Rye contests ‘Homerun’ numbers

Written by Christian Falcone and Paige Rentz

Thursday, 02 September 2010 14:40

Says flood storage would be decreased

Mamaroneck Village residents downstream of the notorious Project Homerun site on the Beaver Swamp Brook could be impacted by new disagreements between the Town of Harrison and the City of Rye over how much floodwater the site could retain.

Proposals for what to do with the former industrial site and unofficial dumping ground have morphed over the last several years into the most recent amendment of the plan, which Harrison submitted to the Department of Environmental Conservation on May 28. The amended plan requires state approval before ground can be broken.

Harrison Mayor Joan Walsh (D) said at that time that she believed the most recent plan will address the controversy around Homerun, with neighbors in the Beaver Swamp Brook corridor saying fill brought into the site is increasing flooding in the region. “What they’re concerned with is avoiding flooding, and because this plan will prevent more water from flowing downstream more quickly, it should satisfy their concerns,” she stated.

However, a review of the plans by the City of Rye raised several unanswered questions that continue to exist regarding potential flooding and wetland impacts to the Beaver Swamp Brook. An analysis of the town’s latest application by the FPM Group, an environmental consulting firm out of Long Island, revealed a net decrease in flood storage capacity on the site. This contrasts starkly with Harrison’s belief that the project would in fact increase and aid in flood storage retention. Leonard Jackson Associates, located in Pomona, N.Y. has been on retainer serving as the town’s consultant. Additionally, Rye contests that based on data made available using a 2009 survey, flooding in the region will be exacerbated by the proposed work. Kristen Wilson, the attorney on behalf of Rye, says “a net decrease is simply unacceptable.”

But Mayor Walsh is steadfast in her belief that the project will serve as a flood mitigator and doesn’t understand where the discrepancy in numbers is coming from. “Our consultant has been consistent on what he’s said all along,” she continued. “We think we’re providing sufficient storage.”

Rye City Mayor Douglas French (R) said city officials sat down with their Harrison counterparts prior to submitting their comments to an administrative law judge presiding over the case on Aug. 20. That was done with the intent that both parties could walk away on the same page. “The big question is what the proposed plan does to flood storage,” the city’s mayor said. “That is the question we want answered. We disagree with what the number is.”

Therefore, Harrison will hand over electronic engineering files to better assist the city’s consultant in getting a true reading of the proposal, according to Rye officials. “Both sides are willing to determine what the right number is,” French said.

FPM has already spoken with Leonard Jackson Associates, and once those numbers are crunched one more time, then the parties must decide if it provides for a feasible amount of storage. French, expressing confidence in FPM, said in his opinion they’ve raised enough questions in the amount of flood storage.

Harrison’s 2007 mayoral campaign, which saw Walsh unseat former Mayor Steve Malfitano (R), had the controversial Project Homerun as a debate point. Malfitano had spearheaded the effort known as ‘Homerun,’ seeking to transform a once-blighted brownsfield area on the corner of the town’s Harrison and Oakland avenues into a premier athletic facility. Walsh opposed the project and once in office, said she sought to complete the project not with ballfields, but as a passive recreation park.

The amended project, which has gone through at least five iterations since first being proposed as the ill-fated Project Homerun, currently calls for the creation of a softball field and open space field. Two parking lots are also being proposed, but only two spots would be paved for handicapped parking with the remainder of the lot being gravel. The main ingredients would be topsoil and grass seeding with 2-4 inches expected to be added. The town says that the additional flood storage will come through re-grading as well as the planned removal of 1,000 cubic yards of fill.

For Harrison resident Michael LaDore, a longtime opponent of proposed work at the site, this latest scope still doesn’t solve any of the problems of its predecessors.

Harrison, LaDore believes, has muddled the project with misinformation and skewed facts; therefore he is urging that approval of the revised plans be completed by various agencies, such as FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, and not just Harrison’s internal staff. “To do anything less is to make a mockery of the process that we have devoted so much time and energy to over the last three-plus years,” he continued.

The crux of the problem remains the fill brought onto the site during a joint remediation project during the late 1990s. As part of that original cleanup, the town was to have taken out 20,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and replaced it with 20,000 cubic yards of clean fill to cap the property. But some contest that as much as 44,000 additional cubic yards of fill were actually brought onto the site. And, since the site has been sinking, it is unclear how much more soil will be needed over time to maintain it.

Furthermore, the buildup of silt along the brook was also supposed to be removed after the remediation project, but that action was never undertaken.

Coincidentally, an examination of the site during a 2007 Manhattanville College study that compared water and sediment levels in different areas of the Upper Guion Creek region further identified the excess of silt buildup at the brook. It also cast doubt on the claim that the past remediation project was a success.

Samples during the study were collected on several occasions from six different sites over the course of 2007 and the highest levels of bacteria such as E. coli and enterococci in the water and sediment were identified at Beaver Swamp, with significant levels seen in the brook near Rye Neck High School and in Upper Guion Creek. Contaminants, though diffused, were found all the way into Mamaroneck Harbor. The bacterial contamination proved that the remediation effort was not effective in cleaning up the location, according to the study.

Residents of Rye Neck have also seen their fair share of trouble from the Beaver Swamp Brook, with crumbling retention walls creating flood-inducing obstructions in the waterway. However, some residents believe that the obstructions in the flow of the water is just part of the problem.

Maureen Rosa, a Stoneybrook Avenue resident whose home backs the Beaver Swamp Brook, thinks development in Harrison is the underlying cause of the increased instances of flooding in the neighborhood. “We’ve seen the difference in the water levels,” she said. “It’s not just the wall.”

Rosa, who has lived on the Beaver Swamp Brook since 1971, couldn’t recall ever being flooded before 2007. “We get a couple of inches of rain, and now, my God, it’s up to the top,” she said. “It never was like that before.”

Rosa’s neighbor Andrea Macko said that only twice in 30 years she had gotten maybe an inch of water in the basement. Since 2007, which was the first time they were flooded, she has seen the problem increase.

Rye City Manager Scott Pickup said the city has raised the possibility, with Harrison, of dredging the brook, but any conversation regarding such never seemed to have gotten off the ground.

In the past Walsh has said that the town’s actions to mollify its own residents could have potential impacts on Mamaroneck residents downstream, where the brook gets substantially more narrow. Walsh acknowledged the silt problem in the stream that reduces its capacity to carry water and the saturation of land that makes it impossible to absorb any more groundwater in the area. “The town would clearly love to dredge the brook,” she said, “but the increase in water would worsen the flooding in the Village of Mamaroneck.”

Since 2007, Harrison officials have repeatedly stated that the Village of Mamaroneck must repair the bottleneck in the Rye Neck section of the village in order to alleviate flooding upstream. Village officials have said that it would be nearly impossible to widen the brook, as homes and commercial properties would have to be encroached upon to do so.

Ultimately for Mayor Walsh, it’s not about the past: It’s about looking forward and waiting to see if the two engineers can come to an agreement. However, she feels in the long run it will end up in the hands of the judges and the DEC.

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