More than 30 people gathered in the rain two weeks ago to tell the Parks Department and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) how they think $4.5 million the city has set aside for Jerome Park Reservoir can best be used.

The money, originally allocated for a path of some kind around the reservoir, is part of the parcel of $200 million in park projects that Bronx politicians received in return for supporting the construction of the filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park.

The debate over whether the city would build the recreational path along the water’s edge or outside the security fence has gone on for years, but Richard Friedman, DEP special counsel, did his best to put an end to the argument.

“If you’re only at this scoping meeting to say you want the track inside the fence, then we can end this right now,” Friedman said.

But some of the reservoir’s neighbors aren’t giving up on the recreational path they have planned and designed since 1994. Still, Anne Marie Garti, president of the Jerome Park Conservancy, knows she will have to be patient.

“Don’t focus so much on the running track until it can go where it belongs,” Garti said after the meeting on March 23. “The path is going to go inside the fence, it’s just a matter of when.”

Discussion shifted to ways the $4.5 million could make the area outside of the 8-foot security fence more park-like without the addition of a recreational path. A new path would not circle the entire reservoir fence because of the Lehman College parking lot on Goulden Avenue and because the already existing sidewalk along Reservoir Avenue leaves no room between the street, the historic pin oaks and the fence to create another path.

Many people at the meeting wanted flowers and other decorative landscaping, new lighting, more benches and someone to maintain the new additions.

The meeting also doubled as a grievance session. Neighbors took turns complaining of the DEP’s neglect of the land around the reservoir. Complaints included snow-covered sidewalks during the winter, graffiti on the low stone wall along Reservoir and Sedgwick avenues, and trash, including a pig’s head in a bag a few weeks ago.

“Nobody is taking care of things,” Karen Argenti, a longtime reservoir advocate, said.

Margaret Groarke (disclosure: Groarke is married to Norwood News editor Jordan Moss) compared the maintenance of Fort Independence Park, which is cared for by the Parks Department, with the upkeep of the land in the DEP’s jurisdiction.

“You want to plan something that’s sustainable,” Groarke said. “The DEP is not in the business of maintaining parkland.”

When Groarke and others suggested the Parks Department acquire the reservoir land at least for cleaning responsibilities, Hector Aponte, the Parks Department’s Bronx commissioner, laughed and said that would require more funding for his agency.

Residents are particularly exasperated with the DEP’s failure to make good on its promise to demolish a filtration demonstration plant in order to build an urban ecology lab at the reservoir, a project championed by the Conservancy.

According to an April 29, 2004 article in The Riverdale Press, the DEP commissioner at the time, Christopher Ward, said the demonstration plant, built more than 20 years ago, would be demolished within 12 to 18 months to make room for an urban ecology lab, a project championed by the Jerome Park Conservancy.

Almost 36 months later, the demonstration plant still stands, and plans for the ecology lab have reached a standstill. Friedman told the group at the scoping meeting that the DEP would begin demolition on the demonstration water treatment plant on Goulden Avenue this summer, completing the task in the first half of 2008.

A 1997 New York Times article said the Parks Department and the DEP expected to finish planning the ecology lab, which would be used by area schools, in the next month.

In May 2000, the Norwood News reported that the Jerome Park Conservancy’s plans for the ecology lab were approved and the lab would be completed in the spring of 2001.

A 2004 Riverdale Press article reported that Ward “promised” an urban ecology lab would be built on the site of the demonstration plant.

Resident Leonard Stoller isn’t expecting swift action from the DEP.

“They’ve made a lot of promises,” Stoller said. “I don’t trust them.”