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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 14 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 30 • July 26–August 1, 2019
FLOODS HIT GOWANUS
Torrential rain following heat wave turns streets to rivers, drowns cars
Cyclist killed
in Greenpoint By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A Monday night downpour
cut through the searing heat that
plagued Brooklyn since Friday,
only to incite flash floods in low
lying neighborhoods across the
borough, drowning cars and inundating
New piers to open in W’burg
Parks Department to open two East River walkways near ferry stop
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A bicyclist died after colliding
with a box truck in
Greenpoint on Tuesday.
The 58-year-old cyclist
was in the southbound lane of
McGuinness Boulevard near
Norman Avenue at 3:51 p.m.,
when he “made contact” with
a box truck heading in the
same direction, according to a
police spokesman, who could
not provide more specific information
regarding an investigation
conducted by the Police
Department’s Collision
Investigation Squad.
Paramedics rushed the man
to Bellevue Hospital, where
he was pronounced dead, according
to authorities.
No arrests have been made
in the case, and police are
withholding the victim’s
name until his family can be
notified, the Police Department
spokesman said.
The Brooklyn biker is
the 17th cyclist to die on
city streets this year. His
death came just hours after
a tow truck in Staten Island
fatally struck a cyclist
at around noon Tuesday, and
a few hours before a driver
collided with a bicyclist in
Queens shortly after midnight
Wednesday, leaving
him in critical condition,
according to police.
He is also the 12th Brooklyn
cyclist to die in a motorvehicle
collision this year.
He follows Bushwick resident
Devra Freelander, who
was struck and killed by a cement
truck in Williamsburg
on July 1.
In the wake of Tuesday’s
fatalities, bike advocates
pounced on Mayor Bill de
Blasio for failing to make
busy streets such as McGuinness
Boulevard — which does
not benefit from a bike lane
— safer for cyclists.
“These crashes are tragic
examples of what happens in
a city that purports to welcome
cyclists but fails to
dedicate protected space
for bikes on the vast majority
of its streets,” said Thomas
DeVito, director of advocacy
for Transportation Alternatives.
DeVito went on to demand
the swift installation of a 100-
mile protected bike lane network
in the next two years
and to immediately redesign
every street where a serious
crash occurs.
homes in murky, kneehigh
water.
One Gowanus driver said she
was amazed at the floodwater’s
extraordinary speed, which managed
to submerge her Prius in mere
minutes.
“I went to take a shower and
when I got out it was flooded,” said
Eunice Lee, who parked on Fourth
Avenue near Carroll Street on the
border of Park Slope Monday. “It
happened within 10 minutes.”
Lee’s partner, Jason Rivera, tried
save the vehicle upon noticing the
flood, but the water was already
too high by the time he reached the
car, and the pair watched helplessly
from a nearby fire escape as the
deluge washed away construction
barriers, carried away trash bags
strewn along the busy thoroughfare,
and engulfed their hybrid.
Naturally, the couple’s son found
the whole spectacle hilarious, according
to Lee.
“Our son thought it was funny
and wanted to go swimming,” Lee
said. “When you can’t do anything,
you just kind of take it in and you
just wait.”
Another motorist discovered the
floodwater had swept his Beamer
from a parking spot on nearby Carroll
Street and sent the luxury German
import slamming into a nearby
street lamp.
“I came by this morning... and the
car was up against the light post,”
said Thomas Flaherty, who was in
town from North Carolina visiting
his daughter in Park Slope.
The Southerner bailed out his
car with a bucket and a cup, but his
engine coughed up smoke when he
went to start it, and his insurance
company later told him the vehicle
was most likely totaled.
Car owners shared their misery
with nearby businesses, and
soon-to-open Fourth Avenue watering
hole Gowanus Gardens took
some water damage, according to
the husband of the bar’s owner, who
found the establishment’s basement
transformed into an underground
pool.
“The basement was really bad
— like three feet of water,” said
Danny Peña.
Peña’s efforts to drain the basement
were frustrated by passing
cars, which continued slosh water
into the cellar, and he was forced to
wait for the downpour to subside
and for city workers to start draining
the floodwater before he could
make any real progress.
“The city people came, they
cleaned up the sewers, and that’s
when everything started going
down,” he said.
The sky dumped nearly three
inches of rain per hour in the borough
during last night’s storm, which
rolled down Carroll Street to the lowlying
Fourth Avenue, overwhelming
the thoroughfare’s drainage system,
according to Department of Environmental
Protection spokesman
Edward Timbers.
“Fourth Avenue sits at the bottom
of Park Slope – so stormwater
flows downhill from Prospect Park
West all the way to Fourth Avenue,”
Timbers said in an emailed
statement.
Fortunately, the flood consisted
entirely of stormwater, according
to Timbers, who insisted that water
from the fetid Gowanus Canal
did not spill onto the streets.
“This was all stormwater. Contrary
to some reports, there was
no tidal flooding or breach of the
Gowanus Canal,” he said.
