ארטיקעל אין רעקארד איבער קרית יואל רב

Chris McKenna, Southern Orange
cmkenna@th-record.com
-The Village of Kiryas Joel's plan to build a 13-mile pipe to tap New York City's Catskill Aqueduct sparks the biggest controversy Orange County government has seen in years.

-On paper, it looks like the owners of a Woodbury chicken farm have sold their 140 scenic acres to an upstate businessman with a fondness for recycling operations. But two weeks later, on Jan. 29, the real story comes out: The businessman is just a frontman for land interests from neighboring Kiryas Joel. The news kicks off a series of events boiling down to one fundamental conflict: Kiryas Joel needs more land to grow, but its neighbors don't want its dense housing to spread.

JANUARY - Pipeline battle made waves

Kiryas Joel – When 2004 began, opposition to this village's proposal to tap New York City's water supply was a mere ripple.
By summer, waves were crashing down on the Orange County Government Center.
What happened in between was that people outside the Hasidic community became convinced that the proposed 13-mile pipeline that would enable it to draw water from the Catskill Aqueduct would perpetuate the village's rapid growth and allow its multifamily housing to spread – an outcome many outsiders dreaded.
What also happened was that word got out that Kiryas Joel had quietly requested $20 million in federal funds for the project – a huge source of irritation for those already resentful of the village's success at winning government grants.
Soon enough, two citizens' groups had formed to fight the project. One also vowed to resist any attempt to allow the densely populated village to expand.
The expansion fears can be traced to a single date: Jan. 29. That's when the Times Herald-Record reported that the real estate arm of Kiryas Joel's main congregation had secretly bought ACE Farm – 140 acres of fields on the village border.
And that's when many first realized that Kiryas Joel developers were looking past the village borders for building room once the village's 1.1 square miles filled up. And, with the population hitting around 16,000, that day wouldn't be far off.
That message was reinforced in March by news that Hasidic property owners were already talking about having their land – along with ACE Farm – annexed into the Village of Kiryas Joel from the neighboring towns of Monroe and Woodbury.
Pipeline opposition grew. And two Orange County legislators from different parties, Republican Frank Fornario and Democrat Roxanne Donnery, took up what seemed an unlikely crusade: putting the Legislature on record as formally expressing its opposition to the project.

Phone calls, e-mails and letters inundated their colleagues. On July 1, the Legislature voted 20-1 in support of the anti-pipeline resolution.
Kiryas Joel's leaders were furious. They had pitched this project to their neighbors as a benefit to the whole region: an outside water source that would cap Kiryas Joel's wells and thereby reduce competition for the limited ground water.
And here their project was being formally denounced by the county, without their being allowed to speak in defense of the project before the vote.
Opponents finally prodded the county into filing a lawsuit against the water project, challenging its environmental review. Kiryas Joel, meanwhile, threatened to counter with a federal discrimination lawsuit against the county and individual public officials.
The latest news came Dec. 5, when the Sunday Record reported that Hasidic and Orthodox people have been steadily buying homes in neighborhoods outside the village.
Ever since ACE Farm sold, it seems, some people with homes outside Kyrias Joel have felt more inclined to sell. And the appetite for their homes has been voracious.

What happened in between was that people outside the Hasidic community became convinced that the proposed 13-mile pipeline that would enable it to draw water from the Catskill Aqueduct would perpetuate the village's rapid growth and allow