Even though there's a stall in the Superfund debate, the EPA is moving forward with their work surrounding the Gowanus Canal. The Daily News now reports that they're pointing fingers at four more alleged polluters, all of whom could eventually have to help pay for the cleanup of the Canal. And they are (drumroll please): the U.S. Navy, Con Edison, chemical maker Chemtura, and... the city of New York!
Mayor Bloomberg will prove he's not scared of no stinkin' canal when he visits Gowanus later today to announce the “start” of his $150-million effort to improve water quality there. Currently he's up against the fed's push to turn the Gowanus Canal into a Superfund site; something he believes will be too expensive, take too long and ruin the future re$idential area with a toxic stigma.
As previously mentioned, Mayor Bloomberg is now facing two NYC waterways becoming potential Superfund sites; the Gowanus Canal and more recently Newtown Creek. While supporters of the Superfund status say that Bloomberg is making a political decision where he should be making a scientific one, the mayor recently tried to explain his motive$, saying: "Better we can find developers that can put the money in and pay for the cleanup right now because they will get a benefit of being able to develop the land around there."
Time to test your own waters to see if you're brave enough to take a boat ride in the Gowanus Canal (home to the gonohorrea bacteria and other little treats).
While Mayoral Candidate Monty Burns would never want to clean up the Gowanus Canal (what's a little gonorrhea bacteria?), Mayor Bloomberg wants it spic n' span for developers and investors. And he doesn't want help from no stinkin' EPA either. The director of the Center for Urban Innovation now agrees that Superfunding the site would be setback; in his editorial for the Post he says that while someone may benefit (Mother Nature?) the neighborhoods around the canal will not.
As the battle for the Gowanus Canal continues, and Superfund supporters bring their campaign from doorsteps to YouTube, the NY Times looks at the canal as one man's artistic muse (and it's not the first time).
Alright Gowanus Canal, where were we? The NY Times reports on the latest developments surrounding the clean-up debate, which is split between those who want it to be labeled a Superfund site and those who are afraid of that label's stigma (real estate developers). City officials are sided with the latter group, and have proposed an alternative cleanup plan that would be overseen by the EPA, would take less time, and wouldn't have such a scary word attached to it.
Last we heard in the great Gowanus Canal Clean-up debate, developers in the area were concerned with the Superfund stigma, and would choose the city cleanup efforts over the EPA's even though their consultants found levels of hydrogen sulfide in the water that they said would create a "significant odor impact."
Word came in over the police wires starting at around 11 p.m. last night that a car dove into the Gowanus Canal near the corner of Bond and Degraw Streets. Twitter was lighting up late last night with Park Slope residents reporting that helicopters were flying overhead. At least one person (the driver—who apparently was intoxicated) was pulled from the water by police divers. There were unconfirmed reports that the driver claimed that there were two other people in the car, but this doesn't appear to be supported by any of the wires that were coming through until just before 2 a.m., when the incident was deemed under control.
While city and state battle it out over who gets to clean up the Gowanus Canal, one residential developer says they're "confident the city's work" will be good enough. The Toll Brothers plan to build 460 condos along the waterway, a plan that would go down the drain if it were granted Superfund status. The NY Times explains the stigma, saying "city officials and many residents fear the Superfund label, reserved for the worst contamination in the country and evoking health emergencies." In other words, it would be difficult to fund a project with this scarlet letter attached. However, the developer's consultants found levels of hydrogen sulfide in the water that they said would create a "significant odor impact," the Daily News reports. So chances those duped into signing leases would rather have the stigma than the overwhelming stench floating into their brand dream home and sinking in to their brand new IKEA furnishings.
Brooklyn artist Anthony Clune says from his Gowanus studio he "can smell the overflow sewage that cascades into the canal after heavy rains, inhale the concrete dust billowing from mixing facilities, and meditate on the prismatic oil-slick rainbow floating out to sea." So he gave what he calls his Gowanus Canal Tonky Octopus some text in hopes of hurrying the cleanup process, which is currently being debated about as city and state debate the pros and cons of a Superfund status. Clune says, "The Gowanus Canal area is an unhealthy place for New Yorkers to live and work and I hope it gets cleaned up soon. It seems that adding the area to EPA’s Superfund list is the most expeditious way to do so." However, the Bloomberg administration has said it would take two decades for the EPA to finish their cleanup, and would stall the city's cleanup (and development).
City and State were at odds last night at a public forum held in Carroll Gardens regarding the cleanup of the Gowanus Canal. It's being reported that the Bloomberg Administration is "opposing a proposal by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to add Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal to the agency’s list of Superfund sites, arguing that the designation could jeopardize planned development for the area and the city’s own cleanup efforts." Daniel Walsh, director of the Mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation, noted that "Of the 1,500 federal Superfund sites to date, no river cleanup has been successfully completed." Because the Superfund solution would require finding responsible parties for past contamination, the city fears that the effort would take up to 20 years, "putting at risk more than $400 million of private investment already committed to the area for housing and other development," as well as the city's own cleanup efforts. The E.P.A. officials will make a final decision following a 60-day public comment scheduled to end June 6th.
