Dial a Bus for Hydrogen Sulfide Solution?
Why South Blooming Grove got bus service from the Town of Monroe.
Yes. I know. There was no post on Monday. But I have a good reason. It goes something like this:
Last week, during the July 21 Village of Monroe Board meeting, Village Trustee John Karl brought up the hazardous hydrogen sulfide smell in the Village, a problem that was formerly isolated to the children’s playground in Crane Park.
Since nobody took the smell seriously until The Monroe Gazette started writing about it in October 2024, it has now spread throughout the Village.
We have extensively covered the poo gas issue, so we’re not going to recap the whole saga here.
(Our archives are free thanks to the generosity of paid subscribers like you.)
But I will point out that former Village of Monroe Mayor Joseph Mancuso repeated a common—and false—Monroe Town Republican line about the hydrogen sulfide smell during the exchange seen in the video above.
Mancuso was part of the new Board that came in with Melchiorrie because Lipa Deutsch and Avrohm Flohr wanted a more cooperative Village Building Department, which, it is clear, they got according to people we spoke to with direct knowledge on the matter.
Mancuso stated that the smell had been there forever. This is a Trumpian lie in the sense that, at its core, there’s some truth there, but it’s also wildly deceptive.
We’ll also take a moment to remind readers that former Monroe Town Board member Dorey Houle and former Town Supervisor Tony Cardone, both members of the Town of Monroe Republican Committee, had known about the hydrogen sulfide issue for at least five years.
Despite this, and despite being told of the dangerous levels of that gas at the children’s playground, they proceeded to do exactly what you think those two did: Absolutely nothing.
Worse, they said nothing to the public. So, think about that next time you see those two crying on Facebook, or at a Town meeting, about how terrible the new administration is that replaced them.
The truth is this: Since 1991 or so, there’s been an occasional whiff of hydrogen sulfide in and around Airplane Park and over by the former Monroe Taxi location, which is also the heavily trafficked Millpond Shortline bus stop.
What’s different—and has been different since Cardone and Houle were made aware of the issue in 2021, years after Mancuso was mayor of the village—is that the gas reached dangerous levels in 2021 and remained high for years after.
So it’s not a tomato, tomahto situation as Mancuso and others, like Orange County Legislator Peter Tuohy, want you to believe.
In 1991, the poo gas existed, but it was an annoyance that occurred in one, maybe two spots.
In 2021, it’s a near-daily recurrence throughout the entire village, and at some of those times, the exposure level was potentially dangerous.
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Unfortunately, for Monroe residents, Alex Melchiorre is also their Village Mayor.
So when Melchiorre says to John Karl in the video above that he wants to meet with Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern—the two men engaged in an ongoing white-collar crime spree that New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office is well aware of, but won’t act on—that was going to be the original post I was going to share with you on Monday.
But Then…
Town of Monroe Supervisor Maureen Richardson put out an announcement that the hydrogen sulfide problem would soon be settled …
There are several issues here. For one, Cardone and Houle actively lied and covered up the situation. They didn't try anything to resolve the hydrogen sulfide on their own. We know because we put in a FOIL request for everything we could concerning the sewage situation and have all the emails, including one where Cardone complained about having to go to a meeting on the issue. So, Supervisor Richardson is being too generous by saying they tried to negotiate anything other than under-the-table bribes for Mr. Cardone—something he is alleged to have taken from Lipa Deutsch, Mr. Melchiorre's backer, to move the Monroe Commons project forward. (Mr. Cardone has denied ever taking any bribes.)
The other thing is, South Blooming Grove budgeted for and set aside a few hundred thousand or so for the ANUE Water Technologies System. They claimed, at the time, that they didn't purchase the system because, during a test, their sewer infrastructure had a major operational problem. (The extent of the problem is unknown, since The Monroe Gazette received redacted emails from the Village of South Blooming Grove on the subject.)
So nobody knows where the money went for the ANUE system. (I keep seeing people online say they got a grant for the ANUE system, but I haven't been able to verify that. They got grants for water, but none that I’ve seen SPECIFICALLY for the hardware. What I do have are all of SBG's budgets going back to 2021, and you can track the missing money that way.)
