Public Meeting on the Gowanus Canal Cleanup Tuesday

There will be a public meeting at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, January 24 at the Carroll School, 330 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, to discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Draft Feasibility Study for the Gowanus Canal cleanup.

You can preview a copy of the study at the EPA’s document repository at the Carroll Gardens Library at 396 Clinton Street, or view it online here. 

The Gowanus, which empties into New York Harbor, is bounded by Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook. Built in the mid-nineteenth century, it was a major transportation route between Brooklyn and Manhattan, before Brooklyn became a borough of New York City.

As was the norm in the 19th century, the gas and chemical plants, mills and tanneries that once lined the Gowanus used the waterway as a open sewer. Industrial effluent combined with storm water runoff and outflows from the city's sewer system to make the Gowanus one of the worst toxic waste dumps in the country.

The industrial contaminants in the canal include PCBs, coal tar wastes, heavy metals and volatile organics, which threaten both public health and the environment.

In March, 2010, the EPA added the Gowanus to its Superfund National Priorities List (NPL), which authorized the EPA to further investigate contamination in the Gowanus and develop a comprehensive plan to clean it up.

But the city has complicated the Superfund process by targeting the Gowanus as a development site, creating a parallel cleanup process that is going forward while the EPA plan is being developed.  

According to the Daily News, this spring, National Grid will begin an independent coal tar dredging project at the canal. Residents living along the Gowanus are challenging the company's plan to monitor coal tar vapors during its cleanup as inadequate.

National Grid, partnered with the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, has hired New Jersey firm Minnich and Scotto Inc. to monitor air quality around the perimeter of the project, using a proprietary technology called "TO-16". Robert Scotto, co-owner of Minnich and Scotto, is the cousin of Buddy Scotto, founder of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp. 

The National Grid cleanup is part of the city's plan to build a 770-apartment "affordable" housing project, called "Public Place", on the banks of the Gowanus.

The EPA, earlier this month, released a preliminary study of cleanup options for the canal, building on its earlier investigation confirming that the site is extensively contaminated. The study looks at the technologies that could be used to clean up the canal, as a step in developing a comprehensive cleanup plan. 

The EPA encourages the public to comment on the study and discuss cleanup options at the January 24 meeting, calling it a critical step toward a full-scale cleanup that will protect human health, mitigate the environmental impacts, and revitalize the canal.

For more information about the meeting, click here.