by George Potanovic, Jr.

Last week, Suffern and Piermont passed a resolution requesting that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS DEC grant Rockland County an Issues Conference on United Water’s proposed Haverstraw Water Supply desalination plant. These votes brings the total to SEVEN villages to date. The request had been previously approved by the Town of Stony Point, The Town of Clarkstown. County Executive Scott Vanderhoef and the Rockland County Legislature also support the Issues Conference. Votes by the Town of Orangetown and the Village of Nyack are expected next week.

An independent economic study by EcoNorthwest, a firm that was retained by the Rockland Water Coalition to examine the financial data and real costs of the proposed desalination plant, was highly critical and found United Water’s financial data to be lacking in how data had been gathered, organized, documented and presented and states that there is “almost complete lack of transparency and documentation regarding the data, assumptions, and analysis methods used to generate the cost results.” The report went on to state that cost sections of the DEIS report “lack credibility as a source of information for decision makers and stakeholders.”

The Rockland Water Coalition thanks the towns and villages that have supported the resolution. It is critical that disputed issues of need and real costs be more independently examined.

George Potanovic, Jr. is president of SPACE, the Stony Point Action Committee for the Environment and a member of the Rockland Water Coalition