Croton activists look back on year of frustrations

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What moves at a snail’s pace, has a ravenous appetite for public funds and can drive activists mad?

People living near Jerome Park might be quick to name the Croton Water Filtration Plant Project, which has run nearly four times over its original estimated budget and seen numerous delays.

The year started off with activists on the Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee (CFMC) hoping that a change at the head of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) would effect greater transparency about the project and more concessions to public demands. 

Ten months after Emily Lloyd became DEP Commissioner — a post she previously held, from 2005 to 2009, according to a biographical entry on the DEP’s website — and five marathon meetings of CFMC later, activists say they are as mad as ever. 

They pointed to a city audit showing new cost overruns; a DEP statement that the general public will never get access to Jerome Park Reservoir, the Kingsbridge Heights facility undergoing renovations in tandem with the construction of the Croton plant at Van Cortlandt Park; and the release of documents apparently showing the plant will protrude above ground, contradicting longstanding DEP claims it will go entirely underneath a golf course at the park.

“I told him it’s going to be like guerilla warfare,” Father Richard Gorman, the outgoing chair of CFMC said of a recent conversation in which he discussed community activism with DEP spokesman Eric Landau. “It will never end. I told him it’s going to never end.”

Increasing costs

Last month, the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) released an audit placing total estimated costs of the water filtration plant and related projects at $3.7 billion. The report said the Croton plant alone will cost about $3.18 billion by the end of 2020, a $167.4 million increase over the IBO’s estimate in 2011 and a more than $2 billion increase over a 2003 estimate in the city’s initial environmental impact statement for the project, which placed costs of the plant at $992 million in 2003 dollars.

Croton Plant, Jerome Park, DEP, Parks Department, Emily Lloyd, Father Richard Gorman, Gary Axelbank, Karen Argenti, Shant Shahrigian
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