Christos Tsiamis, Environmental Protection Agency Remedial Project Manager for the Gowanus Canal Superfund clean-up, attended Tuesday night's meeting of the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group (CAG) to provide the public with a brief update. Most importantly, he wanted to clarify EPA's position on placement and size of the Combined Sewer Overflow retention tanks that his agency requires New York City to construct under the Record of Decision, which was signed back in September 2013.
Tsiamis was referring to a public meeting held by New York City Department Of Environmental Protection (DEP) on May 14, 2015 on its Combined Sewer Overflow Long Term Control Plan for the Gowanus Canal, which the City is obligated to prepare under an order from New York State.
According to DEP calculations , the smaller sized tanks would be enough to achieve the 58% to 74% CSO reduction mandated by the EPA.
"We took an exception to the suggested sizes of the tanks by New York City. The EPA made comments regarding the reduced sizes to the City. We do not agree and in our comments, we lay out the reasons why we do not agree, why we think the sizes need to be bigger than what New York City presented at that meeting. In other words, we told DEP that this is unacceptable and we are moving towards defining what is acceptable. And we expect a response.
I wanted to be clear that what the City presented to the public was not what will be constructed."
Regarding the DEP's preferred location of the tanks, Tsiamis had this to say:
"New York City has submitted to EPA an evaluation of two locations for each of the two CSO tanks.
We reviewed what New York City gave us and again, we had significant disagreements in the way the evaluations were conducted. Our disagreement was regarding the cost acquisition element and its weighting factor in the evaluation. In other words, it would cost the City much more to acquire land than the cost associated with siting the tank further from the canal.
We put this in writing, sent it to them and we are still waiting for their responses.
He added:They don't make the decision. We make the decision. The City is under a unilateral order: That is a one way street."
Despite the complexity of these projections, reports, and comments, it is clear that the EPA continues to steadfastly work towards our long awaited comprehensive cleanup while our local government drags its feet and undermines the process.
I guess it is too much to ask for DEP to step up its game and be more like the EPA.
On the other hand, as a community, we have the perfect right to demand just that.
And we should.
The correspondence from EPA to DEP was made available by Christos Tsiamis upon request
EPA COMMENTS ON NEW YORK CITY DEP’S “GOWANUS CANAL CSO TANK SITING” MEMO
General Comment:
There are several critical omissions and unrealistic assumptions that were utilized in assigning the weighing factors to the ranking elements listed in Attachment A, which ranks potential sites for the location of the retention tanks in the vicinity of tank location RH-34 as specified in EPA’s Record of Decision.
For example, the “Land Use and Environmental” criterion for “Known contamination/hazardous materials” has been given a weighting factor of 15. The description of the scaling factors does not include the assumption that the site will be remediated by others, namely National Grid, if excavation for the construction of a retention tank takes place and, therefore, would not be the responsibility of New York City (NYC). In addition, tank locations RH-3 and RH-4 have been given different ratings, although both of the sites are known to have significant contamination and RH-4 is also known to have large underground structures that will have to be removed. In addition, as mentioned above, these locations will not be remediated by NYC. Therefore, the ratings for this criterion should be at least the same and they should have a much higher rating than the one assigned because NYC would not be responsible for their remediation. This ranking criterion should be redefined and the scaling factor should be applied properly taking into account the above considerations.
Another criterion that is improperly assessed is the “Land Use and Environmental” criterion for “Property Acquisition.” This criterion is given a weighting factor of only 10%, which is much less than the 30% weighting factor assigned to the “proximity to existing infrastructure” criterion and two other criteria. NYC’s ability to build on property that it already owns, so that it does not have to acquire property that currently is at a premium in the Gowanus area, should have a much higher weighting factor than the one assigned. In our estimate, the weighing factor for this criterion should be at least 20%, if not 30%.
A weighting of 30% would be in line with the NYCDEP Commissioner’s statement at the 2014 Wyckoff Gardens public meeting that cost would be very important in considering the tank locations. It would also take into account the rapidly increasing costs for land acquisition in the area and the loss of tax revenue in perpetuity for at least two parcels that comprise tank location RH-3, the sum of which would be presumably much higher than the additional construction and operational costs that might be associated with tank location RH-4. NYC should also assume that any costs associated with the temporary relocation of the pool and services and their eventual restoration in tank location RH-4 would be at least shared with other parties.
For similar reasons, unless the costs associated with the “Proximity to Existing Infrastructure” criterion (i.e., the approximate costs of additional conveyance pipes) are comparable with the “Property Acquisition” costs, which is unlikely, as acquisition costs are in the tens of millions of dollars, the weighting factor assigned to the “Proximity to Existing Infrastructure” criterion should be reduced.
Please revise the rankings taking into account the above considerations.
EPA COMMENTS ON NYC’S “GOWANUS CANAL BASELINE CSO VOLUME MODELING AND CSO TANK SIZING”
General Comment: