Council candidate braves Coney Island Creek
BY ROSE ADAMS
He swam into troubled waters!
Coney Island Council hopeful
Steven Patzer led a team
of scuba divers into Coney Island
Creek on Sept. 26 to document
the contamination in the
fetid canal — and said that the
creek was more lively than he
expected.
“We saw several schools
of fi sh, and I saw a summer
fl ounder camoufl aged at the
bottom that swam quickly
away,” said the 23-year-old
candidate. “There was random
litter, mainly gloves and
beer cans. We didn’t pick them
up out of respect for environmentalists
that requested we
leave the area as we found it
for further study by government
offi cials.”
The young politico, who
fi lmed the dive on a GoPro
camera and collected lab samples
from four different parts
of the creek, hopes the evidence
will help Congressman
Hakeem Jeffries secure a Superfund
cleanup for the notoriously
toxic waterway, he said.
Local environmentalists
balked when the District 47
Council candidate fi rst announced
6 COURIER LIFE, OCT. 2-8, 2020
his diving plans last
fall. The stream bed contains
dangerous levels of toxins
from decades of factory dumping
and fecal matter from
more recent pollution, making
it a risky endeavor, one environmentalist
emphasized.
“Most of the creek bottom is
what we call black mayonnaise
— very fi ne, easily dispersed
toxic material,” Ida Sanoff told
Brooklyn Paper in November
2019. “The Interstate Environmental
Commission came
down a few years ago, and basically
found pure sewage coming
out of that outfall.”
One of the last regular divers
of the creek was the late
expert diver Gene Ritter, according
to Coney Island historian
Charles Denson. Ritter
was an experienced, hard hat
diver who also dove in the waters
around the Verrazzano
Bridge, where he found thousands
of live artillery shells,
he said in 2016.
Patzer, 23, said his years of
scuba diving in New York City
has prepared him for the mission.
His father, a scuba diving
instructor, taught him to dive
when he was 15, he said.
Patzer is organizing the
expedition with the nonprofi t
scuba organization, the Super-
Dive Foundation, and with an
environmental lab that is donating
a body of tests, Patzer’s
spokeswoman, Reyna Gobel,
explained. All the divers are
experienced, and everyone
will wear scuba suits and gear
that will cover every part of
their bodies, Gobel added. One
attendee, a fi refi ghter, will
stay on the boat to keep track
of the divers as they swim.
Though divers would have
to collect lab samples regularly
in order to get trustworthy results,
Patzer said that the onetime
dive will at least raise
the public’s awareness and
hopefully “inspire an in-depth
study by the government with
regular sample collection.”
“Someone has to dive into
the issue in order to bring
more awareness to the public
that uses the area for recreation
and the government that
can create legislation and regulations,”
he said.
The dive is one of several
dozen community events
Patzer has hosted since jumping
into the Council race in
October of 2019. The young
upstart moved from his home
near Mill Basin to Gravesend
shortly before announcing his
candidacy for District 47 —
which encompasses Coney Island,
Sea Gate, and Gravesend
— and has since held a fl urry
of job fairs, food giveaways,
and toy drives.
Patzer said he would make
a cleanup of Coney Island
Creek a priority if elected.
“If elected next year to City
Council, this will be one of the
issues I champion,” he said.
City Council candidate Steven Patzer prepares for his scuba dive clean
up in the Coney Island Creek. Steven Patzer