Lightstone to Spend $20 Million on Gowanus Cleanup, Won't Be Liable in Future
In a major turn of events for the Gowanus area, Lightstone has agreed to spend $20,000,000 helping to clean up its corner of polluted Gowanus, the EPA announced yesterday. Since the developer broke ground on its controversial 700-unit apartment complex at 363-365 Bond Street, neighbors have complained of “petroleum waste” fumes that reportedly cause “light-headededness,…
In a major turn of events for the Gowanus area, Lightstone has agreed to spend $20,000,000 helping to clean up its corner of polluted Gowanus, the EPA announced yesterday. Since the developer broke ground on its controversial 700-unit apartment complex at 363-365 Bond Street, neighbors have complained of “petroleum waste” fumes that reportedly cause “light-headededness, nausea and dizziness,” according to the blog Gowanus Your Face Off.
Part of the remediation includes the removal of 17,500 cubic yards of polluted soil, DNAinfo was the first to report. Crews have already been replacing contaminated soil with fresh soil and gravel at 365 Bond Street, above, but whenever they stir up the existing soil, fumes are released, according to Gowanus Your Face Off.
The construction site was once home to dry cleaners, oil terminals, warehouses and factories, which spewed suspected carcinogens such as heavy metals and PCBs into the soil. Another part of the agreement is that Lightstone will work with the EPA on a sewage and stormwater plan so future flooding will not release contaminants.
Lightstone agreed to the cleanup in exchange for the EPA promising not to sue the company in the future for any additional cleanup work — or impact from the development on the canal (or vice versa), the EPA press release said. So if the development, perhaps combined with another flood, somehow spreads around more toxic waste, Lightstone won’t be liable.
Do you think that’s fair? Public comment on the agreement will be taken until October 8.
Photo by GYFO
The toxic materials are all through the land and at great depths. They say they can’t remove the all the toxic stuff, so we have been told by the DEC that the next best thing is to try to prevent the toxins from emitting gas and substance into the future apartment buildings. A concert foundation is pretty much all that they use to do this. The question is how long till cracks and other problems emerge.
They did not remove much from the Whole Foods site either, the store floor and foundation walls are suppose to protect the space from the toxic materials in the land there. (At least no one and their kids are sleeping at the Whole Foods property.
The notion that a Brownfield Cleanup is a “cleaning” with removal of all toxic materials from a site is just not true.
The clean up that Lightstone was doing was through the NYC DEC Brownfield program. It isn’t clear, at least not to me, whether the EPA will now be overseeing the Brownfield clean up of if it is in addition to the Brownfield program.
Funny though that when people contacted DEC about the fumes they were told not to worry their pretty little heads and that the contractor would be using a masking agent and that we should be smelling citrus or pine. Maybe there was something to worry about after all.
The press release has a contact at the EPA listed for questions and comments. I plan on contacting them.
My impression is that this prevents the EPA from suing Lightstone in the future and not any other person or agency.