NYC Sierra Club Stands With Voice Of Gowanus In Opposition To Gowanus Rezoning

Today, the New York City Sierra Club joined the Voice of Gowanus to stand  firmly with the community against the 80-block rezoning currently planned by the City of New York.

In a letter to Supreme Court Judge Katherine Levine, the group expressed grave concerns about the environmental challenges facing Gowanus. 

In particular, the club cautions against building housing on Public Place, currently the most polluted site in Gowanus.  It cites the warnings of the Environmental Protection Agency's project manager for the Gowanus Canal Superfund, Christos Tsiamis, who stated clearly that it would be dangerous to build housing on a site that will never fully be remediated.

Sierra Club also mentioned the injustice of  holing Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) meetings virtually, which excludes all those with limited internet service.

Judge Levin is currently presiding over a suit brought by VoG on the legality of holding ULURP meetings virtually, instead of in person, at a place of assembly, as it is written in NYC's Charter.

Sierra Club concludes with a warning to "not create another Love Canal".

I would like to thank Sierra Club for their support of  Gowanus residents. It is reassuring to know that such an illustrious environmental group stands by the community.

Honorable Katherine Levine
Supreme Court Judge

The Sierra Club NYC stands with community opposition to the re-zoning of the Gowanus neighborhood. To make matters worse the re-zoning is being sold to the residents as providing affordable housing, relegating low-income New Yorkers to toxic danger. The dirty secret is that low-income families with limited options will be offered housing and a school on a highly toxic site that cannot be remediated by current federal, state and city efforts to clean up the Gowanus Canal Super Fund site and the upland areas. It is short sighted to try to rezone a mixed manufacturing/residential area for residential use rather than plan adaptive re-use for the existing buildings that can provide much needed jobs once the city re-opens.

It is of upmost importance that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) hearing have the widest possible participation by all that are and will be affected by the re-zoning. The case before the court is to decide if an on- line hearing, as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), will be adequate to ensure wide participation by the existing businesses and the general public It is clear that this will not be the case. Wifi is not available to everyone. The City has promulgated no plan to extend internet connectivity to those who lack it, and no plan to provide alternate options ( eg call-in without internet) to those with device issues. The Gowanus Houses part of NYCHA is a few blocks from the Gowanus Canal and will be affected by the re-zoning. It is well known that public housing developments have spotty if any Wifi access. Similarly, many senior citizens in the surrounding area have difficulty managing high tech on-line services such as Webinars and Zoom; others cannot afford expensive online connections. There is no urgency. The City is slowly re-opening, residents should have the option to testify in a public hearing while others can use an on-line option if they so desire.

The Gowanus area has numerous environmental problems: When it rains, raw sewage overflows into the Canal. Heavy rains result in flooded streets and basements. The remedy – two giant retention tanks to hold the sewage until the rain stops, will not be ready until 2032. It defies logic to propose residential housing before it is known if the remediation works. Mr. Christos Tsiamis, Senior Project Manager of the Superfund remediation projected a potential elevenfold increase in Combined Sewer Overflow (CSOs) events due to the up-zoning.

Public Place, the site where the development will be constructed, is particularly toxic with underground plumes of tar and other hazardous compounds that are volatile when they bubble up to the surface. Mr. Tsiamis noted: “If you put a structure like a school or a building, those compounds that 8, 10 ,15 feet down, they will volatilize. It might be in five years, it might be in 10 years, they will find a path and they will come inside the enclosed structure and they will build up.”

The proposed development amounts to nothing more than the City intentionally putting people at risk, setting young children up for severe health issues in years to come. Let's not create another Love Canal here in Brooklyn.

Thank you for your consideration.

Catherine Skopic, Chair

Sierra Club NYC Group

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Tonight, Tell Council Member Lander That Building Affordable Housing On The Toxic Public Place Site In Carroll Gardens Is Insane ...And Nefarious

Public Place site at Smith and 5th Street

A 1930 view of the former Citizens Gas Work Site on what is now Public Place

TONIGHT, TELL COUNCIL MEMBER LANDER THAT BUILDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON LAND THAT WILL FOREVER BE POISONED IS JUST INSANITY!

By now, most residents in Gowanus and neighboring areas have hopefully heard about the proposal by the NYC Department of City Planning  to up-zone the Gowanus Canal area, which calls for 8,200 new units of housing that will bring approximately 20,000 new residents to the area.

