The Gowanus Canal
State Department International Visitor Francesco Pascale of Italy
Marlene Donnelly of FROGG with Mr. Pascale
At the EPA's filed office On Bond Street
Marlene Donnelly, interpreter Elisabetta Mazzantini-Clark and Mr. Pascale
Christos Tsiamis, EPA Project Manager For Gowanus
Rebecca Krucoff of The Urban Memory Project
with students Nicol Medina and Carina Escoto
of The Secondary School For Research
A few weeks ago, the State Department contacted the Friends And Residents Of Greater Gowanus, FROGG, to ask if members of the organization would kindly give a tour of the Gowanus Canal area to Francesco Pascale of Italy, who had been invited through the International Visitor Leadership Program. Mr Pascale had requested that the Gowanus Canal be on his list of things he wanted to see on this visit to New York City.
Mr. Pascale is a member of Legambiente Campania ONLUS, an Italian environmental non-government organization. He holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Science.
Marlene Donnelly and Bette Stoltz of FROGG met Mr. Pascale and his interpreter Elisabetta Mazzantini-Clark at Proteus Gowanus to take a walking tour of the canal area on Thursday morning.
Joining the tour was Matt Gross, a freelance writer, Rebecca Krucoff of the Urban Memory Project and students Nicol Medina and Corinna Escoto from the Secondary School For Research.
The first stop on the walking tour was the Environmental Protection Agency Region 2's field office on Bond Street, were the group met up with Christos Tsiamis, EPA's Project Manager for the Gowanus Canal.
Mr. Tsiamis explained to Mr. Pascale how the Superfund program works, what the environmental issues are, what data has been collected so far and how the agency is planning to remediate the polluted waterway.
Mr. Tsiamis also took the group to the Toll Brothers' development site on First Street, between the canal and Bond Street, where EPA sub-contractor, McVac Environmental was installing a well into the ground for data collection.
Well drilling on Toll Brothers site at First Street and the canal
I would like to thank Marlene Donnelly and Bette Stoltz for inviting me to join the tour. It was a pleasure meeting Mr. Pasquale and as always, it was truly informative and inspiring to hear Mr.Tsiamis speak about the Gowanus Canal and his work.
Please take the time to view the videos below. They contain a lot of pertinent information regarding the Gowanus.
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3 comments:
Wow, all the way in Italy they are hearing about the Gowanus? All the more reason to take pride in what happens here - to work on behalf of visions that are exemplary, now, and into the future!
Yes visitors from around the world are interested in how we cleanup and reuse this 19th century industrial canal; which even today serves the community as an open sewer.
But in making our post-cleanup vision for this area, we need to recognize that the canal and it's early industrial past may serve as a much greater asset to the community that a bunch of tall modern housing developments.
The Gowanus is already a destination place and is a valuable asset as such. So how do we build on that aspect rather than turning it into a private enclave of residential buildings claiming the street ends? How do we open up the minds of the city planners to a better vision for this place?
well-said anon. I read somewhere that Gowanus is on an endangered neighborhood list for the very reason that here we have something so historic and unique - and the city and developers are still thinking of it as open space to exploit. The joke is they are still using the same old rationale - need for housing, need for affordable housing. New York has lost a lot of character in other neighborhoods that have been overdeveloped. Pray it doesn't happen here.
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