Environmental
March 14, 2008
Nabe Groups Get State Grant to Study Gowanus Brownfields
In one of his last acts as Governor, Eliot Spitzer sent a little love to Brooklyn in the form of a $250,000 grant for a team of local groups to study and identify brownfields along the Gowanus Canal and in abutting properties. The money is going to Friends of Community Board 6, Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus, and the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation for all three to work together to complete a nomination study for five brownfield sites along the Gowanus Canal. The funding was doled out as part of a $7.25 million package meant to spur economic revitalization in blighted areas across New York State, and it will allow the organizations to hire consultants. “Once this acreage is transformed into clean, usable land, it will be a tremendous asset to our community," said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz in a statement yesterday. "I am very enthusiastic about this important initial step towards achieving our goal.”
Brownfield Study Funding Notice [ny.gov]
Photo by wallyg.
March 10, 2008
Future Brooklyn May Be All Washed Up, Says Scientist
A Columbia scientist has produced a NYC version of "An Inconvenient Truth," Gotham Gazette reports, showing how climate change could wreak havoc on New York City over the next 80 years. The report, put together by Klaus Jacob, a special research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, illustrates how new developments on the Brooklyn waterfront—especially in Williamsburg and Greenpoint—could be flooded by strong storms:
Areas of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront slated for development that will bring tens of thousands of new residents stand a major risk of being flooded by a hurricane, according to the city's own maps. Sewers in Greenpoint already cannot deal with the rainwater from severe storms, such as those of last July and August...Much of the new development "will occur along the East River waterfront, which is subject to flooding from storm surges. New construction will result in significant changes to the floodplain that may reduce its capacity for flood retention or alter stormwater flow characteristics, said Brooklyn Community Board One's Rezoning Task Force in comments on the draft of an Environmental Impact Statements on rezoning the area to accommodate more development.
Scary stuff. The city is starting to try to face the disastrous problems that climate change may cause by creating a multi-agency Climate Change Task Force aimed at protecting infrastructure and looking to upgrade sewer systems. Jacob, meanwhile, says the city should reconsider allowing any new development on low-lying, flood prone areas. "That," he says, is the "price to be paid for pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
City by the Sea—or Underneath It? [Gotham Gazette]
Klaus H. Jacob illustration from Gotham Gazette.