BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Whatever fl oats your boat, it
won’t be the Gowanus Canal!
Uncle Sam will ban canoeists
and all other recreational
boaters from the upper half of
the Gowanus Canal come Nov.
1, as the federal Environmental
Protection Agency offi cially
starts its Superfund Cleanup of
Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory
next month, the agency’s project
manager for the cleanse
said Tuesday.
“No boating is going to be
allowed during cleanup operations
that begin in November
— no boating, no canoeing,”
said EPA’s Christos Tsiamis at
a meeting with the Gowanus
Canal Community Advisory
Group on Oct. 27.
Barge-mounted excavators
will start dredging the upper
third of the canal beginning
the week of Nov. 16, and Tsiamis
COURIER L 24 IFE, NOV. 6-12, 2020
said it will be too risky for
smaller watercraft to share the
noxious channel with heavy
machinery.
“Canoeing and boating will
be dangerous and interfering
with our work,” the federal environmental
engineer said.
The industrial waterway
will be off-limits from its head
at Butler Street all the way to
the Ninth Street Bridge — 0.8
miles of its 1.8-mile length —
and the closure will likely last
for years as the feds launch the
fi rst of three cleanup phases,
covering the stretch from the
head down to the Third Street
Bridge, which is set to wrap by
July 2023.
The sweeping ban shocked
a captain with the beloved local
canoe club, the Gowanus
Dredgers, who said offi cials
went completely overboard.
“Wholesale closure for the
Canoe voyages like this will be banned from most of the Gowanus come Nov. 1. Kris Connor
next two and a half years to vessels
below Third Street Bridge
down to Ninth … is overbroad
sic, even draconian,” wrote
Brad Vogel in the online hearing’s
chat panel.
The boat club, founded in
1999, embarks on regular voyages
in the polluted waters
and organizes programming
like canal-side movies and concerts.
Vogel said the founders
chose the name “Dredgers” because
they wanted the cleanup
of the canal, more than a decade
before Washington declared
it a Superfund site.
But, the Gowanusaur said
the feds blindsided him with
the sudden restrictions, having
previously said they would
only recommend against their
maritime programming, not
an outright ban.
He pleaded with offi cials to
continue letting them access
the fi lthy waters, fl oating the
idea of limiting boating hours
to times when contractors
aren’t working on the canal.
“We certainly don’t want to
get in the way of dredging, but
we do think there’s a way that
—especially on, say, weekends
or evenings when the work is
not actually being conducted
— we’d like to work with you to
fi nd a way to tailor that to allow
for more access for a longer period
of time,” said Vogel.
Offi cials indicated they
would be open to permitting
some boating and events that
coincide with work stoppages,
but a lawyer for EPA noted that
workers will be moving the
gunk from the canal bed down
the channel and transferring
it to larger boats to be shipped
off, while also driving new
sheet piles along the water’s
edge south of the Third Street
Bridge, making most of the inlet
perilous for other vessels.
“We literally can’t let someone
go on one of barges without
hazardous OSHA training and
so to allow people near those
barges is an equally important
regulatory concern,” said
Brian Carr. “We will work with
you, we will make this work.”
Sail away!
Feds to ban recreational boating
on Gowanus Canal to make way
for Superfund Cleanup
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