Everybody do your share!
Feds, state to ensure safety at planned Gowanus Green affordable housing
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Uncle Sam and the Empire
State are starting with a clean
slate.
Federal and state environmental
offi cials will join forces
to promise that a planned affordable
housing complex
along the putrid Gowanus Canal
will be safe — which comes
after an Environmental Protection
Agency guru raised
alarming concerns over the
site’s toxic soil.
“As part of EPA’s assessment
of the Public Place remediation
effort, EPA and New
York State Department of Environmental
Conservation
have agreed to work cooperatively
with all parties involved
to ensure that the remediation
will be protective of public
health and the environment,
and that the basis for the remedy
is clearly communicated
to the public,” reads a March
22 letter by both agencies.
The joint statement came
after a behind-the-scenes rift
between the two agencies,
6 COURIER LIFE, APRIL 2-8, 2021
because EPA’s Superfund
Cleanup project manager for
the Gowanus Canal Christos
Tsiamis publicly voiced
concerns in December about
the housing project slated for
Smith and Fifth streets —
dubbed Gowanus Green — due
to the land’s century’s-worth
of pollution from once housing
manufactured gas plant.
The proposal includes
950 below-market-rate housing
units, a waterfront park,
and space for a future public
school — and, when completed,
the project will be the
largest cluster of affordable
apartments promised as part
of the Gowanus neighborhood
rezoning.
The development of 100 percent
below-market-rate housing
units will be jointly developed
by the Fifth Avenue
Committee, the Bluestone Organization,
the Hudson Companies,
and the Jonathan Rose
Companies.
National Grid is currently
working on a state-supervised
Brownfi eld Cleanup of Public
Place, and Tsiamis gave
his now-infamous analysis of
that work and the site’s future
safety late last year upon request
by the Gowanus Canal
Community Advisory Group,
a local watchdog group of the
waterway’s federal scrub.
The veteran engineer got
into hot water with the state’s
DEC, whose local cleanup director
Michael Ryan fi red off a
missive to Tsiamis’s boss saying
he had spread “misinformation”
and made “fl ippant,
unsubstantiated statements,”
unnecessarily drumming up
fears.
Tsiamis returned to the
CAG after a three-month absence
from their monthly
meetings on March 23, saying
he believed a cleanup of Public
Place could be done, citing
similar efforts in Manhattan,
but he added that his assessment
of the site’s challenges
remained unchanged.
“It is in the interest of all
the parties involved — EPA,
the state, the city, and the developers
— to ensure that all
that needs to be done at that
site will be done so that the developed
site will be safe for the
public,” Tsiamis said at the
Tuesday virtual gathering. “I
have not seen any new data or
documents since I have last
spoken to you and I have nothing
to add to that assessment
that I provided at the CAG previously.”
The engineer compared
Public Place to the state-supervised
cleanups with Con Edison
of two properties slated for
residential development atop
the former West 18th Street
Gas Works site in Manhattan,
where gas was manufactured
from 1833-1900 and gas holders
remained operational until
1914.
The company extracted
coal tar or excavated the polluted
soil at the Big Apple site
and in one case stabilized the
ground with cement, similarly
to EPA’s current method
of cleaning up the Gowanus
Canal bed.
“These sites have been developed
and in a manner that
it is protective of the future development,
of the users of the
future development, so it’s not
anything new,” Tsiamis said.
“These are fi nished sites and
they seemed to have done the
right thing.”
A rendering of the proposal. HPD
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