Pols Question R’wood Reservoir Breach
Eight local legislators questioned the necessity for the Parks Department’s Ridgewood Reservoir dam decommissioning plan in a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent last Thursday, July 24.
The correspondence, a copy of which the Times Newsweekly received on Monday, July 28, followed a June 30 meeting the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Parks Department held in Glendale regarding the project, which would breach the walls separating the reservoir’s three basins.
Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, Assemblyman Mike Miller, State Senators Joseph Addabbo and Michael Gianaris, Representatives Grace Meng and Nydia Velázquez and City Council Members Elizabeth Crowley and Antonio Reynoso each signed the letter to Cuomo.
As previously reported, the Parks Department and DEC indicated the project is necessary to fulfill a state mandate to either upgrade or decommission by this August any structure deemed a dam. This includes the Ridgewood Reservoir, which once supplied drinking water for Brooklyn residents but was taken off-line and drained decades ago.
The state DEC currently classifies the Ridgewood Reservoir as a highhazard Class C dam, and breaching its walls would reportedly enable the agency to consider it a non-hazardous Class D structure.
Small culverts would be installed in the walls separating the three basins, and a large, 11′-wide culvert would be installed on the westernmost basin adjacent to Vermont Place. To complete this task, the Parks Department previously stated, it would need to construct a road within the western basin to allow access for construction vehicles.
In their letter to Cuomo, the legislators feared that the road’s construction and other aspects of the project would cause irreparable harm to the natural habitats that developed since the reservoir was completely deactivated in 1989.
“We are deeply concerned that these changes will significantly harm the natural and largely undisturbed habitats of the animals that currently live there,” they wrote. “We ask that the DEC look at this situation again before forcing the NYC Parks Department to begin construction.”
Since only five feet of water is situated in the reservoir’s central basin, the lawmakers also questioned the necessity for the project. They suggested the DEC re-examine its dam classifications pertaining to the reservoir, which many argued could only be refilled either manually or by some weather event of biblical proportions.
The Parks Department indicated the decommissioning project would cost about $6 million, and the legislators suggested such funding would be better spent on other, more pressing matters.
They also asked Cuomo and the DEC to provide the Parks Department with a waiver allowing the agency to delay decommissioning work in order for the DEC to reconsider its necessity and examine a pending wetland declaration for the site. Initiated in 2010, DEC officials claimed at the June meeting that the agency has yet to take further action on the declaration due to reduced staffing and issues related to Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“It is important to know that if these basins are given wetland designation, then the plans by NYC Parks would have to be halted,” they wrote. “However, the NYC Parks Department cannot delay this project because, under state regulations, the decommissioning must be completed by August. There is a simpler way to mitigate this situation: we ask that the NYC Parks Department be granted a waiver so they can delay the proposed work to give DEC the time it needs to examine the 2010 wetland application.”
