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Willets Point cleanup riles workers
City’s environmental decontamination process is hurting local businesses, owners claim
BY MAX PARROTT
At last week’s meeting about the
progress of the Willets Point Development
between the city and the Flushing
community board, a group of auto workers
showed up to make sure they weren’t
left behind in the aftermath.
The meeting was designed to be a
progress report centered on environmental
concerns. The Economic Development
Corporation (EDC), the group
overseeing the mega-project, presented
its preliminary studies on the level of
pollution in the area of the industrial
zone that the city bought, which is
known to have a long history of toxic
dumping.
But workers who remain in Willets
Point have begun to suffer as a side effect
of this cleanup work. In coordination
with these studies, the EDC demapped
portions of the southern part
of the neighborhood and erected gates
that block off all major roads to the area
including Willets Point Boulevard, 36th,
37th and 38th avenues.
After the EDC presented at the meeting,
three different Willets Point auto
workers raised concerns that the gates
are choking off their business and putting
them in peril by blocking off ambulances
in the case of an emergency.
“The key problem is that all the
displaced shops are now clogging the
streets. All the poor shops that are now
at the bottom of Willets Point Boulevard,
are starving,” said Sam Sambucci
a community board member and auto
shop owner on Willets Point Boulevard.
Sam Sambucci says that auto workers in Willets Point have struggled after the EDC
erected gates as part of the Willets Point Development. Max Parrott/QNS
During the EDC presentation on
their progress under the Brownfield
Cleanup program, the state’s regulatory
environmental purification framework,
engineering consultant Gerald
Nicholls, said that the initial results
were promising. They found what they
expected to find, namely petroleum
contamination in soil and groundwater,
which he said is relatively easy to
clean up.
But decontamination will be timeconsuming.
Nicholls estimated it would
be another two years before the agency
could break ground on the construction
of the first batch of affordable housing–
and that’s just covers about a third of
the land that the city owns.
After EDC finished the presentation,
which made clear that it planned
to keep the gates up for years, three
workers testified about their effects.
Arturo Oyala, an auto worker who lost
his shop over the last few years and was
forced to work from a mobile shop, said
that he’s struggling to get by.
A lawyer representing of the Sunrise
Cooperative, a group of mechanics
and auto-body shops in Willets Point
who negotiated for subsidies in 2014 after
the city took over their properties, also
spoke on the hardships that the group
had recently endured as a result of the
gates.
“We understand that the area is going
to get developed. We’ve been talking
about it for 15 years–before I was there.
Either or develop it or figure it out. But
while we’re here you need to take care of
the people,” said Sambucci.
Eleni Bourinaris, a representative for
the EDC, responded responded to the complaints
that the roads were de-mapped
and blocked off in order to complete the
remediation process. The agency would
have to coordinate with the Department
of Transportation in order to turn them
back into functioning streets.
Community Board 7 Vice Chairman
Chuck Apelian weighed in to say that
something needs to be done to help the
workers.
“It’s not a technicality whether it’s a
road or it’s not a road, I think we need to
have some kind of relief access sic on
the 30 foot-wide strip right at that key ‘V’
intersection. I think that’s a smart idea.
So we’ll talk about that,” said Apelian. He
then insisted on adjourning the meeting
so that he and the EDC representatives
could have this conversation outside of
the context of the public meeting.
Asked about its plan to respond to
the complaints of the auto workers in
the wake of the meeting, an EDC spokesperson
said that “we take the concerns
raised very seriously,” but neglected to
propose or commit to any plan of action.
Vol. 28 No. 39 48 total pages
October 5 & 6
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