Maria McGriff does not want to live a few blocks away from an above-ground sewage plant.

McGriff, 36, a resident of Syracuse’s South Side, showed up at the offices of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation along with about 40 others Thursday afternoon for a rally protesting new policies made regarding the proposed Midland Avenue sewage plant.

‘I don’t want my children growing up in a neighborhood that stinks,’ McGriff said.

The rally was sponsored by the Partnership for Onondaga Creek, a group that has been fighting against the building of the sewage plant for the last six years. Protesters, primarily from the city’s South Side, went to sign a petition asking the DEC to hold a public hearing over a new draft of combined sewer overflows, said Partnership member Aggie Lane.

The DEC wrote up the draft without asking for the input from South Side residents, Lane said. Under federal law, sewage plants are required to draw up a long-term plan of combined sewer overflows.

Lane said a combined sewer overflows plan would essentially say how much the DEC is going to pollute the area.

‘It’s basically forming a list of polluting limits,’ Lane said.

Louise Poindexter, another member of the Partnership for Onondaga Creek and a South Side resident, said the creek in which the Midland sewage plant would dump its pollutants is currently labeled a ‘Class B’ creek, meaning it is considered fishable by the DEC.

‘The creek is supposed to be a Class B, but now it’s going to be a sewer,’ Poindexter said.

After the rally outside the DEC office, protesters headed into the main lobby to hand their petition to Kenneth P. Lynch, the DEC regional director, but the protesters were stopped short by DEC enforcement officers.

The DEC officers spoke with both Lane and Poindexter, but would not allow a meeting with Lynch because the women did not have an appointment with him.

‘They know our position, but they drafted the discharge permit anyways,’ Lane said.

The Partnership for Onondaga Creek has been in negotiations with Lynch for the past nine months, but they were not aware of the latest CSO draft until the read about it in The Post-Standard Jan. 29, Lane said.

Lane, a retired engineer, has been working with the Partnership for Onondaga Creek for six years and uses her home two blocks away from the proposed plant site as the group’s base of operations.

The Partnership has worked to garner the city’s attention to the eviction of several Midland Avenue residents from public housing due to the plant’s construction.

Thom Dellwo, 25, a member of the Citizen’s Awareness Network, said that even though he lives on the East Side of Syracuse, he came to support those living in the poorer South Side saying that the government’s actions towards Midland residents are racist in nature.

‘It’s racist in the sense they’re not trying to put (the plant) on the East Side where there are white people,’ Dellwo said. ‘They figure these people can’t fight it.’

Poindexter agreed with Dellwo.

‘This is a flagrant violation of civil rights,’ she said. ‘They figure we’re low income and that casts us out. They figure we’re black and that casts us out.’

Published on February 24, 2005 at 12:00 pm