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No, no, dear Reader, I was not at last night's meeting hosted by the City to once again tout their half-baked 'Alternative Plan' to clean the Gowanus Canal. I am still on a beach vacation in South Carolina, but you know that my Brooklyn neighborhood is never far from my mind.
This morning, I received a very thorough account of the meeting from area residents who attended the first of two meetings, one for home-owners, the other for business-owners along the canal. Last night's was for home-owners.
This is the report:
The city meeting was fairly interesting. Cas Holloway, Chief Of Staff to NYC Deputy Mayor Skyler. was the designated hitter for the city once again with Dan Walsh, Chief of the New York City Superfund and Brownfield Program, on deck for an occasional and ineffective pinch hit.
Walter Mugdan of the EPA was there and although he clearly tried to maintain his distance from the microphone, he was the voice of reason, calm and common sense.
There was a flyer distributed by the city which a local resident held up and contemptuously labeled, "spin"--others in the audience quickly and loudly agreed with this. There was a letter written by an unknown fifth generation Gowanus banks-grown person begging not to Superfund and a postcard from the cleangowanusnow.org folks printed up and ready to go for those who do not want Superfund.
There was an appearance and some questions from Josh Skaller, 39th City Council District candidate, and a surprise for me--a fellow named Doug Biviano, who is running for Councilman in the 33rd. He is a civil engineer, articulate and put the city right on the spot (one of Dan Walsh' moments were required here)
The city has no plan. They are trying to say that this can be done through the W.R.D.A. program, even though Walter Mugdan expressed doubts. Dan Wiley, of Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez's office, gave facts and the congresswoman's comments quoted in the June 11th article in the Downtown Star refuted the idea completely. They, the city, claim that they will kick in for some of the initial studies. The only thing they really seem to care about is saving certain parties money and getting the feds (basically, us) to foot a big part of the deep discount for the prps.
Walter Mugdan made it very clear that the timeline for the City's or EPA's plan will be the same. The City has no ability to move any faster than the EPA -- in fact starting with the City could actually cost more time because their plan is more complex. It is a matter of where the money comes from and how successfully all of the Potentially Reponsible Parties can agree to play nicely--all of it a very unlikely scenario.
When the city was asked why they are "expending a great amount of resources" (their words) in order to save a handful of PRP's money at the expense of a great deal of the community's wishes, they really did not have an answer.
They had a slide as part of their presentation that was widely criticized and will probably be excluded from future presentations. It was supposed to show how much better and faster the city plan is in comparison to EPA but it was a bust.
When the City was asked why two meetings, they said it was to accommodate everyone. When it was pointed out that notification was spotty and attendance not that great because of it, they apologized. They actually apologized a lot--and promised that there would be answers to some of tonight's questions tomorrow--like which developers they met with privately.
We asked them to bring the army corps of engineers with them tomorrow but no promises were made there--just an agreement to ask them to come.
Ellen was there from State Senator Daniel Squadron's office, but she said nothing. Tom Gray, of Councilman Bill De Blasio's office sent out a notice that no one from Bill's office would be there due to "scheduling conflicts", but he promised someone would be there tomorrow night and all meetings going forward. Did not see anyone from Joan Millman's office and Deanna Betteti of Yvette Clarke's office is in DC.
John Heyer Sr and Jr were there but I did not see Brad Lander, Bob Zuckerman or Buddy Scotto.
Part two of the city's Spinfest is tonight at PS32
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3 comments:
The majority of the community's feelings were succinctly summed up when one of my favorite community activists blew the city a raspberry.
I have one of the postcards that were circulated last night. I think people should take a Sharpie to the pre-printed statement on the card, add a comment in support of the Superfund and thank Clean Gowanus Now! for providing a stamp.
Another question that Cas Holloway is supposed to answer tonight is how much the city has spent on lobbyists to DC.
The City's plan also creates the potential for protracted litigation without the benefit of collecting treble damages if a PRP is found liable.
The City is also relying on funding under WRDA which receives 50 million a year and is shared between all the states.
As always, the EPA did a phenomenal job of dispelling any misinformation and providing concrete information in a forthright manner with no spin.
The major difference seems to be that if the stars align properly and pigs fly down Court street PRPs will be responsible for 35% of the cost of the clean up whereas with the Superfund PRP's will be responsible for a larger percentage.
I am looking forward to Round 2.
The big question was - why was the City so slipshod about notifying the community about these mtgs.? And then it becomes really odd for them to say that they needed TWO meetings in order to accommodate everyone. Huh? How would they know to come? Well,there could not have been more than 50 people there - and about 12 were from the City-City Planning, HPD, The Mayor's Office of Brownfields.