The final thing is, I don’t know who’s advising the Supervisor, or if she’s doing it herself, but the time for this announcement would have been at the same time the Dial a Bus arrangement was made with South Blooming Grove.
This way residents would have made the connection—whether or not they’re happy about it is a different matter—that the Dial a Bus services were provided to South Blooming Grove in exchange for their assistance in resolving the hydrogen sulfide issue. One that the New York State DEC, Orange County Department of Health and Orange County Environmental Services, and the Attorney General’s office, refuse to intervene with and solve for Monroe residents.
She didn’t do that.
(There’s an argument to be made that all decisions by Stern and Ekstein are void because they’re not duly elected or duly appointed since the entire board is essentially squatting and holding the Village hostage. However, the only way to resolve that is a federal lawsuit, which is what The Monroe Gazette will begin working on as soon as our two FOIL requests about those phantom elections are settled. The little FOIL case is moving along. The big FOIL case, which involves access to emails in Joel Stern’s gmail account, is still waiting to get started.)
We Have Questions
The following are our questions to Monroe Town Supervisor, Maureen Richardson, that we encourage you to ask her.
After that, we have the questions I sent to “Co-Mayors” of South Blooming Grove, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein.
We asked Supervisor Richardson:
“We can factually demonstrate that Mr. Joel Stern and Issac Ekstein are compulsive liars. (See: Court testimony provided by both men in the Orange County lawsuit) What guarantees have been made to the Town of Monroe that Stern and Ekstein will keep their word in both purchasing this hardware and making sure it’s operational?
When asked by staffers of Congressman Ryan to resolve the illegal use of the helicopter at 58 Fort Worth Place— something Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein’s Planning Board never approved, and Mr. Stern and Ekstein’s Code Enforcement Officer, Al Fusco Jr., has never acted to correct—Stern’s response to the Congressman was that Mr. Dam “should be glad we didn’t further develop the property around his home.”
Mr. Javier Dam is a Monroe resident of nearly thirty years. The helicopter situation, despite being in Mr. Stern and Ekstein’s power to address, has not. If this sort of disregard is demonstrated to South Blooming Grove’s neighbors in Monroe, how can either man be trusted to keep their commitments to you and Town of Monroe residents?”
We asked “Co-Mayors” Stern and Ekstein:
“I have a series of emails between Ekstein, Stern, and Fusco, claiming that the pilot the ANUE Water Technologies hardware caused in 2022 a number of issues when activated due to the state of South Blooming Grove’s sewer infrastructure. Have those issues been addressed?
Has Orange County’s Department of Health and Environmental Facilities and Services signed off on these issues being resolved?
If not, what assurances have been given to the Town of Monroe that the sewer issues will be remedied —and by WHEN— in exchange for the generous Dial a Bus service South Blooming Grove is now receiving?
Will continued cooperation with the Town of Monroe on this issue be contingent on providing the Dial a Ride Service? Or do you both plan to hold the Town hostage by turning the system off whenever you feel like it?
Has this arrangement been discussed and shared with Orange County Sewer District 1’s Advisory Committee, which has been working to remedy the hydrogen sulfide smell in the Village of Monroe? They had no knowledge of this announcement at their meeting last week. (Below)
Has this arrangement been shared with the Orange County Department of Health and Environmental Facilities Services? Is South Blooming Grove currently in compliance with the OC Department of Health concerning their water and sewage infrastructure, or has it begun to pay fines to Orange County after years of ignoring the County’s warnings concerning their water and sewage infrastructure?
Where did the $300,000+ budgeted and set aside for the ANUE Water Technologies Hardware go, since the machinery was clearly never purchased, and now the Village needs to purchase NEW hardware in order to meet is end of this deal with the Town of Monroe?”
Requests for comment were also sent to Bob Gray at Orange County Deputy Commissioner of Public works. We also requested comment from New York State Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, whose office will soon enter its third year of an audit of the Village of South Blooming Grove. The Comptrollers office would not provide a timeline for when the audit would be completed.