[Previous] [Main Index] [Next]

"County plan for island park set back - February 22, 2002"

By SHANNON D. HARRINGTON
Staff Writer, Bergen Record

By a 9-0 vote, the Historic Sites Council called the 19th century water plant a nationally significant landmark and urged the county to preserve it.

The decision, which must be affirmed by the state commissioner of Environmental Protection, was cheered by historic preservation advocates and a non-profit group that wants to make the plant a museum and environmental research center.

"They've been told that this is a national resource ... and that every effort must be lent to save it," said Maggie Harrer, president of the Water Works Conservancy Inc.
But county officials and proponents of the park proposal fumed over the ruling. County officials suggested that it could block their efforts to begin building a park on the 13-acre Van Buskirk Island, which includes the waterworks.

"The council has effectively denied the people of Bergen County access to a passive park that would have been enjoyed by many thousands of people," County Executive William "Pat" Schuber said in a statement. "Today's decision is a victory for a small band of special-interest players over the vast majority of Bergen County residents.''

Schuber said the county will try to persuade the new Department of Environmental Protection chief, Bradley Campbell, to overturn the council's ruling. Campbell's decision is expected next month.

The county wants to demolish most of the old Romanesque-style plant - a main source of water for Bergen County until United Water abandoned it in 1990 - and essentially turn it into the backdrop for a park.

The plant's 1911 pump house would be largely gutted, although the old steam engine would be preserved inside. Two large smokestacks would be saved, as well as the head tower of the water filtration building. The oldest section of the plant, built in the 19th century, would be almost completely demolished, except for some of the walls, which would form the edges of a garden.

Architects drew up that plan after a 10-year effort by county and local leaders, neighboring residents, and environmental and historic preservation advocates to determine the best use for the waterworks and the land it sits on.

Environmentalists saw it as an ideal opportunity to restore a key stretch of the Hackensack River. Preservationists argued that the plant was a laboratory for breakthroughs in water filtration and should be saved.

Schuber and Oradell officials originally endorsed a plan that would have melded both priorities - allowing the conservancy to take over the buildings while turning the remaining 10 acres into a park.

But after a change of administration in Oradell, officials refused to assume responsibility for the buildings if the conservancy's $15 million plan failed. Unwilling to saddle the taxpayers with that kind of burden, Schuber offered the current plan as a compromise.

"The alternative my administration developed would have honored the history of the waterworks and created public access to an environmentally unique park without incurring huge costs or liability issues," Schuber said in his statement.

The county would have been able to enact its $9 million plan with little interference. But Harrer and the conservancy succeeded in having the waterworks listed on the state's historic sites registry. And because the waterworks is owned by the taxpayers, it came under the jurisdiction of the Historic Sites Council and the DEP.

Members of the Historic Sites Council hardly saw the Schuber plan as a compromise. At a public hearing in December, Chairman Alan B. Buchan of Mount Laurel said that to turn the site into a ruin would be "total theater."

The council also rejected one of the county's biggest arguments against preserving the waterworks as a museum. The waterworks was never designed for public use, said Adam Strobel, Schuber's chief of staff. And because the plant is surrounded by the river - and was severely flooded during Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999 - opening it to the public would pose a danger, he said.

But members of the council noted that many successful historic sites are located in flood plains. And even under the county's park plan, they said, the public still would be put in the way of flooding.

If Thursday's ruling is upheld, historic preservation advocates said they would renew their push for the county to preserve the waterworks and put it to use.

"We think it's that worthy of a site," said Adrian Scott Fine, a senior program associate with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

But opponents of the museum plan, including the local Sierra Club chapter and the Hackensack Riverkeeper, argued that the ruling only thwarted what local residents and officials had determined to be the best use of the site. And they fear that the ruling will keep the county from turning any part of the island into a park.

"They did a disservice to preservation today because ultimately nothing is going to be done," said Marguerite "Peg" Andro, an Oradell resident who has been one of the most vocal advocates of a park on the island.