An annoying tendency regarding the filtration plant project is that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is inclined not to listen to the ratepayers and citizens who are funding all of this.

Concerned residents, some of whom have become experts on the issue, turn up at hearing after hearing and tell the DEP important things.

Agency officials don’t really listen; they just “explain” why they’re right, as if all it would take for the community to agree is to have it explained in words we poor foolish citizens can understand.

But that’s not so. Local activists were right that the DEP could do with a smaller plant and filter less water or use another technology like membrane filtration, rather than just spend money like — well, like water, actually.

They were right that the plant would never go in the Jerome Park Reservoir. They were right that you couldn’t build something 20 feet high at the street and call it underground. And they were right that that the city had to get state legislative approval to put it in the park and that it would cost more to put it there.

If the DEP had really listened to the community and respected it as a valuable resource rather than just wait for the clock to run out at every hearing, we would have avoided many of the project’s problems, not least of which are massive cost overruns.

The DEP maintains that the blasting at the reservoir (see cover story) does not violate promises in the Environmental Impact Statement. That’s not true, but even if it were, that’s no excuse for once again ignoring the citizen ratepayers who pay their salary.

Will they ever learn?

This editorial was adapted from comments made by Norwood News publisher Dart Westphal at last week’s meeting of the Croton Facilities Monitoring Committee.