Councilmember: revise Jamaica Bay plan

Councilmember James F. Gennaro has called on the City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to revise its Jamaica Bay protection plan, released Monday, October 1.
In a statement released Friday, October 5, Gennaro said DEP’s current plan lacks “details and commitment.”
“This is a plan for a plan,” said the Councilmember. “What we want is a substantive, meticulous road map, chock-full of facts, figures, solutions, timelines, goals, milestones and commitment to save Jamaica Bay from pollution, development and disregard.”
Concerns surrounding pollution in Jamaica Bay date back to 2005, when the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, chaired by Gennaro, determined through a series of hearings that the health of Jamaica Bay and its marshland was essential to the surrounding ecosystem, and “that aggressive actions be taken to protect and restore the health of the Bay.”
Shortly after the hearings, Gennaro penned Local Law 71, appointing an advisory committee to study the environmental health of Jamaica Bay. In August 2007, the committee declared the bay dangerously close to drying up, and said it could be gone completely by 2012 due to massive marshland loss.
Gennaro, quick to point to nitrogen pollution as a possible cause for the marshland depletion, said DEP’s response plan to help save the bay fails to offer specific actions to be taken.
“It is not clear exactly what DEP will do or when and how it will do so,” Gennaro said. “We need to continue working with DEP to formulate a comprehensive plan, because we need to take action now.”
The Councilmember also noted DEP’s waffling on whether it planned to address the possibility of nitrogen pollution. Only recently has DEP agreed to look into reducing nitrogen pollution, said Gennaro, and its current plan fails to specify how - or to what extent - the agency will study the matter.
Gennaro acknowledged the hard work expelled by DEP in formulating its plan, but said it is “simply not enough.”
DEP could not be reached for comment.