Talk Bronx New York

Ears Cocked for the Sound of Blasting

KAREN ARGENTI, a 57-year-old environmental consultant who lived on the west side of Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx for 20 years, still remembers how the music from concerts in Harris Park, on the reservoir’s east side, used to carry across the water.

That sound carries over water so well is one of many reasons Ms. Argenti can’t believe that for at least three weeks and possibly longer, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection plans to do blasting along the 94-acre reservoir’s eastern edge, near Goulden Avenue and 205th Street.

“The blasting is going to be just like the music,” she said. “People are going to hear it everywhere.”

The agency has long intended to build shafts near the reservoir to connect tunnels, which are part of the Croton Water Filtration Plant project, a treatment facility that the agency is building beneath Van Cortlandt Park. But a few weeks ago, the department announced that instead of drilling to make space for the shafts, it would blast.

According to Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, this plan is significantly different from the one laid out in the 2004 environmental impact statement that outlined the scope and effects of the project. “The fact is when the D.E.P. was trying to sell this to the community, we were specifically told there would be no blasting,” Mr. Dinowitz said, adding that he would like to see a revised environmental impact statement before the work goes further.

But with blasting scheduled to begin in early September, residents have little time left to voice their objections.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Screening apparatus greets students on their way into John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx.

Cameras, Screening Apparatus & Security In NY Schools..  

The Internet Protocol Digital Video System is only one aspect of New York City’s school safety program, a joint Department of Education - New York Police Department effort that some student advocates consider so aggressive, they’ve dubbed it the “school to prison pipeline.”

In addition to security cameras, the public school atmosphere today includes more than 4,500 uniformed officers patrolling the halls, enforcement of zero-tolerance behavior policies, and thousands of predominantly minority students attending “Impact” schools – a designation given to the most crime-ridden – who must walk through metal detectors and past armed police officers just to get to class.

Students have expressed their objection in a variety of ways, including at a demonstration in Aug. 2006 on the steps of DOE’s central office at Tweed Courthouse. “We’re students, not felons. We need books, not prisons,” hundreds of student demonstrators chanted.

In the wake of a City Council hearing this fall, lawmakers increasingly have spoken of a need for change (See Principals, Police And A Question of Authority, City Limits Weekly #609, Oct. 15, 2007). “The current school safety system is at best a Band-Aid, and at worst a criminalization of the students,” City Councilman John Liu said this month. A member of Council’s Education Committee, Liu went on to condemn the DOE’s widely-touted decreases in school crime and overcrowding as “smoke and mirrors.”

Councilman Robert Jackson, the chair of Council’s Education Committee, believes that the current safety policy has turned schools into “institutions resembling prisons” and “is not conducive to learning.”

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post