We Won't Let Gowanus Rezoning Compromise Canal Clean-Up, EPA Says

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — Even with a plea at the start of the meeting to stay on topic, officials and Gowanus residents found it hard to keep the city's controversial plan to rezone the neighborhood out of a discussion about the clean-up of the Gowanus Canal on Wednesday.

The elephant in the room — a Department of Planning proposal that could bring 20,000 new residents to the neighborhood — has worried residents and advocates that an ongoing federal clean-up of the toxic waterway could be all for nought if new development just recontaminates the waters. Just last week, activists called for the city to wait until the Environmental Protection Agency's project is done before taking on the rezoning plan.

But during Wednesday's meeting, a Town Hall update on the clean-up, EPA officials assured residents they wouldn't let the rezoning interfere with cleaning the toxic water.

"We will not stand still and allow development to negatively impact what we are trying to do here," EPA Region 2's Regional Administrator Pete Lopez said. "The council has a responsibility to ensure new development does not diminish remediation."

The EPA began its work cleaning out the 1.8-mile canal, which it has designated as a hazardous Superfund site, about two years ago with a pilot project that scooped 17,000 cubic yards of toxic muck from the Fourth Street Basin.

Over the next several years, the agency will continue to dredge the sludge known as "black mayonnaise" from the rest of the waterway and "cap" the toxic sediment it can't take out with layers of concrete and uncontaminated soil.

New 8 million-gallon and 4 million-gallon tanks will then be added to either end of the canal to do a better job catching and extracting sewage that has long seeped into the water during rainy days.

The worry, though, is that new buildings as tall as 17 stories along the waterway will bring enough new people, and sewage, that the project will not be enough to control waste from recontaminating the canal.

EPA officials said they will be reviewing the rezoning plan, first unveiled in January, as it moves through the approval process. They also plan to look over a new proposal from the city to use a tunnel, instead of the two tanks, to catch and remove the sewage.

Either way, they said, the federal laws that allow them to clean up a Superfund site are "powerful" enough that they can ensure city plans will not get in the way of the clean-up's success.

"Any development in the area has to be consistent with the remedy, not compromise the remedy," EPA Deputy Regional Administrator Watler Mugdan said. "It would be crazy to spend that amount of money to then recontaminate the canal."

The millions of dollars going toward the clean up are "virtually all" being provided by the National Grid, the company that bought former companies that first polluted the water with coal tar centuries ago, Mugdan said.

National Grid will also build a "cut-off wall" along the top portion of the canal to protect the water from those former manufacturing plants. That construction will start next month, along with EPA construction replacing other walls throughout the canal.

Work on the tanks, or tunnel, to keep the sewage will start shortly after the final design is decided. The tank design is scheduled to be completed in September.

And, the largest undertaking in the project, the dredging of the toxic muck in the rest of the waterway, will likely start in 2020 or 2021 at the latest, Mugdan said.