Add The New York Post on Google Fishing and boating on a Staten Island lake that was polluted by human waste has finally been closed by authorities, one week after The Post reported that officials had done nothing about the “open secret” for decades.
The Parks Department told The Post in a statement Friday evening that “out of an abundance of caution, fishing and boating will be suspended in Clove Lakes Park while we await water testing results.”
The Post spoke to boat rental workers earlier in the day who said that boat rentals had been open all week.
The workers informed The Post that parkgoers continued to boat on the sewage-polluted lake, but that sales dropped following last week’s revelations about the crappy calamity.
“Hopefully sales will go back up next summer when they fix the pollution,” the staffer said.
Ahead of the closure, authorities were scrambling to fix the situation.
The Stone House at Clove Lakes Park erected PVC pipes to reroute their sewer line away from the lake and directly into a Parks Department manhole instead, The Post confirmed.
“The restaurant has been all over it,” a source said.
The restaurant also added outdoor trailer bathrooms that do not connect to the sewer line, The Post observed.
“So many people are horrified and glad it’s being addressed,” a Staten Island parkgoer said.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation — which is responsible for monitoring Clove Lake — is conducting tests on the body of water to determine what measures will need to be taken to disinfect it from decades of pollution from human waste, a source said. The lake and park are NYC property.
A 2022 licensing agreement signed by the vendor operating The Stone House and the city Parks Department stipulated that $200,000 be allocated for repairs, including on “drainage structures, plumbing and utilities,” according to materials.
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An amendment to the agreement signed by the vendor — who took over operations of the restaurant in 2014 — and Parks in July showed that each party was aware that “a sewer line collapsed.”
However, a plumber who worked at the restaurant 20 years ago, before the current operators took over, said the sewage issues go back at least two decades.
“They had lots and lots of stoppages, every time you turned around they were calling, their dishwasher was always stopping up, our snakes would pull up mud, we didn’t know where it came from,” he said.
The DEC told The Post they do not comment on active investigations.
