DeStefano: “We caught them in a lie …”
MIDDLETOWN – Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano unleashed a harsh verbal reprimand on the leadership of the Village of Kiryas Joel on Friday.
The village sued the city and Orange County over their deal for Middletown to acquire water from the Indigot Creek and resell it, claiming Kiryas Joel had a right to tap into the creek for water as well. It claimed in its court papers filed with State Supreme Court Justice Gretchen Walsh seeking annexation of 164 acres of land in the Town of Monroe that it had ample water supply to expand. Yet, in the most recent lawsuit filed with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Sciortino seeking Indigot Creek water, village officials said they had an emergency water shortage.
The village won the right to annex.
“We caught them in a lie and now they are trying to back out of it,” DeStefano said of the village’s leadership. The mayor said he has no problem with the residents, but village leadership was untruthful.
“We are making the argument that even if they don’t have enough water, that the Indigot is 32 miles away, has no bearing on them, they have the aqueduct coming,” he said. “The problem is once you start lying, you can’t believe anything they say to either of the courts. The point is they filed this lawsuit and immediately tried to use the lawsuit as leverage against the city to get involved politically and supporting their position on the use of the water pipeline. We immediately responded that we are not going to be blackmailed by Kiryas Joel.”
The mayor said he was also told by leadership that the reason they were withdrawing the Indigot lawsuit was because the village had just received the permits to move forward on their water pipeline, but DeStefano challenged that saying the approvals were granted a year ago.
Whichever statement is accurate, that the village does or does not have ample water supply, DeStefano urged the towns and villages in the southern part of the county to consider going back to court against KJ.
He said the village administrator tried to influence the city to lean on the county so they could get their water pipeline permits in return for dropping the lawsuit. “The judges need to know what they did. It casts a lot of doubt on the village leadership. When you lie to the court, it needs to be exposed.”
Assistant Middletown Corporation Counsel Alex Smith said the situation is “very serious. You can’t say one thing to one Supreme Court judge and use it to get a favorable decision and say pretty much the opposite to another judge in a different lawsuit, suing other municipalities.”
The Kiryas Joel pipeline in the Cornwall area will eventually tap into the New York City aqueduct.
