Deciding the Fate of North Bay
It is expected that tonight the Common Council will vote on the resolution, introduced last Monday, declaring that the sewer separation project proposed for State and North Front streets is a Type II Action and therefore requires no environmental review.
According to the resolution, the project is a Type II Action because (1) it involves "replacement, rehabilitation or reconstruction of a structure or facility . . .," i.e., the sewer main; and (2) it involves "street openings and right-of-way openings for the purpose of repair or maintenance of existing utility facility." Neither one of these justifications has anything to do with the environmental impact of the project--an impact that has many people concerned. Untreated storm water, containing salts, oils, trash, sediments, and other pollutants, will be discharged directly into North Bay and from there into the Hudson River. It is calculated that more than 242 million gallons of untreated storm water--runoff from the streets of Hudson--will be discharged into North Bay every year.
The Common Council has the opportunity, by refusing to approve the resolution, to identify the project as a Type I Action and, in so doing, to ensure that the impact of this project on North Bay and the river will be studied and understood before the project proceeds. Rejecting the resolution and doing the environment review would be the responsible thing to do.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
Hudson has come so far. This is not 1976! Why would anyone vote for a proposal to dump sewage into a Historic River that is almost cleaned up -- when we don't have to? Please, Common Council, do the right thing.
ReplyDeleteFour years ago the City spent four million to rip up Front street and now they want to send the storm water right back to where it used to flow?
ReplyDeleteQuestion for Delaware Engineering; why did the storm water cross the road, because you placed the relief uphill!
I have alerted Hudson Riverkeeper.
ReplyDeleteI've alerted Hudson Riverkeeper and asked them to determine whether an environmental review is required by law.
ReplyDeleteIf the aldermen really are voting on "replacement, rehabilitation or reconstruction of a structure or facility, in kind, on the same site,” then the city would replace the trunk sewer only.
ReplyDeleteWe welcome a new trunk sewer, but going so far as to separate the sewers, that's not RE-anything. How can anyone believe that the action is "in kind"?
To characterize this unprecedented scenario as “in kind” is sophistry, a lawyer's trick which does a disservice to the North Bay, to the Common Council, and to the public which was improperly excluded from its federally-required participation in CSO (sewer) decisions.
Why else would our Corporate Counsel, last Monday, have explained the action as taking advantage of a regulatory window before it closes? If the action is truly "in kind," there'd be no need to exploit loopholes in order to pollute the North Bay. It would be grandfathered.
In the same vein, anyone who claims that the sewer separation is "required" should be immediately distrusted. Betraying the lie, any "requirements" would appear in the Resolution, because a requirement is unambiguously exempt from SEQRA (exemption being the argument of the Resolution).
The engineering firm which wants the job to build the thing will swear that it's "required," but a Resolution must be more than an infomercial.
Can we all please finally acknowledge that any idea to separate the sewers is entirely voluntary!
In the same vein, we're told that an in-kind replacement of the trunk sewer and sewer separation are one and the same project. We must only implement the plan for which the grant was awarded, or so the argument goes.
But a block grant does not front-load the environmental review process in this way. If that were the case, the council would have voted on SEQRA before the plan was submitted for a grant. It doesn't work that way, and anyone who claims that the project description was fixed as soon as the grant was awarded should not be trusted.
An environmental review is all about weighing project modifications following a reasoned evaluation of all alternatives. Now is the time - not last year - to scrutinize whether this is two projects or one.
SEQRA was designed as the public's defense against abuses of power, because it's so much easier for officials and consultants with hidden agendas to manipulate the public than it is for the public to deconstruct a privileged fib.
In the sewer separation argument, logic and law clearly favor the public.
Which laws? The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), and the draft Resolution itself, which makes no claim that sewer separation is required by anyone.
Go smell the sewer gas coming out of the street grate at 3rd and Partitian near Mid Hudson Media at then try to convince yourself that we won't be polluting the North bay with raw sewage.
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