October 06, 2004
Crapped out
Stadium opponents often bemoan the traffic that accompanies pro sports facilities, but now questions are being raised about (warning: cliched journalistic wordplay ahead) flow of a different kind. New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey and the state's Department of Environmental Protection have asked New York City to redo its environmental impact statement for the proposed Manhattan Jets stadium - the current report, charges Harvey, notes that untreated sewage would flow into the Hudson River from the project, without indicating how often this would happen or what the city would do about it. "We think it'll have an impact on our shoreline and on our tourism industry," wrote Harvey in a letter to the city planning department. "But this report glosses over that issue."
In related news, a visit to D.C.'s proposed stadium site along the Anacostia River revealed some shoreline impacts of its own. "When they flushed the toilet at the White House yesterday," environmental lawyer Lawrence Silverman told Washington Post columnist Angus Phillips, "this is where it came out." Local environmentalists estimate it would cost $1.2 billion to build underground sewage holding tanks that would keep raw sewage out of the Anacostia - too bad there's no way for D.C. to come up with that kind of money.
