Gowanus Superfund Coming to a Head
UPDATE 9:46 am: Pardon Me For Asking is reporting that the EPA has just announced that is has put the Gowanus Canal on the Superfund list. We can’t find a press release or mention on the EPA site though. UPDATE 10:41 a.m.: The Times has an article up now, complete with this statement: After conducting…
UPDATE 9:46 am: Pardon Me For Asking is reporting that the EPA has just announced that is has put the Gowanus Canal on the Superfund list. We can’t find a press release or mention on the EPA site though.
UPDATE 10:41 a.m.: The Times has an article up now, complete with this statement: After conducting our own evaluations and consulting extensively with the many people who have expressed interest in the future of the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding area, we have determined that a Superfund designation is the best path to a cleanup of this heavily contaminated and long neglected urban waterway, Judith Enck, the E.P.A. regional administrator, said in a statement.”
With a community meeting scheduled for Thursday (P.S. 58 at 7 p.m.), Crain’s takes a close look at the “To Superfund or Not to Superfund” question that is currently dividing various constituencies along and around the Gowanus Canal. If the site is placed on the Superfund list, it almost certainly will be the death knell of the mega real estate projects slated for the area. Given the way Superfund sites work, it could be a decade or more from now before clean up starts, said David Von Spreckelsen, vice president at Toll Brothers, told Crain’s. We just don’t have that time horizon. We will most likely walk away from the properties. Not only that, it could affect the ability of homeowners within a half-mile of the site to get a mortgage. The developers and other stakeholders in the area favor a plan put forth by the city for a faster clean-up to the tune of $165 million. One such position is taken by Buddy Scotto, longtime neighborhood resident and activist. Here’s what he wrote to the pro-Superfunders in a letter we got our hands on:
I take a back seat to no one with regard to my commitment to our environment and if I believed that you had a better way, I would willingly accept the fact that I might never see the affordable housing and other economic development initiatives along the canal that I long ago envisioned. You, however, come to us not with an open hand bearing gifts but with a hammer growling threats. I willingly reach out my hand to receive the $175 million dollars offered by our City, and I would be more than pleased to accept federal funds to move the remediation of the canal forward, but instead you only offer us the prospect of years of delay through litigation.
Where do you stand on the issue now?
Gowanus Canal Faces Crucial Cleanup Decision [Crain’s]
The Other Dead Zone Around the Gowanus [Brooklyn Paper]
Photo by sahocevar
oops i posted this in wrong thread…
i think living on the gowanus makes people more resilient. someone asked for the data showing higher cancer rates around it, and honestly i dont think there are any. people have been living near the gowanus for like ever. there’s tons of old ladies living in that area who are cancer-free.
what is it they actually want to do with it anyway? just clean up the site and leave as is, or drain it completely? pave it over? people always mention paris by the canal and that’s just barfy. i think the gowanus area is funky in it’s own right and should be left as is. people are always talking about preserving the character of a neighborhood, and this is a good example of which i can agree it should be left as is. the whole superfund thing reeks of exploitation and scandal (those arent the right words… ah, corruption is the right word to use)
*rob*
I am not so in favor…because from what I understand the superfund has to do with cleaning canal bottom but does not address the sewage overflow problem which I think is more important. The overflow will still continue because sewer infrastructure will not change.
I think it’s rather dangerous to let short-term interests (Toll brothers and other large landowners and developers) dictate the remediation of a long-term risk. They are bound to go for the cheap & nasty way. It’s just human nature to have a biased understanding of the facts to suit ourselves. Ideally, the remediation should be in the hands of people whose interest and duty lie with public health. I trust politicians and developers to apply pressure on the EPA to keep things moving.
Most every place I eat at and shop at on Atlantic Ave in BoCoCa will be affected.
Chicken — certainly the map seems to indicate that 95% of Boerum Hill, 95% of Carroll Gardens, all of Gowanus, and 75% or more of Park Slope below 6th Avenue would be affeceted.
One point is that the Brooklyn Paper’s article links to a HUD letter that seems to apply only to FHA mortgages for condominiums. Does anyone actually know whether the same rules apply to mortgages on single, 2-family, or multi-family properties?
It’s a moot point. According to the NY Times link that pickles posted, it was designated a Superfund site yesterday.
I will be long gone from brooklyn by the time this is “shovel ready.” I hope all of you arguing for Supefund designation know what you are in for and I pity any of you who live near there.
If someone can present some real data on mortgage availability with in xxx fet of a Superfund project I’d be interested in hearing about it. I think people are in for a BIG surprise here.
If developers making money also meant bringing more housing to Gowanus and continuing to improve the neighborhood, I think most of us who actually live here would be in favor of it as well. The last thing I want to see is businesses being scared away.
That said, I don’t actually think that will happen – from what I understand the claim about mortgages doesn’t hold much water – the FHA would already have had to consider the pollution in the canal (along with a ton of other factors in the area) before granting a loan, and the Superfund designation doesn’t really change that at all. So in the end, I’m (sort of tentatively) in favor of the Superfund, because I think it will result in a more thorough cleanup in the long term.
Though it now seems like a mute point, any cleanup still would have had to go through state DEC procedures, which are quite extensive. And the Superfund program is still mostly dependent on past owners footing the bill, not the EPA, so while more Superfund is providing a more cohesive cleanup plan, its not necessarily providing any more funding, and without the financial incentive to clean up the property for future development, this is apt to take well beyond 10 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/nyregion/03gowanus.html?hp