If this seems insane to most, the plan has nevertheless the backing of Councilman Brad Lander, who has supported the rezoning from the start.

Though it appears on the surface that Lander wants to make sure that "plans for growth are grounded fully in the public interest, and will achieve our shared goals", the rezoning of the Gowanus area was always a huge giveaway to developers despite all the talk about affordable housing units that may be gained in the process.

Councilmember Brad Lander, supporter of housing on Public Place

Which brings us to Public Place, the City-owned six acre Brownfield site near the intersection of Smith and 5th Streets adjacent to the Gowanus Canal. It is currently in NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development portfolio.

Brad Lander has been pushing for the development of housing on Public Place from the moment he ran for City Council, if not before.  From 1993 to 2003,  he served as executive director of Park Slope's Fifth Avenue Committee, a not-for-profit community-based organization that develops and manages affordable housing.)

Interestingly enough,  in 2008, Fifth Avenue Committee, together with  Hudson Companies, Jonathan Rose, and the Bluestone Organization was selected to develop the site for affordable housing with retail space, community facilities and open space.

Fifth Avenue Committee's current executive director is Michelle de la Uz, who also currently serves as a Commissioner of NYC Planning Commission. If that is not a conflict of interest, what is?

Gowanus Green: a proposal for about 900 apartments and a school on permanently toxic land

Their proposal was named 'Gowanus Green' and included 774 units of housing, of which 70% would have been permanently affordable. To move forward, the site needed to go through a rezoning from manufacturing to residential, which never moved forward after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the Gowanus Canal a Superfund Site.

Gowanus Green has been revived of late since City Planning has wrapped Public Place into the framework of the agency's Gowanus Neighborhood Planning Study. 

The new plan for Public Place calls for about 900 units of affordable housing in 30 story buildings as well as a new public school. 

Tonight at 6 pm, the NYC Department of City Planning and the “Gowanus Green” development team are going to present the development at a webinar hosted by Community Board 6.

To register, click here.

In 2019, Brad Lander stated:

"The chance to build a sustainable, mixed-income community in Gowanus is one of the most important and unique opportunities of the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning. Gowanus sits in-between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, two wonderful neighborhoods, with great schools, thriving commercial strips, great access to transit -- and almost no affordable housing. Gowanus Green offers us the opportunity to build hundreds of units of truly affordable housing, right at the heart of the neighborhood, to open up the opportunity of our dynamic community to a much wider range of people than can afford to live here now."

Affordable housing, additional parkland, a new public school...it all sounds great, until you consider the history of Public Place, which Brad Lander refuses to mention in his email to the community.

The truth is that to this day, Public Place will remain one of, if not the most polluted site along the Gowanus Canal even after remediation.

From the 1860s to the early 1960s, the Public Place site was the home of the former Citizens Gas Light Company's 12th Ward Gas Work Plant, a Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP) where coal and petroleum products were turned into flammable gas. The gas was used for cooking, lighting, heating and commercial purposes in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, one of the by-products of this gasification process is coal tar, a black viscous liquid, which is harmful to humans and the environment. At Public Place,  coal tar has been found in significant amounts at depths of 150 feet.   

When the Citizens Gas Works plant was decommissioned in the 60s, the site was given to the city 'by condemnation' as public land in 1975. Hence the name "Public Place". Citizens Gas Light Company later sold to Brooklyn Union Gas, which became Keyspan, which is now National Grid.

The responsibility for the clean-up falls on National Grid. The work is currently being done under the supervision of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

Since coal tar and contaminated groundwater have been found to ooze from the site into the Gowanus Canal for decades, the US Environmental Protection Agency, which declared the canal a Superfund site in 2010, has also been involved.

Though National Grid's contractor, Creamer Environmental, has been recently implementing remedial actions on the site. we are a long way from a clean environment.

Brownfield remediation consists mostly of removing the top layer of existing dirt, adding new clean fill, and installing a plastic vapor barrier before capping the contamination on the site with cement.

How well those sites are monitored and how long the barriers maintain their integrity is anyone's guess. As an example, the Lowe's site in Gowanus at 9th Street, which was also built on an MGP site but cleaned under the NYS Brownfield program a decade ago, was found to be in need of additional remediation by the EPA.

By far the biggest concern about housing on Brownfield sites is the intrusion of vapors into the structures.  According to Public Integrity.org: 

"Plastic vapor barriers and other soil containment measures are all that states require in some types of redevelopment.

