Norwalk: Cafero Secures Funds for Oyster Shell Park

by turfgrrl

June 27th, 2007 · 22 Comments

Tags: In the News · Norwalk

22 Responses so far ↓ “Norwalk: Cafero Secures Funds for Oyster Shell Park”

• 1 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 8:33 am

  Maybe they can use the funds to keep the grass mowed and for graffiti removal from the sculptures until the park’s finished.

• 2 L'arlequino // Jun 27, 2007 at 8:48 am

  Parks and Rec? Why are the consultant’s plans for the park posted on the Redevelopment Agency’s page of the City’s website?

  Has the City given any thought to security in the park and under the I95 overpass? Perhaps they could hire the homeless people that live there to keep out the gang-bangers.

  How about beautification between the park and the lovely transfer station, or are they planning to incorporate that into the pedestrian path to Lockwood Park?

• 3 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 9:02 am

  wow what a can of worms maybe a walk thru would do some good in the park ,,first concern is it capped or not?

  If it isn’t I can now see why our city isn’t moving very fast on the cleanup in and around the old police station,

  Where is Brooks labs on the study by the way ,,nice red herring lets talk about something else and not the old police station and its possible problems,,

• 4 L'arlequino // Jun 27, 2007 at 9:22 am

  It’s been vented for some time - you can still see the pipes sticking out of the ground from I95 - but given the concerns over contamination at Vets’ Park, there should be even more scrutiny of Oyster Shell Park considering it was used as a landfill for decades, and was notorious in its time for being particularly foul.

• 5 Jerry Aldrich // Jun 27, 2007 at 9:32 am

  When Oyster shell park is open where are the Buses going to park? In fact when Reed Putnam is finished where are the buses going to park? Futhermore more when downtown Norwalk is re-developed where are the buses going to park? When is the Norwalk Aquarium going to get bus parking on their own property?

  Will out of staters be able to identify where Norwalk is located on Interstate 95, without having to look at the exit signs, because of the 1 mile long backup of log jammed buses that goes from the center of town out onto the Thruway?

• 6 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 10:03 am

  its a shame so many red herrings right before the campaign season..it must be what the residents need and want a study must of said so.

• 7 L'arlequino // Jun 27, 2007 at 10:07 am

  Speaking of red herrings. When the park was hurriedly opened to the public by the Esposito administration, to much fanfare (and conveniently right before his re-election bid, I might add), was any consideration given to whether the site was properly capped?

  Have any studies been done to determine whether there might be any exposure to hazardous materials by people visiting the park? Are the methods used to mitigate the landfill contents by the City public record and available for review? Does the City have any liability if the mitigation is insufficient and exposes the public to hazmats?

  A bit of cursory online research on capping landfills is a real eye-opener. From the Center for Public Environmental Oversight: “Landfill caps do not lessen toxicity, mobility, or volume of hazardous wastes, but they do limit migration.”

  See the CPOE link at http://www.cpeo.org/techtree/ttdescript/lancap.htm

• 8 Grant's Folly // Jun 27, 2007 at 11:53 am

  Words matter. So do typos matter when you’re voting in an ordinance. No one on the Council bothered to ask Poruban about the typos. Why? Because they know this is the Potemkind Village of ordinances. Interesting to see how they treat the upfront paragraph that contradicts the later requirement of an indpendent ethics commitee. Careless and self-aggrandizing. Not really interested in what’s best for the City. Can you just go in and rewrite ordinances that have been voted in? Good thing we have so many lawyers…

  Here’s the an exmaple of the significance of a typo (from FindLaw)…

  “Like Takings Clause doctrine itself, the underlying facts of the San Remo case were highly complex. At its core, the case involved a San Francisco ordinance that required owners of low-cost rental housing to pay a “conversion fee” if they chose to convert their property into a hotel for tourists.

  In 1981, the operator of the San Remo Hotel erroneously reported to the city that all of the rooms of the hotel were being used as residences. In fact, for years the hotel had catered to tourists, in addition to some long-term tenants. The reason for the erroneous report seems to have been a simple good-faith mistake, perhaps a typo.

  In 1987, the owners of the hotel reported the error to the city. But they were told it was too late to correct the report. The hotel had been classified as a residential building, and that was that.

  Eventually, the San Remo Hotel’s owners were assessed a fee of $567,000 to “reclassify” the San Remo as a hotel–even though it had been a hotel all along, at least in substantial part. That was one costly typo.”

  There are others, including a recent case (if I remember correctly) where a state or municipality could not collect millions of dollars because of a typo in the regulation.