The agency toured the area with
Borough President Eric Adams
Tuesday afternoon and showed him
how they plan to upgrade the area’s
drainage early next year, according
to Timbers.
“DEP toured the area with Borough
President Adams this afternoon
and pointed out how a drainage
upgrade slated to begin early
next year will improve conditions
along Fourth Avenue during rain
storms,” he said.
The brownstone Brooklyn
neighborhoods weren’t the only
parts of the borough submerged
by the torrential rains, as residents
of Borough Park, Williamsburg,
and Crown Heights found themselves
wading through water and
bailing out basements that evening,
according to Council Speaker
Corey Johnson .
(Above) Gowanusaur Enuice Lee watched
her car get submerged in the torrential rainfall
from the safety of her upper-floor apartment
fire escape. (Left) Flooding at Carroll
Street and Fourth Avenue.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Courtesy of Adrienne Zhao
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
After several years of construction,
the city is poised to open two
piers on the Williamsburg waterfront
for public enjoyment, the
Parks Department confirmed.
The landings — located beside
the North Williamsburg ferry
stop — are known as “North 5th
Street Pier and Park” and are lined
with benches and walkways, with
the northernmost pier containing
AstroTurf, plants, and sweeping
views of the East River and Manhattan
skyline.
The narrowness of the piers will
likely prevent Parks from offering
concessions for food or events
vendors to operate there, and a
spokeswoman for the agency did
not elaborate on the department’s
plans for the park space.
The piers were originally built
by Manhattan-based firm Douglaston
Development as part of a
2006 Greenpoint-Williamsburg
rezoning plan that resulted in the
construction of a 40-story rental
tower at 2 N. Sixth Place.
In exchange for the rezoning,
Douglaston agreed to transform
waterfront property near the development
into public parkland,
which included the N. Williamsburg
ferry stop that opened in
2013, along with the two additional
piers and a surrounding
park the firm says was only recently
completed.
But locals claim that the area
has appeared finished and fit for
public use for more than a year,
and wonder why it has remained
walled off by traffic barriers and
fencing.
“It’s strange,” said Minh Le, a
Williamsburg resident. “The area
looks usable.”
Residents also complain that the
landings remain unkempt and that
shabby fencing guarding entrances
to the piers has not prevented people
from accessing the enclosed
areas — or leaving a mess.
“People use them, but don’t
clean up. Nobody cleans it up,”
Le said.
The Parks Department spokeswoman
said that Douglaston will
transfer ownership of the piers to
the city by the end of July, paving
the way for public access sometime
later, though a specific date
could not be provided.
The Parks Department plans to open North 5th Street Pier
and Park for public use, after having been closed for two
years, according to locals.
Minh Le
Steve Solomonson
Brooklyn goes dark
As though an unbearable heat wave wasn’t bad enough, large swathes of Brooklyn lost
power last Sunday. Some residents went without power until Wednesday.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority plans to cut service
to three Brooklyn bus routes starting
this fall.
The scheme to take busses off
the road and lengthen waits along
a whopping 23 bus lines citywide
will allow the MTA to shave $7
million off its operating costs,
according to internal documents
first reported on by the New York
Daily News .
Following the service cuts,
commuters relying on the B38 —
which runs through Bushwick, Bedford
Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, Fort
Greene, and Downtown — will
wait up to three minutes longer
for busses on weekdays during
the morning and evening rush, as
well as during most times Saturdays,
and from noon to evening
on Sundays.
The nearby B54, which runs a
similar route along Myrtle Ave-
nue, will have less buses weekdays
during all times except peak
hours in the evening, while the B15,
which goes from Bedford-Stuyvesant
to John F. Kennedy Airport,
will suffer longer waits at midday
on weekdays.
The Authority chose to strip
busses off the Bed-Stuy lines due
to relatively low ridership figures,
according to agency documents,
which claimed that the affect on riders
would be minimal during morning
and evening rush hours.
And transit honchos will monitor
those routes to ensure riders
aren’t completely screwed, according
to the memo.
“We will closely monitor the service
to ensure that the new schedules
provide sufficient service to
meet customer demand,” the MTA
document reads.
But one straphanger said the
route is already poorly managed,
and complained of busses that arrive
in groups of two or three, only
to be followed by long waits afterwards.
“They have enough at rush hour
but they all pull out at the same time
— it makes no sense,” said Dyckman
Welcome, who boarded his
homeward bound bus from America’s
Downtown Monday.
To mitigate the affect of a smaller
service fleet, the Transit Authority
is adding longer, articulated buses
— capable of holding an additional
20 passengers over standard busses
— to the B38 route, according
to agency spokeswoman Amanda
Kwan. The B54 and B15 routes,
however, will not benefit from the
bigger busses, documents show.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will cut service of
the B38 this fall but replace its buses with longer coaches.
17 DEAD IN CITY THIS YEAR
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