March 6–12, 2020 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 3
Ready to start scrubbing
EPA unveils schedule for Gowanus cleanup’s fi rst phase
Photo by Jason Speakman
Bklyn Historical Society
to merge with library
Brooklyn
Heights
Gowanus
Prospect Park
Prospect Heights
Crown Heights
East Flatbush
Marine
Park
Park Slope
Red Hook
Sunset Park
Bay Ridge
Dyker Heights
Bensonhurst
Sheepshead Bay
Gravesend
Bergen
Beach
Mill
Basin
Flatlands
Flatbush
Borough Park
Williamsburg
Midwood
Our Perspective
Housing Works Employees’
Voices Will Finally be Heard
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW
Twitter: @sappelbaum
harassment and health and safety issues.
Workers have raised concerns about pay and
benefits, including that their health insurance
doesn’t provide adequate coverage, such as for
workers transitioning genders.
These workplace concerns are central not
just to employee welfare, but to client care as
well, with these issues leading to high turnover
rates for employees.
Expert doctors close
to home. Brooklyn, we’ve
got you covered.
Our doctors including Weill Cornell Medicine experts
provide a wide range of services including primary care,
OB/GYN, cardiology, orthopedics, and more at over 25
locations in Brooklyn.
Find a doctor: 844-425-5697
or nyp.org/medgroupbrooklyn
Workers believe that union representation
is the best way for them to address their
concerns. Housing Works’ refusal to recognize
the union – or at least to sign a neutrality
agreement – has hindered that process.
And now, Housing Works is escalating their
campaign to deny their workers’ rights by
attempting to turn workers against the union with
a classic misinformation campaign, even after
claiming countless times that they would respect
their workers’ wishes and remain “neutral.”
Housing Works leadership does not know what
remaining neutral truly means. By continuing their
misguided fight to deny workers their rights,
Housing Works continues to operate in a manner
contrary to their progressive values.
Housing Works employees strive every day
to improve the lives of people living with
HIV/AIDS, and their work makes a real
difference. It’s not too much for them to expect
that their employer lives up to the same
progressive principles toward
their own workers. It’s past
time that Housing Works
ends its union-busting
fight against its own
workers, and allows the
process to continue
unimpeded.
Housing Works employees have spent
over a year trying to get their boss to
accept that they want to join the
RWDSU. Workers at the otherwise progressive
Housing Works – founded in 1990 by several
members of ACT UP in order to provide housing,
healthcare, job training, legal assistance, and
other supportive services for people living with
HIV/AIDS – assumed that their employer would
respect their rights and their wishes to join a
union. But they were wrong.
After failing to secure a neutrality
agreement that would promise zero interference
from management during an organizing drive,
Housing Works employees demanded
recognition from their employer. Housing
Works refused to recognize the union, despite a
majority of the workers choosing to support the
unionization efforts. Now, fed up with the delays
and obfuscation, Housing Works employees
have filed for an NLRB election so their wishes
to join a union can finally be realized. After
numerous meetings with Housing Works and
delays by management, they had no other
choice.
It didn’t have to be this difficult. By insisting
on an NLRB election, Housing Works has
ensured the process will take more time and
resources and delay better treatment for its
workers and better care for its clients.
The 650 Housing Works employees at
housing units, thrift stores, healthcare, and
other locations throughout New York City have
been clear from the outset that they need union
representation to address a number of
important issues and to provide their clients
with the best possible care. Workers at Housing
Works have raised serious concerns to
management, describing unmanageable
caseloads, lack of training, discrimination and
www.rwdsu.org
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The Environmental Protection
Agency released detailed
plans for the first phase
of the Gowanus Canal cleanup
on Feb. 25.
The new plans describe
the federal agency’s nearly
three-year timeline, ranging
from September 2020 until
July 2023, to dredge pollutants
from the upper third of
Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory
from its head at Butler Street
to the Third Street Bridge, and
then cap place a cap intended
to prevent polluting chemicals
from seeping up through
the canal’s bed, according to
EPA project manager Christos
Tsiamis.
