Superfund Gowanus!

Despite Bloomberg, De Blasio and Tollhouse Brothers wanting to develop by the toxic Gowanus Canal, the people that live in the neighborhood beg to differ. This half-hour, citizen-driven special is dedicated to showing everyone why the canal must be taken care of by the Superfund. A quick cleaning by the city is simply not enough, so sign the petition to make it so today!

Brooklyn Paper Makes Excuses For Superfund Cleanup Of Gowanus

I know the buyout of the Brooklyn Paper to NewsCorp was bad news, but for them to subtly side with the city over whether the EPA should come in and make Gowanus a Superfund site is just a little too unseemly. Although they do not specifically advocate for letting the city do what it wants (letting Toll Bros. develop 460 condo units and a not-so-thorough cleanup of the canal), reading between the lines in the "City could be holding bag for feds’ Gowanus clean-up" article isn't too hard to do.

From The Brooklyn Paper:

Despite its name, the Superfund is not a pool of money that federal officials tap into for environmental remediation. In fact, one goal of Superfund designation is to identify guilty polluters and get them to pay to clean up toxic sites.

But there is a long history of towns and municipalities being forced by the EPA to open up their checkbooks to pay for decontaminating polluted land. In February, for example, the upstate cities of Poughkeepsie and Newburgh were held responsible for hazardous material on a car and metal processing plant, and had to cough up $12 million.

Well since the city has pretty much neglected any kind of cleaning of the canal for decades, the city does share some of the blame here. Just because there is some concern now that developers show interest in the area doesn't mean NYC has made a good-faith effort on its own.

Cleaning up the Gowanus, with its dioxins, PCBs, coal tar — and, more important, tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage that spills into it on rainy days — would be considerably more expensive.

The EPA says local governments are usually minor defendants in their suits, but industrial companies have sought big bucks from cities to defray the costs they have to pay to the EPA. In a case from 1989, companies joined together to sue 29 California cities for $500 million as part of a Superfund battle.

The EPA says it does not yet know who would be targeted if the Gowanus Canal is added to the national priority list of Superfund sites, a controversial proposal first floated earlier this month.

Amid this new debate, a clearer picture began to emerge this week about why Gov. Paterson secretly appealed in December for federal assistance with the cleanup of Brooklyn’s infamous channel. It turns out, state officials now believe that their highly touted efforts are neither adequate to clean the area, nor powerful enough to identify parties responsible for the pollution.

Of course it is expensive! Good for Paterson for realizing what a serious job this for enlisting help from the Feds. Whoever they find liable for the damage to the area should pay for it, from the oil and chemical companies to the City of New York. Putting the area back together again should be concern #1, not giving into the Toll Brothers who do not want the stigma of a Superfund site attached to the area. The Gowanus is already toxic, the label from the feds won't change that. If anything, long-term rehab of the canal will improve lives and any living conditions that eventually take place there.

Some environmentalists say the Superfund designation is the only way to get a comprehensive clean-up of the so-called Lavender Lake. But other do-greeners point out that remediation can take decades, cost far more than anticipated, and not always work.

"Some environmentalists" links to another Brooklyn Paper article that highlights three toxic cleanup projects in New Yorkthat took years and millions upon millions of dollars to undertake. What do they expect, that the EPA can just go to an area that was polluted for decades with a magic vacuum cleaner that will suck up all the bad chemicals? Developers might like the sound of that, but it doesn't work that way in the reality-based world. The awful truth of the matter is that Gowanus is a filthy canal that needs a serious rehabilitation that will take years if not longer. Putting the wishes of developers and the politicians that love them ahead of the safety of the area is simply unacceptable.

De Blasio Advocates For Developers

If there is anyone you should cross off your list for Public Advocate, start with Councilman Bill De Blasio. The job he's running for requires a politician that is serious about standing up for ordinary New Yorkers (IMO people like Norman Siegel). De Blasio however, regards developers like the Toll Brothers as regular people, going so far as to decry efforts to clean up the severely polluted Gowanus Canal.

From The NY Daily News:

City Councilman Bill de Blasio (D-Park Slope) said he didn't believe the cash-strapped federal program would be able to come up with the funding to complete a cleanup.

"We're being sold a bill of goods," he said. "There isn't necessarily money attached. ... How can you call it Superfund if there's no fund?"

Answer:

The Superfund program usually pays for the early stages of a cleanup and then goes after polluters and owners of contaminated land to foot the rest of the bill. Cleanup can take years.

So why is De Blasio so adamant about not having the government clean the toxic canal?

Officials from Toll Brothers, whose controversial plan to build 460 condos and townhouses along the waterway was approved last month by the City Council with de Blasio's backing, have said they will drop the project if the canal becomes a Superfund site.

The Bloomberg administration came out against the Superfund proposal last week, touting city plans to spend $175 million on a new pumping station and upgraded flushing tunnel for the canal, and dredging a portion of the waterway.

"We, locally, have gotten our act together. The city's doing the right stuff. ... The Toll site will get cleaned up," de Blasio said, charging the feds would just "get in the way."

That's his opinion (and Bloomberg's). What do environmentalists in the community say?

"Those are just cosmetic cleanups. They do absolutely nothing," said Ludger Balan, a Gowanus resident and environmental programs director at the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy.

He said the most an upgraded flushing tunnel would do is move around dirty water. "It does not remove the toxins."[...]

Federal officials have found high levels of cancer-causing PCBs and metals such as mercury and arsenic in the Gowanus Canal. While contaminants at many hazardous waste sites are measured in parts per million, levels of coal tar more than four parts per hundred were found in canal sediments.

"The city has had decades ... to do something about the canal and they've really been dragging their feet," said Marlene Donnelly, a member of Friends and Residents of the Gowanus Canal. "It's really disingenuous for them to turn around and say [they have] a plan."

Who are you going to believe, a self-interested pol like De Blasio or advocates in the community that care about seeing the area cleaned up? Commenters from Pardon Me For Asking know the deal with De Blasio, and so should everyone who is going to cast a ballot for Public Advocate in the fall.

Obama's EPA Notices The Infamous Gowanus Canal

For years decades well over a century, the Gowanus Canal that runs through Brooklyn has been a polluted man-made waterway. Even though many factories that used to line it are gone, the pollution is still there and it is still a problem. Although there have been many complaints, few have impressed the ears of the powerful. Now that Obama is in office (and with so many New Yorkers scattered about the White House) things are about to change.

From The Gothamist:

The Gowanus Canal, which has long been festering with gonohorrea, may be on the road to getting cleaned up. OTBKB reports that the EPA is likely adding the 1.8 mile long waterway to their Superfund National Priorities List (NPL), meaning the agency would take a look at the contaminated site and work towards bettering it. In their press release, the EPA begins at the beginning, saying, "The canal was built in the 19th century to allow industrial access into Gowanus Bay. After its completion in the 1860s, the canal became a busy industrial waterway, acting as the home to heavy industries, including manufactured gas plants, coal yards, concrete-mixing facilities, tanneries, chemical plants, and oil refineries. It was also the repository of untreated industrial wastes, raw sewage and runoff." All that history, and it still has heavy kayak activity.

Now that's change Brooklyn can believe in! Though I wonder how they'll get rid of the gonohorrea? Can you treat a canal with penicilin?