A
Consensual Relationship
Our editor's got a bumper sticker that reads "We're rural,
not stupid" and if there's one guy that needed to get
it and really seemed to, it's departing DEP Commissioner Christopher
Ward. Working in a culture where skillful means and
the personal qualities needed to make them work don't often
show up in the same person, Ward proved they can, reshaping
the institutions they touch and redefining the future to include
prospects that barely existed before. We're hopeful, concerned
but hopeful, that the climate change he brought to the watershed
will survive his departure. When CWT chairman Pat Meehan
said we'd come "a long way in a short time" under
Ward, that was no faint praise but an honest assessment that
the working relationship between the City and the watershed
is considerably better than it's been for a very long time.
Donald Trump once called the deal the art of the possible,
and no DEP Commissioner's ever proved that as well as the
one we're losing. Hired for his reputation as the City's guy
who got the big jobs done ˆ Brooklyn's Metrotech redevelopment
project, a new train line to Kennedy Airport, and a huge toll
increase for the City's bridges and tunnels to go with its
EZ-Pass system, Ward's managerial skills were, from the start,
a cut above what we've been used to dealing with. Hardly your
typical bureaucrat, he wrote his thesis at Harvard Divinity
School about a Baptist minister who preached that salvation
comes through effective social reform. No town car and driver
for this guy, Ward squeezed himself into his little gas-electric
hybrid, and found his way around the watershed better than
anyone in his position ever managed or even tried to before
him.
Ward takes his leave at a time when things are working pretty
well for his agency in the Catskills; just last week the federal
government found another $15 million a year for the next 7
years to help support the MOA. Of the issues currently in
play between the parties, the largest - and it's far
from large in the big picture of things - concerns public
access to the City's lands. We believe the city's parcels
that aren't contiguous with its reservoirs should be open
to the public to exactly the same degree that the state's
landholdings are. And we think DEP, which can afford it, should
simply pay DEC to hire a few extra forest rangers if necessary
and administer those lands accordingly. Under Commissioner
Ward, we think something like this might have come to pass,
though under his successor, well, who knows. It would be an
example of doing what's reasonable instead of what's expected,
the kind of thing that was basically Ward's stock-in- trade.
A prime case in point is the Ashokan Reservoir, now on the
state tax rolls at three times the assessed value it was a
few months ago. That didn't happen because George Pataki finally
decided to be a good guy after all these years. It happened
because Chris Ward understood how ridiculous and unfair that
was, reigned in his legal people, and put the word out this
needed to be fixed. And so it is fixed now. And when
the dust finally settles on the large parcel issue and the
courts eventually rule it doesn't apply here, people, we think,
will finally understand: it's the reservoir reval that'll
help keep both Onteora's and Olive's school taxes reasonable,
not anything our local politicians will have done.
As for the other significant issue in play, the City's "guidance
documents" now under discussion, we believe that CWT's
fundamentally right and the City's fundamentally wrong in
seeking to alter any of the terms agreed to between the parties
under the MOA. We think the city should back off on this and
under Ward, we believe it would have, though going forward
we're not quite as hopeful.
Our interests as always, are in protecting the people of our
towns and the watershed, and in making sure that funding under
the MOA comes up the levels it needs to and generally hasn't
even approached yet. The best shot we've got at these things
is through the partnership we've forged, which needs protection
just as much as the City's water does. It IS in our
clear self-interest to make this partnership and the MOA work.
Because the economic strength of our communities, the continuing
rise in our property values, and the increasingly precious
and obvious difference in the quality of life here versus
just about everywhere else each of these things directly reflects
the material value of the environmental protection the City's
required by the federal courts to enforce. That's the truth,
even if doesn't dovetail with some of the rhetoric that keeps
surfacing.
There's still some in the watershed who just don't GET this
concept of a working partnership based on mutual self-interest.
Using language better suited to the problems of Iraq or Sudan,
they speak of the City as "an occupying force" seeking
to "depopulate the Catskills," and characterize
the relationship as a series of desperate, life and death
conflicts. It isn't that, but it is in functional terms a
kind of marriage, and the appropriate response isn't to threaten
to file for divorce every time one of DEP's 6,000 employees
leaves the toilet seat up. That's basically what we're hearing
with increasing volume from Delaware County, and it isn't,
in our view, either a solution to the issues in question,
or especially helpful in working them out.
What has been helpful is open communication, mutual respect,
and a recognition that nobody's going anywhere so we better
get used to the idea of solving things like grown-ups. That's
the relationship we have now, thanks in large measure to the
respect the watershed communities have finally been accorded
under Ward's stewardship. If we're lucky and Mayor Bloomberg's
smart, we'll both get what we need.