Uncle Sam has identified
six major polluters most responsible
for transforming the
Gowanus Canal into a toxic
nightmare — National Grid,
Con Edison, the Hess Corporation,
Honeywell International,
the Brooklyn Improvement
Company and the City of
New York — which will be responsible
for carrying out the
$125 million cleanup.
The cleanup will kick off
with the installation of bulkheads
at the edge of the canal
to prevent erosion, to be fol-
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
This is one for the history
books!
The Brooklyn Public Library
and the Brooklyn Historical
Society announced
on Thursday that the two
iconic borough institutions
will merge together, bringing
an unmatched catalog of
Kings County lore under one
unified umbrella.
“By combining with the
Brooklyn Public Library,
the Brooklyn Historical Society
immediately extends our
reach to every neighborhood
in the borough,” said Brooklyn
Historical Society President
Deborah Schwartz.
Under the scheme, the
lender will serve as the parent
institution of the Historical
Society — assuming care of all
of its archives and programming,
as well as it landmarked
Pierrepont Street building,
The archives of the two institutions
will be combined
into one, with library-goers
having access to the society’s
collection of rare Brooklyn-related
texts and artifacts.
The book repository’s massive
collection of over 200,000
photos, books, maps, and
newspapers of historic Kings
County will now be housed in
the Society’s archives, which
the library says will free up
much-needed space for public
programing.
The Brooklyn Historical
Society, which was founded
lowed by the deployment of a
fleet of platform barges topped
with hydraulic excavators able
to scoop up sediment, most of
which is expected to be cleared
by January 2021.
Around the same time,
workers will erect a separation
wall at the First Street
Turning Basin, a defunct and
filled in offshoot of the canal
the agency wants to revitalize
as a wetland area.
From November 2020 until
April 2021, workers will stabilize
the Carroll Street Bridge
ahead of dredging around it by
sinking so-called pipe piles at
the edges of the bridge bases
on either side.
To accommodate the
works, the 131-year-old retractile
drawbridge will open for
three to four months and be
closed to traffic during that
time period.
In April 2021, they will
start stabilizing the Union
Street Bridge with piles until
June without closing it to
traffic, followed by installing
the bulkhead supports north of
that span until August.
From April 2021 until May
2022, they will stabilize the
sediment by injecting cement
— a process engineers call In-
Situ Stabilization or ISS —
followed by a dredge of the
remaining softer sediments
on top of it from February to
May of 2022.
For the remainder of the
time, until July 2023, they will
add cap layers with a spongelike
filter to catch any remaining
chemicals bubbling up
from the ground and a final
hard concrete mat on top to
keep all the levels in place.
The cleanup is divided into
three phases known as Remediation
Target Areas.
Once the first one is complete,
the cleanup will continue
along the middle section
from Third Street to Hamilton
Avenue, followed by the final
third stretching to roughly
22nd Street.
The chemicals coming up
from the canal bed are just
one of two main polluters, the
other being stormwater runoff
and sewage that flushes
into the canal.
Platform barges with hydraulic excavators will float
up and down the Gowanus from its head to the
Third Street Bridge starting September.
Cleaning the
Gowanus
in 1863 and has been housed
in the same Pierrepont Street
building since 1881, recently
opened its first satellite location
in a Dumbo waterfront
warehouse — which Johnson
indicated will remain there
until 2021.
The news comes after it was
revealed that the library faces a
whopping $247 Million backlog
in overdue repairs.
The two institutions are reportedly
seeking city funding
to finalize the merger, but do
not need city approval.
This isn’t the first time the
two institutions have partnered,
such as when the society
donated the former mascot
of the Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, and held a contest to
come up with a new name for
the bird.
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/www.rwdsu.org
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/medgroupbrooklyn
/www.rwdsu.org