But sometimes, such efforts fail or the science changes. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation decided to reopen hundreds of Superfund, brownfield, and other sites that had been remediated to investigate potential new threats from vapor intrusion, something that had not been considered at the time of the “cleanups.” The reviews are ongoing, but the agency has already found mitigation will be necessary at more than 70 sites."

If Brad Lander refuses to even acknowledge to his constituents that Public Place will have a plume of coal tar underneath the site in perpetuity, we need tell him that we will hold him ultimately responsible for the health of everyone of the future resident and schoolchild he intends to bring here.

Perhaps he should listen to those who came before him. In 1984, a New York City Partnership withdrew its proposal to build moderate income housing on the site "because of serious environmental problems and exorbitant costs associated with developing the lot."

Read more

Brad Lander's Brownfield Of Dreams Part 1: Our Councilman's Push To Build Housing And A School On The Most Polluted Site in Gowanus Is Folly

Public Place on Smith Street near 5th Street

A 1930 view of the former Citizens Gas Work Site on what is now Public Place

An arial view of the Citizens Gas Work site in 1926

Councilmember Brad Lander, supporter of housing on Public Place

Gowanus Green: a proposal for 1000 apartments and a school on permanently toxic land

By now, most residents in Gowanus and neighboring areas have hopefully heard about the proposal by the NYC Department of City Planning  to up-zone the Gowanus Canal area, which calls for 8,200 new units of housing that will bring approximately 20,000 new residents to the area.

The rezoning will likely go forward early next year as it moves through the Uniform Land Use Process (ULURP) despite the fact that it will still take years for the Canal to be environmentally remediated as part of the EPA Superfund Clean-up, and despite the fact that the City still uses the waterway as an open sewer and that the area's infrastructure is already stretched to its limits under current conditions. The area is also a FEMA Flood Zone A.

The ULURP process, once it starts, should take between six to nine months. If the rezoning goes through, developers who have already purchased the land around the Gowanus can start building 22 to 30 story high rises.

If this seems insane to most, the plan has nevertheless the backing of Councilman Brad Lander, who has supported the rezoning from the start.

Though it appears on the surface that Lander wants to make sure that "plans for growth are grounded fully in the public interest, and will achieve our shared goals", the rezoning of the Gowanus area was always a huge giveaway to developers despite all the talk about affordable housing units that may be gained in the process.

Which brings us to Public Place, the City-owned six acre Brownfield site near the intersection of Smith and 5th Streets adjacent to the Gowanus Canal. It is currently in NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development portfolio.

Brad Lander has been pushing for the development of housing on Public Place from the moment he ran for City Council, if not before.  From 1993 to 2003,  he served as executive director of Park Slope's Fifth Avenue Committee, a not-for-profit community-based organization that develops and manages affordable housing.)

Interestingly enough,  in 2008, Fifth Avenue Committee, together with  Hudson Companies, Jonathan Rose, and the Bluestone Organization was selected to develop the site for affordable housing with retail space, community facilities and open space.

Fifth Avenue Committee's current executive director is Michelle de la Uz, who also currently serves as a Commissioner of NYC Planning Commission. If that is not a conflict of interest, what is?

Their proposal was named 'Gowanus Green' and included 774 units of housing, of which 70% would have been permanently affordable. To move forward, the site needed to go through a rezoning from manufacturing to residential, which never moved forward after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the Gowanus Canal a Superfund Site.

Gowanus Green has been revived of late since City Planning has wrapped Public Place into the framework of the agency's Gowanus Neighborhood Planning Study. 

The new plan for Public Place calls for 1000 units of 100% affordable housing in 30 story buildings as well as a new public school. 

This Monday, December 2, the NYC Department of City Planning and NYC Housing, Preservation, and Development  will be presenting an update on the Public Place / Gowanus Green site to Community Board 6 at PS 32.

Ahead of the meeting, Brad Lander's office released a statement that reads in part:

"The chance to build a sustainable, mixed-income community in Gowanus is one of the most important and unique opportunities of the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning. Gowanus sits in-between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, two wonderful neighborhoods, with great schools, thriving commercial strips, great access to transit -- and almost no affordable housing. Gowanus Green offers us the opportunity to build hundreds of units of truly affordable housing, right at the heart of the neighborhood, to open up the opportunity of our dynamic community to a much wider range of people than can afford to live here now."

