The advisory committee working with the city Department of Environmental Protection to create a plan to nurse Jamaica Bay back to health criticized DEP last week for not proposing a clear set of solutions to the environmental issues that plague the polluted body of water and its salt marshes.
In a letter to DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd and Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), the co-chairmen of Jamaica Bay Watershed Protection Plan Advisory Committee expressed concern that DEP's final plan for the bay to be given to the City Council in October will "fall short of what Jamaica Bay requires and deserves." The letter was an official response to a draft plan for the bay released by DEP in March. However, Brad Sewell, an official with the National Resource Defense Council who co-chairs the advisory committee along with Doug Adamo, said DEP's plan was not a plan at all but rather a list of problems facing the bay that offers no specific solutions. "We're concerned that we're not going to see a meaningful plan that does what Jamaica Bay needs," Sewell said in a phone interview Tuesday. He said the committee wants DEP to propose clear solutions to Jamaica Bay's problems, including funding sources and implementation timetables. "Everyone is just scared to death to get simply a plan that seems to call for the right things but doesn't contain an implementation process," Sewell added. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for DEP, said the draft plan was just that - a draft. He said DEP is working to create a final plan that will "prioritize strategies (to clean up the bay) according to feasibility and effectiveness." The advisory committee-created in 2005 as part of a law signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg requiring DEP to draw up a plan to improve the health of the bay-has had outspoken members who have criticized DEP in the past. But last Friday's letter was significant because it represented the first time the committee had publicly been critical of DEP. Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows), who drafted the law that Bloomberg signed, was also critical of DEP, arguing that the agency "did not issue something that could reasonably be interpreted as a plan." Gennaro also suggested that DEP might be violating the law and called its failure to release a "true" draft plan "very disappointing." The advisory committee released a plan last July that called for, among other things, a reduction in the amount of nitrogen pumped into the bay from the four sewage treatment plants on its shores. The committee believes high nitrogen levels are driving the rapid deterioration of the bay's salt marches, which form a vital part of its ecosystem. And while DEP has incorporated most of the committee's suggestions into its draft plan, the agency has not developed a concrete plan for implementing the proposals, committee members have said. There have also been questions about DEP's willingness to propose the expensive measures some members believe are necessary to fix the bay. Local Law 71, which created the committee, called for the advisory committee to comment on DEP's draft plan on June 1, the day Sewell released the letter to Lloyd and Quinn. DEP now has until Oct. 1 to submit a final clean-up plan for the bay to the City Council.
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