Tuesday Night at City Hall: Sewer Separation
The Common Council meeting on Tuesday night lasted for more than two hours, and the final issue to be taken up during the long evening was the resolution, originally introduced in March, declaring the proposed sewer separation project a Type II Action.
In April, when it appeared that the Council would vote on the resolution, Council president Don Moore, responding to public concern, proposed that the vote be postponed until June 16 and the intervening time be used doing an environmental study. At the informal meeting of the Council on May 11, we learned the progress of that study. Moore requested a proposal from Saratoga Associates to do an environmental study, and after reviewing the information provided to him, Dan Shearer of Saratoga Associates replied, "I . . . share Delaware's opinion that this is a Type 2 action." At that meeting, too, the Council received a draft SEAF (Short Environmental Assessment Form) completed by Delaware Engineering.
After reviewing the draft SEAF, Gossips raised questions about some the answers given, and earlier this week, we shared the results Timothy O'Connor got when he used the Department of Environmental Conservation's EAF Mapper to complete the SEAF.
Given this discrepancy, on Tuesday night, the Common Council decided to complete the SEAF themselves, and as the clock edged toward 9 p.m., Moore read out the twenty questions that make up Part 1 of the Short Environmental Assessment Form, and the aldermen indicated their answers, No or Yes--a process that often required a show of hands to reach consensus. The aldermen's answers to the key questions about wetlands and natural resources were Yes, in agreement with the answers derived by using the DEC Mapper and in disagreement with the answers provided by Delaware Engineering.
It was after 9 o'clock when the aldermen had finished answering the twenty questions in Part 1 of the SEAF. When city attorney Carl Whitbeck advised them that they now had to go on Part 2 of the form, which requires deciding, in eleven different categories, between "No, or small impact may occur" and "Moderate to large impact may occur," the aldermen's resolve flagged. Alderman Tiffany Garriga (Second Ward) moved to table the process until their next meeting, presumably so that she and her colleagues could give some thought to the magnitude of the impact of the proposed action on natural resources and environmental resources, but in the end it was decided that the Council would "bring Delaware in to ask them why they answered the questions as they did."
According to John Mason's report in today's Register-Star, a return appearance by Delaware Engineering isn't likely, since DPW superintendent Rob Perry called the request "unacceptable." Mason's article, which stresses the time constraints for the project, is recommended reading: "Stormwater project put on hold, again." Also recommended is the testimony by the South Bay Task Force, a greatly abbreviated version of which O'Connor presented at Tuesday's Council meeting.
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We should reject the convenient conflation of an EA with the matter of an exemption. Just because they're both SEQR-related doesn't mean there's any meaningful connection between them. DPW Superintendent Rob Perry conflates them by saying that “Don Moore reached out to Saratoga Associates and asked them to review Delaware Engineering’s recommendations.” Wrong! That's not what was asked. Saratoga was asked to review potential adverse impacts to the environment, period. In Mr. Moore's letter to Saratoga he asked them "to consider an agreement with [the City] for an EAF," and that was all. Mr. Perry's conflation prepared him for the last word in the argument: “Everytime they [the public] get an answer they don’t like, they ask an entirely different question.” That's dishonest, but how do you fight it? You fight it by denying the thing they obviously want and need most: the continuing ecological counsel of the Delaware engineers. Why else are these singularly inappropriate advisors being invited back to explain how they got it so wrong? Who cares what their reason is!
ReplyDeleteDo the alder(wo)men care? I sincerely doubt it. Mostly it's Mr. Moore who'd like to interview Delaware again, presumably to help make them create a less accident-prone company. Well he should do that on his own time. Every single block grant for municipal infrastructure offers funding for an environmental review. Just find out why Hudson's grant doesn't cover this cost and you'll discover something more troubling than a conflict of interest. As long as these individuals will not admit the alleged requirement for the project they claimed in the grant application was totally bogus, then they're perpetuating an impropriety every day. By dropping this same claim about the requirement of a Consent Order the city implicitly acknowledged that it was untrue, yet they're still willing to send it around to Saratoga and god-knows-who-else as if it is true!