Affordable housing, additional parkland, a new public school...it all sounds great, until you consider the history of Public Place, which Brad Lander refuses to mention in his email to the community.

The truth is that to this day, Public Place remains one of, if not the most polluted site along the Gowanus Canal and needs extensive remediation.

From the 1860s to the early 1960s, the Public Place site was the home of the former Citizens Gas Light Company's 12th Ward Gas Work Plant, a Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP) where coal and petroleum products were turned into flammable gas. The gas was used for cooking, lighting, heating and commercial purposes in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, one of the by-products of this gasification process is coal tar, a black viscous liquid, which is harmful to humans and the environment. At Public Place,  coal tar has been found in significant amounts at depths of 150 feet.   

When the Citizens Gas Works plant was decommissioned in the 60s, the site was given to the city 'by condemnation' as public land in 1975. Hence the name "Public Place". Citizens Gas Light Company later sold to Brooklyn Union Gas, which became Keyspan, which is now National Grid.

The responsibility for the clean-up falls on National Grid. The work will be done under the supervision of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

Since coal tar and contaminated groundwater have been found to ooze from the site into the Gowanus Canal for decades, the US Environmental Protection Agency, which declared the canal a Superfund site in 2010, is also involved.

Though National Grid's contractor, Creamer Environmental, has been recently implementing remedial actions on the site. we are a long way from a clean environment.

Brownfield remediation consists mostly of removing the top layer of existing dirt, adding new clean fill, and installing a plastic vapor barrier before capping the contamination on the site with cement.

How well those sites are monitored and how long the barriers maintain their integrity is anyone's guess. As an example, the Lowe's site in Gowanus at 9th Street, which was also built on an MGP site but cleaned under the NYS Brownfield program a decade ago, was found to be in need of additional remediation by the EPA.

By far the biggest concern about housing on Brownfield sites is the intrusion of vapors into the structures.  According to Public Integrity.org: 

"Plastic vapor barriers and other soil containment measures are all that states require in some types of redevelopment.

But sometimes, such efforts fail or the science changes. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation decided to reopen hundreds of Superfund, brownfield, and other sites that had been remediated to investigate potential new threats from vapor intrusion, something that had not been considered at the time of the “cleanups.” The reviews are ongoing, but the agency has already found mitigation will be necessary at more than 70 sites."

If Brad Lander refuses to even acknowledge to his constituents in a press release that Public Place will always have a plume of coal tar underneath the site, we need to tell him that we will hold him ultimately responsible for the health of every current and future resident, and every schoolchild he intends to bring to Public Place.

Perhaps he should listen to those who came before him. In 1984, a New York City Partnership withdrew its proposal to build moderate income housing on the site "because of serious environmental problems and exorbitant costs associated with developing the lot."

Brownfield of Dreams: A Film By Matt Sollars from 2008

PLEASE ATTEND!

Public Place/Gowanus Green Presentation to CB6

Monday, December 2, 6:30 PM

P.S. 32

317 Hoyt Street

Click here for Part Two:
Brad Lander's Brownfield of Dreams Part 2: The Councilman's Shameful Neglect In Mentioning Public Place's Special Designation

Read more

Gowanus Rezoning: These Are The CB6 Members Who Will Vote' Yay' Or 'Nay' On Landersville

3D model of a fully built-out Gowanus after rezoning

by New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) students

Dear Neighbors, 

As the South Brooklyn community is wrapping its collective head around what New York City Department of City Planning's proposed Gowanus up-zoning will mean to an environmentally challenged neighborhood,  Pardon Me For Asking thought it worthwhile to take a look at the members of  Community Board 6, who will cast their vote on either approving or disapproving the plan.

What is proposed in Gowanus is the largest of the recent rezonings on the smallest footprint in the City and will alter this low-rise industrial neighborhood forever by allowing 22-30 story residential buildings along the banks of its iconic canal. It would not be an overstatement to say that this issue is one of the most important many of our board members have ever voted on.

Though the Community Boards of New York City are strictly advisory, some wield more power than others on matters of importance to their community. They are our "local non-partisan interface to the many offices and agencies of City government." In the case of Gowanus, we need to make sure that CB6 members thoroughly understand the environmental issues in Gowanus, are free of conflicts of interest, and truly represent the voice of the community, and will cast a vote free from pressure from the Councilmembers who put them on the board.

