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.

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A Friendly Bustle, With Oases Nearby

IT was either the Bronx or Queens.

Jason Velez, 32, a financial adviser, and his girlfriend, RoseAnn Monterroso, 28, a consignment shop manager, had decided to move in together. He owned a one-bedroom in Bedford Park and worked nearby in Belmont. She owned a one-bedroom in Jackson Heights and commuted to Midtown.

They looked in Queens but decided they would get more for their money in Bedford Park — whose proximity to public transportation and major highways provides easy commuting to both Manhattan and Westchester.

“There’s the Bronx stigma,” said Mr. Velez, who grew up in Parkchester. “I thought it would be hard to convince her, but the more she saw, she started liking it.”

She sold her place, he sold his, and they bought a two-bedroom in his co-op on East 201st Street for $178,000. They plan to redo the bath and closets with a custom job, not prefab units.

“We’ll take the extra money,” Mr. Velez said, “and instead of buying something we don’t like, we’ll create something we do like.”

But Bedford Park is about more than affordability to Mr. Velez. It’s about friendliness. For instance three weeks ago his broker, David Abreu, who lives next door, visited a Manhattan comedy club to witness what Mr. Velez had billed as his first foray into stand-up. (In fact, Mr. Velez is no comedian: halfway through his “set,” he pulled Ms. Monterroso onstage, dropped to one knee and proposed. She said yes.)

Once heavily Irish and Jewish, Bedford Park in the 2000 census was 58 percent Hispanic, 17 percent white, 13 percent black and 7 percent Asian. There is a large mix of new arrivals, among them Guyanese, Albanian and Vietnamese. A Korean commercial strip occupies a block of East 204th Street.

John Dhauraj, a Guyanese immigrant who has owned a three-bedroom house on East 203rd Street for 19 years, was chatting one recent afternoon with a neighbor, Cholelle Miranda, who grew up locally and rents a place in a six-story brick apartment house two doors down. Their block is typical: tree-lined and backing up to the woodsy Mosholu Parkway, with early 20th-century single-family and multifamily houses sandwiched in among apartment buildings.

“This block is still a community,” Ms. Miranda said, and Mr. Dhauraj added, “We look out for each other.”

Like many in this middle-class area, both feel pinched by the economy.

“Let me put it to you this way,” said Mr. Dhauraj, 63, who used to work in building maintenance. “Since I retired, I got to look at the pennies. When I was working, I never looked at pennies.”

Fortunately, Mr. Dhauraj bought before the wave of subprime lending. The Bronx is the seventh-ranked county in the nation for foreclosure-related decreases in home values, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

But several factors insulate Bedford Park. Rental apartment buildings, which constitute a majority of housing here, are mostly immune. Typical homeowners have lived in their homes for a long time, so are less susceptible to the recent proliferation of risky loans.

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