So it's not a conflict of interest, but something worse which impels these engineers to gloss over their errors and miraculously find no adverse impacts as they stumble towards completing their contract with us. As the R-S story makes clear, Messrs. Perry and Moore's interest depends on retaining Delaware Engineering for its ecological advice. Delaware has become the hub and the pivot of this entire narrative, as will any engineering firm who replaces them. (They follow a cultural code of honor; just watch when next Delaware will produce another firm who'll do the 2o minutes of work pro bono and miraculously come to the same conclusions.) For the North Bay, everything may depend on finding an appropriate and disinterested party to conduct the three-and-a-quarter page form. On Tuesday we had another small coup that went unnoticed. Following criticism of Delaware's chemical data at the April Informal Meeting, the engineers corrected the figures the following day in a letter to Mr. Moore. On April 14th, Mr. Moore quietly filed these corrections with the Clerk, but it was only thanks to a comment by Alderwoman Ohrine Stewart that Mr. Moore admitted the corrections at Tuesday's council meeting. From my perspective, the behaviors of Messrs. Perry and Moore look like abuses of power.
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ReplyDelete1.
ReplyDeleteWe should reject the convenient conflation of an EAF with the matter of an exemption. Just because they're both SEQR-related doesn't mean there's any meaningful connection between them. DPW Superintendent Rob Perry conflates them by saying that “Don Moore reached out to Saratoga Associates and asked them to review Delaware Engineering’s recommendations.” Wrong! That's not what was asked. Saratoga was asked to review potential adverse impacts to the environment, period. In Mr. Moore's letter to Saratoga he asked them "to consider an agreement with [the City] for an EAF," and that was all. Mr. Perry's conflation prepared him for the last word in the argument: “Everytime they [the public] get an answer they don’t like, they ask an entirely different question.”
2. That's dishonest, but how do you fight it? You fight it by denying the thing they obviously want and need most, the continuing bad counsel of the Delaware engineers. Why else are these inappropriate advisors being invited back to explain themselves? Who cares about their reasons for getting it wrong, and wrong on their own terms.
ReplyDeleteDo the alder(wo)men care? I sincerely doubt it. Mostly it's Mr. Moore who'd like to interview Delaware again, possibly to help make them towards a less accident-prone engineering firm. He should definitely do that, but on his own time. Every single block grant for municipal infrastructure offers funding for an environmental review. Just find out why Hudson's grant doesn't cover this cost and you'll discover something more troubling than a conflict of interest. As long as these individuals will not admit the alleged requirement for the project they claimed in the grant application was totally bogus, then they're perpetuating an impropriety every day. By dropping this same claim about the requirement of a Consent Order the city implicitly acknowledged that it was untrue, yet they're still willing to send it around to Saratoga and god-knows-who-else as if it is true!
So it's not a conflict of interest, but something worse which impels these engineers to gloss over their errors and miraculously find no adverse impacts as they stumble towards completing their contract with us. As the R-S story makes clear, Messrs. Perry and Moore's interest depends on retaining Delaware Engineering for its ecological advice. Delaware has become the hub and the pivot of this entire narrative, as will any engineering firm who replaces them. (They follow a cultural code of honor; just watch when next Delaware will produce another firm who'll do the 2o minutes of work pro bono and miraculously come to the same conclusions.) For the North Bay, everything may depend on finding an appropriate and disinterested party to conduct the three-and-a-quarter page form. On Tuesday we had another small coup that went unnoticed. Following criticism of Delaware's chemical data at the April Informal Meeting, the engineers corrected the figures the following day in a letter to Mr. Moore. On April 14th, Mr. Moore quietly filed these corrections with the Clerk, but it was only thanks to a comment by Alderwoman Ohrine Stewart that Mr. Moore admitted the corrections at Tuesday's council meeting. From my perspective, the behaviors of Messrs. Perry and Moore look like abuses of power.