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Bedford Audubon Society Dear Editor, In your recent editorial "Water Plant in the Bronx," you call the proposed chemical filtration plant for the Croton Water Supply System a win-win situation for Bronx residents. You neglect to mention that almost all support for this plant has come from the local unions that would benefit with jobs for this enormous construction project. This is short-sighted. The personal lives of their members who live in the Bronx will suffer in the long run due to the impact of increased truck traffic during and after construction (a cause of the unusually high asthma rate in the area) and from air emissions of the toxic chemicals used in this plant, not to mention degraded drinking water quality. By all accounts, the chemical filtration plant would increase real estate development in and around the city's watershed, decrease the public recreational value of intensively used watershed buffer lands and put pressure on already threatened species that are in danger of losing migration way stations, habitat and breeding areas in our region due to real estate development pressures. Moreover, the Croton System and the Catskill-Delaware System (the USEPA has waived any filtration requirement for the West of Hudson system) are linked, and reservoirs of the Croton System supply up to 30% of the city's drinking water during time of drought or high turbidity during spring runoff. The result would be an ever increasing need for more, larger and expensive filtration plants to cope with degraded drinking water quality. Our organization is unalterably opposed to any alienation of dedicated public park land and we oppose any attempt to filter drinking water from the Croton Watershed at the expense of acquiring the necessary watershed buffer lands to ensure the current clean water quality and wildlife habitat protection for generations to come. Donald C. Pachner, Chair e-mail
conservation@bedfordaudubon.org |
Bedford
Audubon Society