Please Help Get Bloomberg Politics Out Of The Gowanus Canal Clean-Up!

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If you read my post yesterday, about Michael Bloomberg's efforts to lobby against the EPA Superfund designation for the Gowanus Canal , you know how peeved I am at the mayor. Though most Carroll Gardens/Gowanus Waterfront residents testified in favor of the designation during the public comment period, Bloomberg is going against the community's wishes and calling EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to tout an alternative plan. I urge everyone in the community to write an email or to call Administrator Jackson in Washington, urging her to keep Bloomberg politics out of the decision making process. I also think it is important to contact our State Senators and Representatives to tell them the same. Additionally, I think residents need to reach out to President Obama. Please find the contact information below. I just sent off my own email to Administrator Jackson and CC'ed it to the White House. Here is what I wrote:

Dear Administrator Jackson,

In April 2009, for the very first time in decades, there was hopeful news about the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal. Residents of the Carroll Gardens/ Gowanus Waterfront community were informed that the Environmental Protection Agency was considering placing the canal on its list of the nation's priority cleanup sites.

There was true excitement at the possibility of the EPA stepping in to oversee the comprehensive environmental clean-up that so many had hoped for, but had long given up on. Generation after generation had heard false promises from our elected officials. If the city had wanted us to have a clean Gowanus Canal, we realized, it would have addressed the pollution long ago. Though we dreamed of clean water, we learned how to cope with the smell and the toxins.

Until that day in April, when Walter Mugden US EPA Director of the Emergency and Remedial Response Division, confidently told this community that a clean-up was possible and that his agency was proposing the waterway as a Superfund site. I am writing to you today, to urge you to listen to the overwhelming number of community members who are supportive of the Superfund listing and of your agency.

However, it has come to my attention, that Mayor Bloomberg has been calling you personally to lobby against the nomination. I have also learned, that Caswell Holloway, Chief of Staff for Deputy Mayor Schyler, has visited your office personally to push the City's alternative plan.

As an active community member and a neighborhood blogger, I can assure you that Mayor Bloomberg speaks for a very few and mostly for himself. The majority of residents are firmly behind your agency and Superfund listing. I was told that your agency only takes science into account, when making its final decision. Mayor Bloomberg has introduced politics into the process. Please do not let him compromise your agency's principles. Respectfully,

Katia Kelly

CC: President Obama

***Please send your own email or phone to the following:

*Lisa Jackson, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency

202-564-4700 email: jackson.lisap@epa.gov

*President Obama, The White House

email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

*NY Senator Charles Schumer: 914-734-1532

*NY Senator Kristin Gillibrand: 212-688-6262

*Representative Nydia Velazquez: 718-599-3658

*Representative Yvette Clarke: 718-287-1142



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