Office of Borough President James P. Molinaro
Staten Island, New York
B.P. Molinaro to Parks Department: “If it works for Brooklyn and Manhattan, it will work for Staten Island”
Molinaro slams Parks Department SEIS on Fresh Kills roads
STATEN ISLAND, NY – Borough President James P. Molinaro has submitted his official comments to the City Parks Department on its Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for Fresh Kills Roads, denouncing the document and the Parks Department as irreparably opposed to providing adequate roads through the former Fresh Kills Landfill.
In what will most likely be his last opportunity to comment on the proposals for Fresh Kills, Molinaro, in a 19-page letter to the Parks Department, once again stated his belief that Staten Islanders and their need for roads must come before construction of a park. Molinaro also called attention to the design and function of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and Central Park in Manhattan, both of which make use of perimeter and through roads to help move vehicular traffic.
“My proposal for Fresh Kills roads is similar to what Manhattan and Brooklyn have in their respective parks,” Molinaro said. “And the beauty of my proposal, at least to me and apparently to the hundreds of Staten Islanders who have come out to public scoping sessions and hearings on Fresh Kills and the roads, is that I want to recycle the existing Department of Sanitation’s maintenance roads.”
“Instead, what I fear will happen is that the Parks Department will move ahead with plans to open only one through road by the year 2016, with no promises of any other connections until the year 2036 at the earliest,” Molinaro said.
Molinaro continued, “So I must ask, why is it that Manhattan and Brooklyn can have a park with many through roads to help alleviate their traffic congestion, while Fresh Kills, which is 2 ½ times the size of Central Park and 5 times the size of Prospect Park, gets one through road in seven years—and nothing else in the next foreseeable generation?”
“In addition to completely excluding the benefits of my proposed road plan, the draft SEIS makes a revealing statement: a goal of the park plan is to REDUCE vehicular traffic within the completed park. To me, such a statement reveals a bias, if not also an ignorance, of the fact that the primary users of the landfill roads will be the people who live on this Island. Instead, Parks wishes to cater to the desires of the transients who will visit this park,” Molinaro said. “Parks sees Fresh Kills as a nice place for people to visit. Staten Islanders see Fresh Kills first as a great opportunity to alleviate traffic congestion and provide a more direct route to our West Shore. Any benefits we get out of a park would be negated by the lack of roads,” Molinaro said.
Molinaro also pointed out deficiencies in the SEIS concerning lack of mention of West Shore Expressway access improvements, costs of maintaining a park the size of Fresh Kills, and maintenance of the small amount of road that Parks is proposing. There is no discussion concerning capital monies for constructing the park, nor where funding will come from for any roads that are constructed.
Of the shortfalls, Molinaro said, “In this massive document, there are, to me, many words that somehow did not make their way between the SEIS’ covers.”
“The main difference between the Parks Department and Staten Islanders is this: where we see a tremendous opportunity for substantial traffic improvement, the agency sees a landmass that they will take great strides to purposely ignore the potential of in our fight for traffic relief on Staten Island,” Molinaro said.
“Parks and roads are not incompatible with each other, as shown in Prospect and Central Parks,” Molinaro concluded.
July 30, 2009