant’s budget and cost overruns.They both said that the overrun could not be justified, according to the original projection.

The DEP has long insisted the numbers are higher because of inflation. Axelbank doesn’t buy it. Dinowitz, in his complaint letter, also claims that the project massively underestimated its cost.

The New York Daily News, in an editorial, said in 2013 that the CWTP is one of the biggest reasons for water bill increases: more than 160% since 2001. The IBO study from 2008 said that one of the reasons for choosing the Mosholu site was that estimated construction costs were cheaper than anywhere else. The estimation, they said, was $992 million. According to the IBO, the project is currently at $3.5 billion.

Membrane Memories
David Ferguson from the Community Watersheds Clean Water Coalition (CWCWC) doesn’t follow news about the filtration plant anymore. He doesn’t keep up with the fight for the running track around Jerome Park, or the pedestrian bridge, or that only $107 of the $200 million, that Mayor Bloomberg promised to Bronx parkland in exchange for support, has been delivered. It’s just too painful.

He hasn’t returned to the CWTP site, since the CWCWC lost their lawsuit against the DEP to use a Membrane Filtration (MF) at the plant, instead of Dissolved Air Filtration (DAF).

DAF dissolves air in pressurized water. When the air is released, bubbles float to the surface and adhere to any matter in the water, where these contaminants can be skimmed off and removed. With MF, a series of membrane systems filter water through a barrier, keeping the treated water physically separate. It’s faster, takes up less space, and costs less, said Ferguson.

Axelbank called it the “biggest untold story” about the plant. Ferguson said the impact of this choice will affect New York’s environmental future.

“[Membrane filtration] would have been a fraction of power and given a better filtration system,” Ferguson said. “It would be flexible; you could really be much more precise about protecting the water. We could have built it above ground. You wouldn’t need this huge bowl that they had to dig, which was extraordinarily expensive.”

CWCWC’s president Marian Rose Ph.D., brought Dr. Audrey Levine, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tampa University, to New York to educate the group and public, before the construction on the plant had started.

In 2005, they sued the DEP under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR). These laws require that every option is considered for environmental benefits. Ferguson said that their expert was not allowed to testify. They lost the case. DEP said they had been researching DAF for five years, and would not pursue another route.

At the public hearings for the plant, Rose remembers union members shouting to prevent CWCWC members from being heard. She said that Ward, chairman of the meetings, did nothing to control them.

“That’s what we were up against,” she said. “All this seems like ancient history to me, but it all comes back. You grow up and learn that it’s all politics. Not what’s best for the water or what’s best for the people. It was a sacrificial lamb.”

Membrane filtration is the preferred choice all over the world, according to CWCWC and Axelbank. Axelbank said that the reason they didn’t choose it was to give the contractors from the General Contractors Association a bigger, more expensive project. Ferguson said that the future price to pay will be the environmental cost.

“The basic thing is that global warming would have benefitted incredibly,” he said. “The carbon footprint of our city would have been much smaller. And this is 24/7. This is going to go on.”

Axelbank said, “When they cut the ribbon on that thing, the city will have bought a three billion dollar dinosaur.”

Future Contention
When this struggle began, the pin oak tree was young, and its roots were strong and thick, called a taproot. Bronx groups and residents fought brashly against a filtration plant in their neighborhood. As the tree aged, its roots lost their configuration and branched out like a thousand little hairs. Now it has a fibrous root system that strongly implanted in the dirt, but more susceptible to harm.

Is all of this, as Rose said, ancient history?

The plant is being built, the DAF filtration is going in, the tree will be ripped up and the money is spent. Sometimes a second entrance is just a second entrance; a parking lot, just a lot. But as completion of the plant draws nearer, every step forward continues to be met with distrust and trepidation from residents and the community. And the reason is that the strong root of the community was broken into pieces too.

Looking to the future, activists are now focused on the building of a pedestrian bridge, the return of the Jerome Park running path and the restoration of all the trees on the parkland. The New York Times reported in March that the Jerome Park reservoir was sensitive to terrorism and that the double walled enclosure may have to remain. This explanation infuriates Axelbank, who said it’s still a sore wound for those who had advocated for the Westchester location and for Jerome Park to be taken offline, all those years ago.

“By choosing to do it in the Bronx, I would think, that they made the decision that it wasn’t that big of a deal,” he said.

The finished reservoir will only be a supplement to New York’s drinking water, the majority of which comes from the Catskill/ Delaware system. He thinks that if a terrorist really wanted to access the open-air reservoir, they wouldn’t do so by land. And if they did, an eight-foot fence is hardly a barrier.

Ferguson said he knew that when the plant was going underground, that the land would need protection after. He never thought it would be returned fully.

“I’m tired of being right, he said. “It’s gotten so frustrating.”

As for the pin oak, and all the parkland to be restored, Francis of CB7 said, “Trees cannot go back in until all the work is done. Yes, it’s been a long time, but the plant is not done yet, and we do have to wait.

The voices in the CB7 meeting murmured around him. Barbara Stronczer, Bedford Mosholu Community Association president, muttered under her breath, “It feels like it’s been going on forever.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.