When asked to summarize the fundamental difference between the EPA and the City's plan, Caz Calloway of the City said that the city would have better management. Yeah, right! They can't even do something simple like coordinating a meeting to disseminate information, and they're going to be better managers than the EPA to clean up the canal? Someone made the point that the flier the city was passing out was not even identified as coming from the City -it didn't have the City Seal. Why is it so hard for anti-Superfunders to identify themselves - make it clear where their message is coming from? (And it had a typo to boot - they misspelled Gowanus of all words!!!)
No one in the audience, except for ONE person, said anything against Superfund. That one person declared that she was "scared of Superfund" and then sat back down.
The City kept saying that the EPA was going to get in the way of work that the City is already doing, planning to do with the Army Corps of Engineers. Well, the facts tell a different story. The City has done nothing but stall work on the canal. And only now because the EPA is coming in is the City suddenly hot to trot. Oh, and the scare tactics - there was the threat that the City is poised to spend 175 million to upgrade the Flushing Tunnel, NOTWITHSTANDING EPA Superfund designation.
In the City's alternative plan, NYC taxpayers (that be us!) will be footing more of the bill instead of the landowners and responsible parties.
How much has the City been spending on their lobbying and consulting to support Toll Bros. and other developers? Because that is what this boils down to. Please, City, instead of fighting this, why not work with the EPA to make this cleanup a positive experience for the canal and the community?!? Please?
Senator Montgomery's office was handing out her fact sheet at the meeting.I got a copy in an email. Good stuff worth sharing.
GOWANUS SUPERFUND LISTING FACT SHEET
SUPERFUND IS NEEDED, NOW!
“Superfund” is the easy name for a program the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses to clean the most polluted areas of our country. The NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation asked the EPA to consider listing the Gowanus Canal after finding the incredibly high degree of pollution in the area.
THE CANAL IS VERY DANGEROUSLY POLLUTED
The level of pollution necessary for EPA Superfund listing is measured in “parts per million.” Heavy metals and certain other pollutants in the Gowanus Canal pollution registers in parts per HUNDRED. That’s 10,000 times more polluted than the lowest emergency listing! In addition, every time it rains raw sewage overflows into the canal. The bacteria count in a recent study is shocking, more than 25 times the unsafe level.
PROPERTY VALUES WILL INCREASE
Land surrounding a clean, safe canal will be far more valuable. A thorough and expeditious cleanup will be the best thing for everyone!
SUPERFUND CLEANUP WILL BE THOROUGH AND WON’T TAKE FOREVER
Progress should be seen quickly once work starts, but the complete cleanup will take time. The cleanup has to be thorough and consistent or the canal will return to the current dangerous state. Federal designation commits the cleanup to professional, uninterrupted effort.
RESPONSIBLE PARTIES PAY, AND WORK STARTS IMMEDIATELY
Superfund cleanups are funded by the people who caused the pollution.
The EPA believes much if not most of the cleanup will be the responsibility of National Grid.
*It won’t cost the community money.
*It won’t cost home owners money.
*It won’t cost new business owner money.
*The EPA has said it won’t cost New York City more money than they are already committed to spending.
The EPA starts work immediately from Federal funds set aside for this purpose.
*Congress budgets $320 million dollars annually for the Superfund
*An additional $600 million dollars has been allocated this year alone
*President Obama is reviving the funding stream that will place an additional billion dollars in the Superfund.
The EPA is ready to go!
THE CITY PLAN
New York City has proposed an alternative plan they believe will accomplish a similar clean canal, but the City is not in the business of cleaning toxic sites. While well meaning, the City plan is completely untested and contains questionable assumptions.
*The City plan depends on polluters voluntarily doing the work themselves, to their own standards; but these polluters haven’t done anything up to now.
*The City plan doesn’t intend to clean the whole canal, and a partial cleanup will not be safe.
*The City plan would need special Congressional approval for the Army Corps of Engineers to work on the entire Canal; they legally can’t go north of the Hamilton Avenue bridge!
*The City plan has no guarantees that the funding will actually happen; it relies on the idea that Congress will give substantial special money for years to come for this one project, which is very unlikely.
*The EPA has been doing this for decades and knows what it is doing. The EPA has said *Superfund listing will incorporate all City programs and not delay any efforts currently in progress. Superfund listing guarantees action in ways the City plan cannot.
JOBS
The cleaning process itself will produce new, Green jobs. And a clean Gowanus Canal and vicinity will be a much better employment area!
HOUSING
Current plans for building housing in the Gowanus area would expose families to a life next to dangerous contamination. For the sake of all, the area must be thoroughly cleaned to Superfund standards so housing for all can be responsibly built.
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