Talk Bronx New York

The agency in charge of delivering clean water to New Yorkers forgot to do it for its own employees.

A new building at the Hunts Point sewage plant in the Bronx was built seven months ago without a necessary “backflow preventer” to protect water in the plant’s huge boilers from backing up into its pipes.

That could have allowed water tainted by industrial chemicals to pour out of hallway drinking fountains, locker room showers and lunchroom sinks, the Department of Environmental Protection admits.

“That’s a mistake. We’re looking into that,” said new DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway. “There wasn’t a backflow preventer there. There is now.”

The building opened last June, and 100 employees used the water - including sewage workers who showered there after their shifts.

Nobody noticed the backflow preventer was missing until a sharp-eyed DEP worker reported it to his supervisors Jan. 15, officials said.

“It wasn’t on the plans,” Holloway said. “We’ll look into why it wasn’t put into the original design.”

The next day, employees say, signs went up above the water fountains telling workers not to drink from them and portable water coolers were wheeled into the building for drinking. Read more..

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The city is calling in the Army to save the Bronx River - the Army Corps of Engineers, that is.

In a move that gives new meaning to the term green initiative, the city Parks Department will partner with the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild a wetlands habitat near the mouth of the river in Soundview Park.

The Corps will foot most of the bill for the $6.3 million project to restore the 3-acre salt marsh, with the Parks Department providing the remaining 35% of the funding.

The Corps is designing the project now, but will contract with a local construction company later this year to do the work, expected to get underway in the fall.

The work will start with clearing away rubble, landfill and construction debris dumped there over the years to raise the low-lying former wetland above the water line, according to Soundview Project Manager Ronald Pinzon.

“There was a lot of stuff dumped there,” Pinzon said. “Rocks, pieces of concrete, even a few refrigerators. Read more..

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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.

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BRONX BOYS OF SUMMER 

The borough’s parks are all being renovated at once, so local teams are sharing crowded turf.

Construction equipment behind them and other teams all around, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League found themselves betwixt and between at one recent practice

A view of the Croton Water Filtration Plant under construction, looking northwest from the roof of Montefiore Medical Center.

A stream of cash pouring into the Parks Department budget has created a rehabilitation bonanza at Bronx parks, but the mostly welcome windfall is also displacing community sports teams and visitors to parks across the borough.

As an incentive for Bronx officials to agree to the construction of the nearly $3 billion Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park by the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation, the agency agreed to give the Parks Department $220 million to $260 million for rehabilitation projects at 63 parks around the borough.

The deal had one major provision: The money had to be spent by 2009. Officials in the borough aren’t completely sure why that deadline exists, but the result is a rush to spend. As the weather warmed up and both children’s and adults’ baseball teams hit the diamonds, they faced a flurry of rehabbing that’s made it hard to play.

Although park renovation sounds like a great thing to many, critics also fault the undertaking for including too little community input, benefiting disadvantaged neighborhoods like Hunts Point, Soundview and Highbridge less than other areas, and even possibly contravening DEP’s own charter.

“It’s inconveniencing a lot of people with the construction they’re doing,” said Anthony Robles, president of the Bronx Panthers youth football team. The Panthers were booted from the Williamsbridge Oval Park, in nearby Norwood, due to a construction project. Robles said he learned of the Oval project “right when they were coming in with the equipment and closing off the fields.”

Having to share their field, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League were forced to move due to several rain puddles at home plate. Coach Rory Gilbert said, “We have to coexist – but I have permits for this field.” Referring to two other large groups, including the young football players currently using the field, Gilbert added, “But I’m getting ready to start batting and if they have a problem with that, I really can’t do anything.”

Obtaining a field requires that an applicant fill out a form and pay an $8 per hour fee, with a two hour use minimum, but one Parks Department staffer explained: “The big problem is if we have the availability.”

When completed, Harris Park – where fences went up in April and several teams are now sharing one field – will have four new ball fields, a multipurpose field as well as a new track, playground and an exercise equipment room with showers.

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DEP Seeks Rate Hike As Institutions & Co-Ops Owe Millions

Call it Law and Water.

While the city Department of Environmental Protection turned off the water at nearly 100 single-family homes earlier this month, the agency has left the water running at dozens of Bronx institutions and co-op buildings that owe millions in unpaid bills.

To make matters worse, many of those institutions say they struggle to pay the bills because the DEP is charging them for years of misread meters and other billing mistakes.

The chaotic billing situation exists even as the DEP seeks a 14.5% water bill hike.

City Council opponents of the hike fume it would not be necessary if the DEP collected the $600 million owed by 15% of its customers.

The DEP says it did not have the ability to recover the money until last December, when Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council gave it authority to impose property liens on deadbeats.

In early April, the DEP announced it was shutting the water off at 93 homes across the city that owed between $1,342 and $2,330 - a total that amounted to no more than $220,000.

Meanwhile, according to a list of delinquent payers the DEP released after receiving it via a Freedom of Information Act request, the top 10 debtors in the Bronx owe $6 million - most of them exempt from the lien sale.

They include St. Vincent De Paul, a nursing home which owes $844,465; Leland Gardens, a condo building on Leland Ave. which owes $961,642, and a housing development fund co-op building at 2089 Arthur Ave. which is $870,813 in arrears.

Many of the largest unpaid Bronx bills are from nursing homes that say they are strapped for cash and dependent on government funds, including St. Vincent de Paul, Workmen’s Circle MultiCare Center and the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

Soloman Rutenberg, Workmen’s Circle’s executive director, said the home was hit with a $400,000 bill after the DEP found it had been misreading the home’s meter for several years. Read more..

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