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.
As part of a $300-million cleanup, for the next two years the city will shut down the flushing tunnel that pumps water from the Buttermilk Channel through a sewage-filled sluice into the Gowanus canal. The tunnel has to be deactivated so the underwater propeller, located at the head of the canal, can be replaced by three smaller pumps. Now there's concern the next couple years will be very noxious for Gowanus residents, as untreated waste that floods the canal during heavy storms lingers undiluted. The Brooklyn Paper, evoking that Reagen-era Massengill disposable douche commercial, worries "the dirty duct" won't have "that just flushed feeling." So in the meantime, locals may want to stick to mouth-breathing and focus on 2013, when the DEP promises a Gowanus utopia of kayaking, condos, and 34 percent less raw effluence poured into canal per year!
In a surprise turn of events, the Gowanus Canal may be rising above that whole gonohorrea p.r. nightmare – the new word on the street is that its water could be a source of antibiotics!
The Gowanus Canal, ripe with gonohorrea, served as a very unlikely muse for artist David Eustace. He worked on his Gowanus-drenched art project for two years, so technically he started before the canal's STD was diagnosed (but really, who didn't think it a possibility at that point). So, in the market for some art? These pieces were, in fact, dipped in the canal -- and will be again!
The exhibition revolves around four large works hung in the canal at three-month intervals. Each canvas was primed beforehand with symbols, notations, & references used to account for and keep track of time, such as lunar phases, tide tables & constellation movement. Raw iron filings were used in each work, to help develop the central image.Continue reading "Gowanus Canal-Dunked Art"
The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally cleaned up sometime after 2020, Sponge Park will help keep it clean, or at least clean-ish.
Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over the site from KeySpan Energy, would need at least two years to decontaminate the area, called Public Place.
Documenting the city in the snow apparently has its limits. Gowanus Lounge noticed this photograph of the Gowanus Canal, taken yesterday, by photoblogger Joe Holmes. Holmes wrote on his Flickr page it was "taken seconds before I was told that photography is prohibited on the 9th Street bridge because of 9-11 concerns." Oh, man, that should be a problem for the Toll Bros. marketing department. And what if there's another whale or seal spotted?
Last decade's decrepit property along a foully polluted industrial canal is just next decade's prime waterfront lots, ready for development by one the nation's premiere luxury homebuilders. The Gowanus Lounge uncovered a "scoping" document filed with the Department of City Housing by the Toll Brothers construction company. The early renderings portray a spread of mixed-use development between 2nd and Carroll Sts. and bounded by Bond St. and the Gowanus Canal itself.
To be a young harbor seal taking some time from swimming to sun! A young seal was seen hanging out at the 79th Street Boast Basin yesterday morning the Parks Department.
As of 8 this morning the starting points for this year's Idiotarod had already been changed twice. As with every year, the effort to dodge police and the scramble to find the most updated starting line is still underway, but the carts should be off soon...and we'll keep you updated. In the meantime, check out Team Danger Zone's ride!
Riders hope that low grades for the G line will eventually lead to improvements, while plans are in place to make the G a more usable line. Despite being the two largest boroughs in New York City, there is only one train line dedicated to getting people from Brooklyn (2.5 million people) to Queens (2.3 million people). All other passages must make their way from one borough, through Manhattan (1.6 million people), and then on...
Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck in a hit and run at Knickerbocker and Gates Aves. in Brooklyn, a wall collapse at Cromwell Ave. in the Bronx, and an escaped prisoner at 107th Ave. and 131st St. in Queens. Firefighters had to rescue a Queens cemetery worker who was buried up to his waist after a cave-in occurred in a 20-foot-deep pit where he was working. The cave-in broke the man's leg...
Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a partial collapse on West 123rd St. in Manhattan, an unusual trauma at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, and a shooting at Bergen St. and Buffalo Ave. in Brooklyn. The 7 train line was shut down for about two hours this afternoon after power to a number of signals failed. Service was back up by 4 p.m. AMNewYork looks at Rudy Giuliani's tendency to take phone calls...
Green Brooklyn (via Brownstoner) has a not-surprising-as-it-should-be post on, well, the Gowanus Canal having a touch of the gonohorrea. According to a Scienceline article, "a biologist at the New York City College of Technology, has her students analyze water samples and observe the oily substance that coats the water’s surface each afternoon. 'One group of students found gonohorrea in a water drop,' said Haque. She’s particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the canal’s bottom, and thinks that the substance is a colonizing life form that adheres to the contaminated sediments."
TIP: Tomorrow morning enjoy some coffee and conversation with Likemind.
A no parking sign? A fire hydrant? Mere street dressing when it comes to drivers with a DOT-issued Department of City Planning placard. Streetsblog observes that a yellow Porsche convertible parked on Seventh Avenue belongs to City Planning Commissioner Dolly Williams. Hello, Dolly indeed.
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