NYC Planning And DEP To Jointly Attend Gowanus Community Advisory Group Meeting Tonight

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Raw sewage and toxic discharges floating on the serface of the Gowanus Canal, past 363 Bond Street and 365 Bond Street apartment buildings along the Gowanus Canal on March 19, 2019.

Tonight's Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group's general meeting should be an interesting one, and since it is open to the public, I encourage local residents to attend.

On the agenda tonight are the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) and NYC's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The two agencies have been invited by the CAG to "provide information on how the tunnel proposal and land use changes in the neighborhood will impact the Superfund process and remedy."

Here is why having both agencies in one room is important.
Everyone is hopefully aware by now of the upcoming upzoning of the Gowanus neighborhood. The rezoning will allow more residential developments along the Gowanus Canal, which the EPA declared a Superfund in 2010.
The proposal calls for buildings that may reach 22 to 30 stories along the heavily polluted waterway

The rezoning is slated to move through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) by the end of 2019.  Since ULURP takes about 9 months to 12 months to complete, developers could potentially begin building their residential towers by the end of next year.

Everyone may also remember that EPA, as part of its Superfund clean-up, has mandated that NYC DEP must finally cease  the practice of dumping raw sewage into the Gowanus Canal during heavy rain events.  The Federal Government has ordered New York City to build two Combined Sewer Overflow tanks to remedy the situation. The larger of the two tanks, which will have an 8 million gallon capacity, is planned for the head of the Canal.

Instead of swiftly moving ahead with fulfilling its obligation in light of the City's rezoning efforts, DEP has managed to delay a completion date for the tank, by first insisting on building it on land that needed to be taken by eminent domain instead of placing it under a City-owned park,  and then to switch course entirely, by proposing a tunnel under the canal, instead of the tank.

So now, the community is looking at a scenario in which thousands of new residents may be living next to an open sewer by 2020, while DEP is still talking about a CSO tunnel/tank completion date of 2030.

Tonight's CAG meeting will therefore give the community an opportunity to ask these conflicting timelines. I hope you will take time to attend.

Full CAG Meeting

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

6:30pm

Mary Star of the Sea Senior Apartments, 41 1st Street, Brooklyn