• 9 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:06 pm

  Grant’s Folly-unfortunately you must be one of the entrenched that actually thought that not disclosing the typo was a clever maneuver. However, anyone who has sat on any committee, held a job or in fact uses a computer knows that typo’s are common in any document, hense the SPELL CHECK at the top of all documents. It was an insignificant gesture at best and only proved to enlist a little chuckle from those present. Personally the Where’s Waldo comment brings about a much heartier laugh and Mr. Peruban’s refusal (look for it yourself)to disclose the typo only proved that it was a ploy to stop the code from passing when like any other minutes/documents are corrected on the floor and voted on by the group. The words shall and should could of should of been voted on there but again that was not to be because there was only one mindset in the room and that was seek and destroy. Hold on, I have to use my spell check to make sure we’re not looking for Waldo here.

• 10 Grant's Folly // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:12 pm

  Ad hominem attacks have value when you don’t have substance. Thank you for proving my point.

• 11 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:17 pm

  SHALL we move these posts over to the proper forum? They SHOULD be in the thread titled “Norwalk: Shoulda, Woulda, Shall.”

• 12 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:20 pm

  hello all not a novel this time simple and plain there is what is called methyl mercaptan that can be found in landfills, not enough studies have been done to list is as a cancer causing or exposure listed danger.

  Yes mercapton is what they put in natural gas so you can smelll it from your stove but not in concertrations.

  capping any lanfill is complex , gas flumes in any capped landfill is serious. I have seen and heard of many deaths even with extreme precautions,,workers have been killed maintaining sites like this look at OSHA they don’t like them at all for workers never mind the public.

  I trust a lot of thought went into this but using the word improvements when total remediation has not been done is somewhat crimminal in theory,,I wonder who voted on this knew the condition of the land or what is not known I think that in itself should be reviewed another slight of hand it would appear..

  Ok so it may not be but this is starting to run in the same direction of piss poor planning when money could be used for a golf course at vets park.

  I can see outside help is needed on this one we are not going to get the info the elected officials know,,if they know anything about this at all.

• 13 Vern Acular // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:27 pm

  I WOULD if I COULD. WILL TG? She appears to be the one that CAN, SHOULD she so choose. SHALL it be so, TG?

• 14 Jerry Aldrich // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:28 pm

  Are there any plans in the works yet, to partnership hunks of Oyster Shell park away to a Miniature Golf, or possibly a big bore shooting range, or maybe batting cages, as they make the same “Crack” as a 30-06 does. If the price were right, maybe we could move all the Massage Parlor’s there so we can keep an eye on them. I am sure that they would pay big bucks for a lease there.

• 15 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:34 pm

  Dunno. Maybe we’ll hear from “Behind yer Back” Bondi after the fact.

• 16 L'arlequino // Jun 27, 2007 at 2:27 pm

  From the EPA’s website:

  Evaluation of the landfill underneath Oyster Shell Park: http://yosemite.epa.gov

  Anybody out there capable of interpreting the data?

• 17 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 3:20 pm

  nice one L’ arlequino the documnet I have been using, I was going to let them know this slowly but yes you are correct and there is no plans for a reassessment this being a low priority. Wonder what this does to the study they have no direction from the EPA do they..

  wow real poor planning and the superfund site needs looking at also..

  there is one woman that is capable of interpreting this but has been shunned by locals probably to keep her away from this..she went public and asked questions but no one wanted to listen about otgher issues ..this was a while ago,,

  I,m leaving it alone for now I see a storm brewing..

• 18 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  >there is one woman that is capable of interpreting this but has been shunned by locals

  I hope you don’t mean Diane Lauricella

• 19 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 3:40 pm

  this woman works for the sate, she was doing a site assessment at the superfund site before she left town for another site.

  She found the city was not prepared to talk about the Meadow st and Woodward ave possible brownfield sites..

• 20 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 3:52 pm

  So we’re prepared to go all the way to protect our kids when it comes to background checks for school volunteers but not protect them when it comes to possible exposure to hazardous wastes?

  Guess one is a no-brainer, politically; the other makes peoples brains hurt too much to think about. Plus, the damage may not show up for years to come…

• 21 Anonymous // Jun 27, 2007 at 4:42 pm

  this has been the case for years as long as there is no communication and no acountability and the pet projects get passed and money is made who would ever think put in a master plan around hazardous waste site or sites.The brownfield report isn’t even out yet so we have some work to do still…

  Who is going to buy into condo’s , high priced buildings , awesome waterfront property accross from the sewage plant of all things and then say we have a problem the place may be next to a hot zone,,

  I had spoke about how the river was dredged, I didn’t say they needed to find another spot to dump it becuase the sediment was not expected to contain what it did..more parts per millions was an issue according to someone who worked the site.

  To think I was concerned about crime guess that will be a moot point now..

• 22 L'arlequino // Jun 27, 2007 at 4:57 pm

  Hey, don’t forget about the Transfer Station. With that and the Sewage Treatment plant, the folks who buy the condos down there on the river will have a trifeca o’ stanky to contend with in the summertime.

  If I spend 400-500k on a riverfront condo the last thing I want to have to smell is rotting garbage and look at Norwalk’s stewing sewage. This is City planning?

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