In all, there are 50 members of CB6, representing Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, the Columbia Waterfront, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Red Hook.  The Board's  members are appointed by the Brooklyn Borough President, with our Councilmembers Brad Lander, Carlos Menchaca and  Stephen Levin, making recommendations.

As part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), the public review process any New York City rezoning needs to go through,  members of CB6's Landmark/Landuse Committee will first cast their vote and make a recommendation.

The current Members of the Landmarks/ Land Use Committee are:

Landmark Chair - David Briggs

Land Use Chair - Mark Shames

Jerry Armer

Paul Basile

Pauline Blake

Lyn Hill

Glenn Kelly

Ariel Krasnow

Daniel M. Kummer

Robert Levine

Marvin Michel

Tom Miskel

Madeline Murphy

Charles Pigott

Allison Reeves

Debra Scotto

Roy Sloane 

Joanna Oltman Smith

Judith Thompson

Suzanne Turet

The full board will then cast a vote on the matter.

Here is a list of current Community Board 6 members

Numbers behind the names represent appointments by  Councilmen Stephen Levin (33), Carlos Menchaca (38), Brad Lander (39), and Brooklyn Borough President (BP)

Term expiring March 31, 2020 

1. Pauline Blake (BP)

2. David Briggs (BP) 

3. Frances Brown(BP) 

4. Jason Reischel(BP) 

5. Eladia Causil-Rodriguez(BP) 

6. Hasoni Pratts(BP) 

7. Ariel Krasnow (BP) 

8. Robert Levine (BP) 

9. Richard Luftglass (BP) 

10. Elena Santogade (BP) 

11. Judith Thompson (BP) 

12. Kiamesha Smalls (BP) 

13. Howard Graubard (33) 

14. Victoria Alexander (38) 

15.J ulian Morales (38) 

16. Vilma Heramia (39) 

17. Sayar Lonial (39) 

18. Eric McClure (39) 

19. Thomas Miskel (39) 

20. Debra Scotto (39) 

21. Josh Skaller (39) 

22. Dolly Williams(39) 

23. Jean Fritzner (39) 

24. Paul Basile (39) 

25. Kathy Park Price (39) 

Expiring March 31, 2019 

1. Jerry Armer (39) 

2. VACANT (39)

3. Leroy Branch (38) 

4. Karen Broughton (BP) 

5. Joe Ann Brown (39) 

6. Marilyn Carter (33) 

7. Reginald Ferguson (BP)

8. Peter Fleming (39) Chairperson

9. Kara Gurl (BP) 

10. John Heyer II (BP) 

11. Glenn Kelly (BP) 

12. Jasmeet Krause-Vilmar( 39) 

13. Daniel Kummer (39) 

14. Bridget Anne Rein (39)

15. Hildegaard Link (BP) 

16. Charles Pigott (BP) 

17. Rachel Freeman (BP) 

18. Angelica Ramdhari (BP) 

19. Roger Rigolli (39) 

20. Mark Shames (BP) 

21. Vacant (BP)

22. Joanna Smith (39) 

23. Suzanne Turet (39) 

24. Neal Zephyrin (BP) 

There are so many unresolved issues concerning the Gowanus rezoning:

-the area is a FEMA Flood zone A with mandatory evacuation.

-the actual EPA Superfund clean-up of toxic material at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal has yet to start.

-The City still has to build two EPA-mandated Combined Sewer Overflow tanks to capture raw sewage that it currently dumps into the canal.

-the infrastructure in Gowanus is currently insufficient or crumbling.

In addition, despite the participation of local residents in Councilman Brad Lander's Bridging Gowanus visioning process, this re-zoning plan guarantees few of the things that the community really cared about: artists lofts, maker spaces and parks.

How exactly the area will accommodate thousands of new residents when our sewer treatment plants, schools and subways are already near or over capacity remains a question that needs to be answered honestly first.

Please take a look at the list of board members. if you know any of them, please engage them (respectfully) in conversation on the matter. If not, take the time to get to know a few.

Help identify those who may own land in Gowanus, are developers or  those who work for developers in Gowanus and may have a conflict of interest.

This is simply too important of an issue. Let us all enter into this rezoning with knowledge, integrity and honesty.

