In Rockland County, tensions are rising between two communities over plans to build a kosher chicken processing plant. People in New Square want the plant, but their neighbors do not.
In a New Hempstead neighborhood of landscaped yards and roomy homes, concerned homeowners have come together.
“Aesthetically it’s wrong, environmentally it’s wrong,” says New Hempstead resident Althea Mundy.
Barbara Greenwald says she’s worried about “the impact on our water, on the sewer system.”
Residents like Mundy and Greenwald are opposing plans to build the 25,000 square foot kosher plant directly across from the entrance to their subdivision.
“A slaughterhouse in the middle of our neighborhood, I don’t know,” says resident John Anolin.
They’re worried about the smell, the traffic, and the impact on the environment. The chicken plant would be on the New Hempstead border in the village of New Square, a Hasidic enclave that doubled in population in recent years.
New Square’s existing kosher chicken plant can’t keep up with demand.
CBS 2 went to the plant to try and get comments from an official. There was a manager there, but he refused to answer the door or answer questions.
Supporters of the plant say the new facility will minimize odor and environmental impact.
“The new plant’s gonna be much more sophisticated, much more built, and they never will know nothing about it,” says New Square resident Jacob Spira.
Meshulem Twersky is friendly with the plant manager and says he’s not opposed to the move.
“I know very good the manager, and I don’t think it should be a problem,” he says.
New Square landed a $1.6 million stimulus grant from New York to build the chick plant, a point of resentment for opponents.
“To add insult to injury, the fact that taxpayer dollars are being used to help fund a poultry slaughterhouse in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” says Greenwald.
Site work has started, but opponents hope to kill the slaughterhouse before it opens.
The Rockland County Planning Department voted down the plant, but New Square is able to overrule that denial. Both sides will square off at a public hearing next month.
(Source: WCBSTV / YWN-782)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
6 Responses
Why do they want to build a plant right next to a residential community? Can’t they find an industrial area? It would be a big Kiddush Hashem if they found another location that does not encroach on a residential neighborhood.
The neighbors, although certainly secular and probably quite anti-frum, are right on this one. A meat processing plant of any kind should not be in a residential area. Why doesn’t New Square build it on their Homowack property? Or in an industrial area like everybody else does? Darkei sholom is part of making a kiddush Hashem. Besides, it’s a practical matter. If the chicken plant is built in New Square, it will have to have 2 different production lines; one for male chickens and another for female chickens.
This doesn’t make sense:If the residents don’t want it there why on earth are they putting it there. Nobody wants to smell a slaughterhouse in their neighborhood. The city will also love to allow a missionary convent to be built right near a yeshiva and they will sign it right away because Goyim can’t take it when Jews are living in comfort. This is a horrible thing to do to a residential neighborhood and the homeowners should have the only say not some city Goy who hasn’t a care about a jews home. So if the people sell their homes off price let’s see two hundred homes at 200,000 less each home the net loss is 40 million dollars of good Jewish money. Slaughterhouses are built outside of the residential neighborhoods period.
I live in the affected area, and I’m concerned, very concerned. What galls me though is that fact that literally next door to this proposed plant, is a well known frum neighborhood; and Skver knows it. Are we, non-Skverers, but yet Orthodox Jews, not part of klal Yisrael as far as Skver is concerned? Does our quality of life mean nothing to the Skverer Rebbe?
cantoresq –
Where exactly do you live? As far as I know, the Clubview neighborhood is not a frum area, and neither is Williams Avenue…
Wits End Bridle area. Close enough to smell the slaughterhouse.