February 7–13, 2020 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 3
WATCH ME
OWN THE PRESSURE
Canal cleanup takes shape
Long-awaited federal effort to offi cially begin in Sept.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The Environmental Protection
Agency is giving the
city and other polluters six
months to official kick off the
long-awaited cleanup of the
Gowanus Canal.
The federal agency issued
the order on Tuesday to begin
the first of three phases of work
— which officials peg at lasting
two-and-a-half years and
costing roughly $125 million
— that will comprise the massive
environmental project.
The order affects six parties
that the agency has held
responsible for polluting the
fetid waterway — National
Grid, Con Edison, the Hess
Corporation, Honeywell International,
the Brooklyn Improvement
Company and the
City of New York — which
are required to begin dredging
and capping the upper section
of the Gowanus from its
head at Butler Street to S.
Third Street.
The cleanup also calls for
the the restoration of a defunct
offshoot of the canal, called
the First Street Turning Basin,
which will be dredged,
decontaminated, and revitalized
as a wetlands area.
The EPA and New York
State’s departments of Environmental
Conservation and
Health will oversee the work,
which will start after they finish
installing the necessary
bulkheads along the banks.
The order comes nearly
a decade after the EPA designated
the 1.8 mile canal a
Superfund Site in March of
2010, despite opposition from
the city and development interests
at the time.
The cleanse will entail
dredging the section of the
canal bed and excavating the
basin of the heavily-contaminated
sediment known as the
“black mayonnaise” — where
more than a dozen toxic materials
have gathered over a century
of heavy industrial and
sewage waste discharge into
the waterway.
The agency will task the
parties with sealing the cleared
areas with a multilayer cap on
top and mix some of the native
sediment beneath it with cement
to prevent further contamination.
Inspectors have found
Cyclist killed in W’burg ers were killed by motorists
THE BROOKLYN QUEENS
CONNECTOR (BQX) is a
City investment to provide
better points of connection
for communities with limited
transit options.
These public workshops will
provide an opportunity to learn
about and discuss the BQX
planning work that’s been done
to-date, as well as the process
moving forward.
Photo by Stefano Giovannini
the sediment to contain high
amounts of toxic chemicals and
heavy metals, such as mercury,
lead, and copper, along with
traces of dog poop and even
gonorrhea!
Meanwhile, the EPA will
move forward with a plan to
install two massive retention
tanks to capture future stormwater
runoff and sewage, after
the feds tossed a city proposal
to build an underground
tunnel to do the job last September.
Trucks will haul the muck
out of the First Street Turning
Basin, while barges will
ship out the black mayonnaise,
necessitating draw
bridges around the canal to
rise more frequently, causing
road delays. The agency will
manage traffic in partnership
with the city’s Department of
Cleaning the
Gowanus
Transportation, a regional EPA
rep told a local watchdog group
Tuesday.
“There will be some fairly
sizable impacts on bridge
openings,” Brian Carr told
the Gowanus Canal Advisory
Group.
Workers will also periodically
shut off the ancient flushing
tunnel that pushes water
from the channel into the New
York Harbor, Carr said.
One CAG member said the
city should use more barges
instead of trucks to clear the
First Street turning basin.
“From my point of view a
barge is infinitely more desirable
Attend one of the workshops
below from 6:30 – 8:30 pm:
February 6
Downtown Brooklyn
February 13
Red Hook, Brooklyn
March 3
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
For more information, and to register, visit:
BrooklynQueensConnector.nyc/events
For questions, or to request translation services at these events,
please email: info@brooklynqueensconnector.nyc
than a bunch of trucks,”
said Louis Kleinman, who represents
the non-profit Waterfront
Alliance on the CAG.
Carr said that the agency
hasn’t made a final decision
to use trucks, but noted that a
barge wouldn’t be able to move
in and out of the basin, which
will be sealed off to prevent
muck from discharging into
the main body of the canal.
“There are upsides and
downsides to both barges
and trucks — I don’t think
we’ve made an absolute final
decision,” he said.
The feds plan to approve a
contract for the work with the
parties by the end of February,
according to Carr.
The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered
the Gowanus cleanup to start in September.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A truck driver mowed down
and killed a Bushwick cyclist
while making a U-turn in Williamsburg
on Jan. 30, marking
the first cyclist death of
2020.
The driver of the flatbed
truck was heading north along
Vandervoort Avenue near
Rewe Street around 2:40 pm,
and waited for oncoming car
traffic to clear before trying
to make U-turn — but then
struck 41-year-old Pedro Lopez,
who was traveling in the
right southbound lane, according
to police.
Following the collision,
the motorist then jumped the
curb and smashed into a row
of unoccupied parked cars,
cops said.
Paramedics rushed Lopez
to Woodhull Hospital with severe
head and body injuries,
where doctors pronounced
him dead.
The 54-year-old driver remained
on the scene, and police
gave him a summons but
did not arrest him.
Lopez’s death marks the
first cyclist to die on the city’s
streets this year, on the heels
of a bloody year for bikers in
2019 — where 29 pedal push-
citywide, 18 of which were in
Brooklyn.
Those numbers compare to
a just 10 cyclist fatalities across
the five boroughs, and two in
Brooklyn, during 2018.
In an effort to stop the
carnage, the Department of
Transportation announced on
Wednesday 10 miles of protected
bike lanes slated for
construction in the borough
this year as part of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s Green Wave plan to
install 80 miles of the greenpainted
lanes by 2021.
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