The Gowanus Canal cleanup to start by September: Feds
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The Environmental Protection
Agency is giving the
city and other polluters six
months to offi cial kick off the
long-awaited cleanup of the
Gowanus Canal.
The federal agency issued
the order on Tuesday to begin
the fi rst of three phases of
work — which offi cials 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
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Conservation and
Health will oversee the work,
which will start after they fi nish
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
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
traffi c in partnership with the
city’s Department of 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 fl ushing
tunnel that pushes water
from the channel into the New
York Harbor, Carr said.
EPA ordered the cleanup of the upper third of the Gowanus Canal to S.
Third Street, along with rehabilitating the fi lled in First Street Turning
Basin. Google/Illustration by John Napoli
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 infi nitely more desirable
than a bunch of trucks,”
said Louis Kleinman, who
represents the non-profi t Waterfront
Alliance on the CAG.
Carr said that the agency
hasn’t made a fi nal 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 fi nal decision,”
he said.
The feds plan to approve a
contract for the work with the
parties by the end of February
and allow for them to get
prepare for the work in the
months leading up to September,
according to Carr.
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