July 04, 2004
Border battle of Kiryas Joel getting hot
By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
[email protected]
John Giattino wants to stop Kiryas Joel's planned water pipeline to keep the Hasidic community from growing until the fallow fields of nearby ACE Farm sprout apartment buildings.
He remembers seeing the Hasidic population in Rockland County expand rapidly when he was growing up there.
"I'm not prejudiced against these people," the Highland Mills electrical engineer said. "These people will stretch and strip resources and they will make us pay for it. The community grows and grows and grows unbridled."
Two miles away, in Kiryas Joel, Shimon Rolnitzky reads with anger about people like Giattino fighting his village's water project and sees a very different parallel – to medieval laws attempting to limit the Jewish population.
In a more philosophical mood, Rolnitzky pretends he's "a rich white suburban guy, living peacefully in a better neighborhood" and concludes that having a growing population of neighbors who act and dress differently probably would bother him, too.
"We are feeling their pain," he says of Kiryas Joel's neighbors, "but as much as we are going to try, we cannot stop our growth. If we will not have water to drink, it might lead to a water shortage in our area and even to serious health problems."
The friction between Hasids and non-Hasids in southern Orange County has risen in recent months from its usual subterranean hum to an open roar, because of the phenomenal population growth in a community that produces huge families – and needs houses to put them in.
The noise reached a crescendo Thursday when the Orange County Legislature voted in a chamber packed with spectators to formally oppose Kiryas Joel's proposal to tap New York City's water supply – a project opponents fear will fuel more explosive growth in one of New York's fastest-growing communities.
One night before, another development in the KJ wars: residents of southern Blooming Grove signed a petition to form their own village – at least partly to forestall what they see as encroachment by nearby Kiryas Joel.
It now appears that a similar effort to form a village is gathering steam in the Town of Woodbury.
For Kiryas Joel's critics, like Giattino, the fight is about protecting the suburban or rural way of life that drew many of them to Orange County.
"It's an encroachment that's not going to stop until the politicians put their feet down," he said. "That's what all the fathers talk about at the baseball games. All you have to do is bring it up and you get a very impassioned discussion."
But for Kiryas Joel's increasingly embattled residents – who say they are just pursuing basic human needs for housing and water – the mounting opposition smacks of anti-Semitism, or at least anti-Hasidism.
"Why are we being treated like second-class citizens?" Rolnitzky asked. "Are we taking anything away from Orange County residents? Why wouldn't they let us live our lives?"
The newest wrinkle in the conflict – the village pushes in Blooming Grove and Woodbury – is causing people to recall events in the Rockland County Town of Ramapo, which had a Hasidic population taking root in the Village of New Square and the Monsey area years before Kiryas Joel was settled.
New villages began cropping up there in the 1980s as residents sought to take control of zoning from town authorities who they said were being too lax in enforcement or too broad in interpreting the law.
The issue came to a head in what would become the Village of Airmont when Ramapo allowed synagogues to operate in homes, recalled John Layne, Airmont's current mayor.
Airmont incorporated in 1991 and was promptly sued by the federal government, and by some Hasidic groups, who accused the village founders of trying to zone out Hasids.
After protracted litigation, the courts left the village intact but forced it to change its zoning. Today, Layne said, Airmont has several home synagogues and a free-standing one but no large, noticeable Hasidic population.
In all, six villages incorporated in Ramapo between 1982 and 1991. One, countering the strict-zoning trend, was the all-Hasidic Village of Kaser – which now has more than 3,300 people living in its 0.2 square miles.
John and Lori Giattino knew Kiryas Joel was just down Seven Springs Road when they bought their home in Highland Mills three years ago, but they didn't consider it a problem.
But then they read in January that the community's development arm had bought 140-acre ACE Farm. Suddenly they could envision more apartment buildings spreading across the landscape – and their property value sinking.
"I think what's got a lot of us up in arms here is the purchase of ACE Farm," John Giattino said. "It's going to be a monstrosity."
Like other pipeline critics, he bristles at the suggestion of anti-Semitism, pointing out that his relatives are Jewish. But he says emphatically that he doesn't want to live near Hasids because he thinks they let their buildings become run down and properties fill with litter.
"Keep your sloppiness contained within your community," Giattino said, "because I don't want you bringing down my neighborhood."
Rolnitzky replies that the quality of life in Kiryas Joel is better than in Newburgh, Middletown and other big cities – and that he and other residents regard their village as a city.
"We prefer an urban environment as opposed to a rural one," he said. "We have to live close to our shuls, schools and stores, because our women and a big percentage of our men aren't driving cars."
Kiryas Joel "is working very hard to keep ourselves and our streets clean," Rolnitzky said. "I don't know any other village in our region where the streets are being swept twice a week."
He sees his village's growth as inevitable and wonders why its neighbors would try to prevent it from securing an outside water source – one that won't compete with their ground water.
Kiryas Joel already had conflicts with nearby Monroe and Woodbury residents when their wells ran dry about six years ago, he points out.
"This is what bothers us," he said. "By opposing the pipeline, they're not helping themselves."
While opponents think stopping the pipeline will stop Kiryas Joel's growth, Rolnitzky said villagers see it differently.
"It's not that we need the water pipeline to grow. We need it to exist."
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