Full transcript
0:01but you see this is not glamour
0:03this is not newspaper stuff this is hard
0:06work on a day by day
0:08basis the other hard day by day basis
0:12was
0:12sc 552 i'll never forget that
0:15s e 552 which is a sewer project
0:19from kennedy airport to grand central
0:22took me years to do that one but that's
0:25another one that's not glamorous but
0:26took very hard work and consisted
0:30it was a sewer because all the people in
0:31southeast queens that owned homes had
0:33water in the basement
0:35those houses were built after world war
0:37ii with no infrastructure
0:39to satisfy the returning vets
0:42so the sewers would back up there
0:45weren't enough storm sewers
0:47and they kept giving me they kept giving
0:50me
0:50uh excuses from dep that there was a
0:53twist in the pipe and it was all baloney
0:56there weren't enough sewers and we
0:59finally worked it out and then the state
1:01that you see didn't want to do it
1:02because they thought that this thirst
1:04and base and water down at kennedy
1:06airport was polluted and the storm water
1:07would make
1:08i said really the snail daughters are
1:10more important than the people living in
1:12southeast queens whose basements are
1:14full
1:16we finally after 10 years
1:1910 years 10 years and people
1:22put a shovel in the ground people in
1:24jamaica are getting their basements
1:25flooded
1:26yeah ten years yeah because there are
1:28not enough waters well that's one of the
1:29good things david dinkins did because
1:31david had a dep
1:35commissioner who was a bird fancier i
1:37forget his name
1:38and he knew those people at dec which is
1:41the state
1:42and he said come on guys give us we gave
1:44them
1:45five outfalls and they wouldn't pick
1:47anyone because they were
1:49afraid of the environmental
1:50reverberations in this
1:53body of water so what finally made it
1:55work
1:56he made them pick one of the outfalls
1:59so the sewer could be built and what we
2:02did was we started building a trunk
2:04sewer at kennedy airport
2:06worked its way up to grand central but
2:09as we moved north we put the laterals in
2:12so these neighborhoods done wonderful
2:16we didn't do well in southeast winds but
2:17we did a major part
2:20and i want to tell you pay for that well
2:21dep doesn't come out of the capital
2:24budget
2:25dep comes out of bond sales that's your
2:28water and sewer rents
2:31so that this hundred million dollar
2:33sewer
2:35was bonded out and didn't come under the
2:38capital budget
2:42so i want you know i give giuliani
2:45credit because they have to think that
2:46giuliani came in
2:48and i said come down to southeast queens
2:50they're not building this trunk sewer
2:52fast enough and he went down he saw all
2:54this water
2:55all over the place and he made his
2:58commissioners
2:59build that damn trunk sewer faster but
3:02he'll never get credit for it because
3:04they hated him
3:05they didn't like it they didn't like
3:06giuliani down in southeast queens
3:09but he was really instrumental in
3:11speeding up that project
3:12so there's a lot of people with dry
3:13basins because julie because giuliani
3:15speeded up the process
3:17and because you spent 10 years working
3:19on oh
3:20i refused to give up and one of them
3:22called me a bulldog
3:26or a terrier well i don't care his photo