Comment Of The Day: The Big Question Is...

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Margaret has left a new comment on your post "Last Night, City Talked Gowanus Alternative Clean-Up Plan, But Didn't Seem To Convince Many":


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?


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