Garden City residents group defends stance in feud over Third Track project

Members of a Garden City residents group at the forefront of a dispute threatening to hold up the Long Island Rail Road's Third Track project say they object to being labeled as obstructionists, noting instead they just want the LIRR to make good on promises it made to their community.

The homeowners, who have dubbed themselves ReVAMP — Resident Voters Against Monster Poles — are calling out the railroad for misleading them while trying to win support for the $2.6 billion project, and irreversibly damaging the Town of Hempstead village by moving forward with no regard for residents’ quality of life. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says Garden City is holding up construction of the 10-mile-long Third Track between Floral Park and Hicksville by refusing to grant much-needed permits.

The homeowners' key objection has to do with the placement of 90-foot-plus utility poles on the south side of the tracks near Merillon Avenue station — rather than on the north side, as they said was promised.

"It’s not NIMBYism, because NIMBYism is ‘not in my backyard.’ They told us it’s not going to be in our backyard. And then they put it in our backyard," said Richard Corrao Jr., an attorney and ReVAMP member. "We’re just asking that they do what they said they were going to do and work with the community and live up to what they said way back when they were trying to sell the project. That’s the right thing to do."

Officials with the MTA — the LIRR’s parent organization — said they’ve been upfront with residents about their plans since they first proposed the project in January 2016, and that it’s the village’s own government that has misled them about the project and stood in the way of improvements that would ease many of their concerns.

"There was a plan in place. If we could just get to the finished product, I think people will be happy," said John McCarthy, who is the MTA chief, external relations.

The complaints from some of the village’s 22,000 residents have wrought serious consequences. Upon having a lawsuit dismissed against the LIRR for the placement of the poles, the village has refused to grant work permits needed to move ahead with a bridge replacement that is critical to the project's progress.

The MTA has asked the state Supreme Court to compel the village to grant the permits. Without them, the project — long viewed by the agency as a model for major infrastructure projects statewide — is at serious risk of missing its December 2022 targeted completion date and going over budget.

Village officials have not responded to requests for comment.

"The nicest thing I’ve heard from anybody who has come out and seen Merillon Avenue station is, ‘It’s a disgrace,’ " said Paul Rothenbiller, a retired industrial engineer who previously worked with the MTA on several infrastructure projects and is now helping lead the fight against how the Third Track is being built. "They don’t care about this community at all."

Dispute centers around poles

At the center of ReVAMP protests are the poles — towering higher than the poles they replaced because of new post-Superstorm Sandy standards. Residents have said in presentations made to the public while the MTA was pitching the project, and in the project’s own environmental study, that the agency made clear the poles would be placed on the north side of Merillon Avenue station in a predominantly industrial area.

Instead, some of the poles were installed on the south side of the tracks, across the street from a residential area. Because the construction work also necessitated the clearing of vegetation near the tracks — including rows of 120-foot-tall trees — several residents’ views of lush greenery outside their windows have been replaced with "repugnant" steel poles, as Corrao called them.

The residents have said the MTA has wronged them in other ways with the installation of the poles, including by making them taller than promised, putting them near a park, and failing to give adequate notice to homeowners living within 500 feet of them, as utility providers are legally required to do.

"They didn’t say, ‘We’ll generally try to do this.’ They said, ‘This is what we’ll commit to as the MTA,’ " ReVAMP member Jim Kumpel said. "All you have now are far more lines, no green space, no buffers and electromagnetic levels that exceed healthy levels."

The MTA has disputed having made any promises about the location of the poles.

While the project’s environmental review does reference relocating transmission lines from the south side of the tracks to the north, it also says the specific location of poles "would be determined on a case-by-case basis during the final design phase" of the project.

McCarthy said the LIRR always made it clear that it must have final say over any construction on its property, or "right of way," because of safety and train operation reasons. He disputed that public notice laws were violated, and noted that the construction has resulted in fewer overall poles than there were before.

McCarthy said a key reason for installing some of the poles on the south side of the tracks is because installing them on the north side would have put them even closer to some homes.

ReVAMP members have suggested that the lines could be buried underground in such instances. Project officials have said that’s not feasible.

"They wanted to make decisions about what goes in our right of way, and we told them, ‘We can never give you that,’ " McCarthy said about the project team’s dealings with village officials.

McCarthy said, ultimately, the exact locations of the poles within the LIRR's property were decided based on conditions and space. "We have to fit them in a way that doesn’t take people’s property and doesn’t get in the way of our railroad service,' " he said.

New administration, refusal

McCarthy said village officials reluctantly accepted the specifications. But a new village administration that was elected earlier this year has refused to work with project officials.

MTA officials said the village has even blocked a proposal for an "enhanced landscaping" plan that would have included the planting of hundreds of shrubs and trees of different species — many taller than 30 feet — that would have helped obscure the poles. Without the village’s blessing, the project contract calls only for short rows of bushes along a sound attenuation wall next to the tracks.

"I don’t think most of the residents know what they’re missing out on," said Leslie Mesnick, community outreach manager for the Third Track project. "I don’t think they know what it could look like and how thoughtful this plan was."

ReVAMP members have raised other objections to the project, including over what they say is the ineffectiveness of the sound walls, over project workers being messy and not parking where they’re supposed to, and over the renovated Merillon Avenue station, a once "sleepy" train stop that Corrao said now looks more like "Luna Park" because of its bright lights.

McCarthy said some of those concerns could be addressed.

What Corrao said residents are not opposed to is the Third Track project itself, despite their portrayal by some MTA officials and supporters of the effort as selfish obstructionists.

"I haven’t run into anybody who’s really said, at this point, they don’t want the project to go forward or anything like that," said Corrao, who regularly commutes on the LIRR. "Nobody here is trying to hold back Long Island. Nobody here is trying to stall the project. We're just asking that they do what they said they were going to do, and work with the community."

Correction: John McCarthy's title was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.