Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all!
Along with the stress of Christmas preparations, this week, we have had the added pleasure of puddles of mud running in front of our homes on Brush Avenue. The dusting and cleaning for the holidays has been made impossible due to the fine dust particles that make it through the doors and windows with the seasonal winds. The fine mud created by the saw that cuts into the asphalt and cement to place Pepsi’s gas line in is being tracked throughout the neighborhood by workers and UPS customers and vehicles that are dragging the mud with them throughout the neighborhood. There are no catch basins for the workers to wash the water and mud into. Again our neighborhood is suffering unnecessary work and damage due to the lack of catch basins on Brush Avenue.
Back in 1959? Brush Avenue was torn up completely and the residents were charged $900 to connect to a new double-lined sewer that was obviously being put in place for future development of the area. But although the “risers” for the catch basins were constructed with the sewer, no catch basins were put in. Throughout the years warehouses were constructed, residential homes were recently placed on our few empty lots, but no catch basins were put in. Hundreds of UPS trucks, Cablevision vans, HoPenn heavy equipment, landfill trucks, USPS mail trailers, Home Depot traffic and now Pepsi, 24 hours seven days a week. We are no longer a quaint little village. We live in a noisy, airplane path surrounded by construction for 50 years. Now that Pepsi is finally done with the noisiest part of their construction, we have the reconstruction of the Bronx/Whitestone Bridge approach to look forward to. I used to listen to my waterfall and the birds singing in the trees, “Thank God for Ipods, I recommend them to maintain your sanity.”
Our borough president and others had strange foresight and imagination to put a huge gigantic six-acre Pepsi distribution plant in our small, once residential neighborhood. Whatever Carrion envisioned when he proudly accepted this Pepsi distribution facility in this small area he did complete with sidewalks, roads and what should have been underground electric lines and phone lines.
Where is the drainage for the streets? This street is now a commercial strip with three blocks of homes. Can you imagine the non specific run off of heavy rains, mixed with such heavy traffic and pedestrians and children walking in the streets? Many of you do not travel on Brush Avenue but thousands of others drive through here daily, through dirty puddles that splash over the parked cars and hit the houses (the puddles are so deep over near 684-710 Brush Avenue).
The installers of the gas line came across a water leak beneath the ground right near the large depression in Brush Avenue, that we reported months ago. The Bronx Times Reporter did an article on this large depression that was causing dangerous traffic problems and endangering pedestrians. Although the depression was filled months ago, there seemed to be a constant sinking in the street, We were concerned that there was a leak below.
So now they had to pump out the water as they worked which added to more muddy water with no place to go.
Well when you walk in the rain and see water pouring into your corner catch basin…remember, some of our neighborhoods don’t have any.
