New York City’s sewage system dumps billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into Bronx waterways each year, according to an investigative report released earlier this week by City Limits Investigates.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, an outspoken critic of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) mishandling of the vastly over-budget Croton Water Filtration Plant project in Van Cortlandt Park, is waiting for someone to prove him wrong.

Serge Marshall Davis has always worked in schools in far-flung neighborhoods, from South Shore High School in Brooklyn to Springfield Gardens, Queens, so the northern end of the Bronx seems like a logical next location for him.

The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organized Acts of 1970, otherwise known as RICO laws, were designed to bring down organized crime syndicates like the mafia. Now, the laws that took down New York mob boss Frank "Funzi" Tieri in 1980 is being used by a tenants association to file federal charges against controversial landlords, the Pinnacle Group, for fraud, harassment, exorbitant rent inflation and illegal evictions.

A group of restaurant workers showed up at Councilman Joel Rivera’s office last week to urge him to hold a hearing on a bill that would help protect restaurant workers from abuses in the workplace.

At the 2007 Annual Harmony Day Picnic at Harris Field in Bedford Park on Tuesday, a child was the price of admission. More than 5,000 kids turned out to this year’s event, which was organized by the 41st Precinct Community Council. It was their last at Harris Field because the park will be under construction next year.

Three men in a room. Dysfunctional. Corrupt. Yes, these words can and have been used to describe our state government in Albany. And yes, there is more than a little truth in it. But that’s why we feel doubly obligated to draw your attention to a welcome example of a state legislator doing some magnificent legislating.

With this issue, the Norwood News takes a brief hiatus. We skip an issue. Our next publication date is Aug. 23, which will include the first of two back-to-school special sections.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (r), shaking hands with Governor Eliot Spitzer in June, persevered for three legislative sessions to witness the enactment of his bill creating stiffer penalties for those engaging in forced labor and sexual exploitation.