***For full disclosure, my husband Glenn Kelly is a board member.

Read more

Gowanus Up-Zoning Watch: City Planning To Attend CB6's Land Use Committee For Q & A Tomorrow Evening

Pardon Me For Asking will try hard to keep the community informed on important meetings or hearings as the proposed Gowanus  neighborhood rezoning
I urge everyone to make every effort to attend, since the future of our neighborhood is at stake.

******

The New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) will return to Community Board 6's Land Use Committee tomorrow night, this time to answer questions from committee members regarding the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal. You may remember that the previous CB6 Land Use meeting on March 1 was set aside so that the community got to voice their comments to DCP on this matter.

The Draft Zoning proposal is an upzoning of the area, which calls for 22 story buildings along the canal, and close to 30 stories on Public Place, the City-owned site along Smith Street near 5th Street.

The proposal almost doubles the density of what had been planned for the area in 2008. Despite the participation of local residents in Councilman Brad Lander's Bridging Gowanus visioning process, this re-zoning plan guarantees few of the things that the community really cared about: artists lofts, maker spaces and parks.

How exactly the area will accommodate thousands of new residents when our infrastructure is already at a breaking point remains unclear.
The plan offers no contract with the community that would truly guarantee us new schools, new investments in our sewers, or increased subway service.
It does guarantee years of construction and a radical change to Gowanus and surrounding neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

The Community Board will have a huge role in rezoning Gowanus, since its members will vote on supporting it or not.

The members represent all of us and we should remind them of that fact by attending CB6 meetings where the rezoning is discussed.

So please be there tomorrow.

CB6 Landmarks and Land Use Committee Meeting

6pm

P.S. 133 

610 Baltic Street (Between 4th& 5th Avenue)

Brooklyn NY 11219

Related reading:

Feel Betrayed By Councilman Brad Lander Yet Regarding The Proposed Gowanus Rezoning? We Do!

Same As It Ever Was In Gowanus: It Is Clear That New York City Plans To Allow New Housing First, Deal With Extra Sewage Later. 

Read more

Same As It Ever Was In Gowanus: It Is Clear That New York City Plans To Allow New Housing First, Deal With Extra Sewage Later.

March 27 2019 meeting of the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group

Jonathan Keller, NYC Department of City Planning

Angela Licata, NYC DEP Deputy Commissioner

Proposed Gowanus upzoning  

Raw Sewage and toxic discharges floating past 363 and 365 Bond Street in Gowanus

A plume of sewage floating past 363-365 Bond Street

How can New York City envision  an up-zoning that would bring thousands of new residents to the Gowanus Canal area when it has not yet addressed the fact that it still releases significant amounts of raw sewage into the waterway  and will continue to do so for at least another ten years?

That is the question members of the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group asked  representatives of both New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) and NYC's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) at the group's general meeting last night.

Either Jonathan Keller of NYC DCP or Angela Licata of NYC DEP were unprepared to give specific answers, but it became clear throughout the conversation that the City plans to allow new buildings to go up first, and then deal with the additional sewage afterwards

And that is all backwards.

How did we get here?

The City and developers have been itching to up-zone the Gowanus neighborhood to allow more residential developments. The proposal calls for buildings that may reach 22 to 30 stories along the heavily polluted canal, which the EPA declared a Superfund in 2010.

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 and to protect its Superfund clean-up, once it is completed. The larger of the two tanks, is planned for the head of the Canal, next to the largest CSO outfall.

Instead of swiftly moving ahead with fulfilling its obligation in light of the City's rezoning efforts, DEP has managed to delay the completion date for the head of Canal 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. Recently, the City has switched course entirely by proposing a tunnel under the canal, in place of the tank.

The community is looking at a scenario in which thousands more residents may be living next to an open sewer by 2020, while DEP is pushing the completion date for a CSO tunnel or tank  to 2030 and probably beyond.

Though Angela Licata last night told the Gowanus community that DEP had already invested significantly to reduce Combined Sewer Overflows (sewage) into the canal, with projects like a sponge park, rain gardens, high level storm sewers, investments on the Gowanus Pumping Station and controls of "floatables."

However, Licata revealed that even with the construction of the two EPA mandated CSO tanks, the City is dealing strictly with current CSO conditions, and is not addressing any additional measures to offset new development.

In other words, the current CSO remedy will be outdated the moment the up-zoning goes through and new high-rises get built.

Members of the CAG urged both DEP and City Planning to plan ahead and to think outside of the box. One of the  CAG suggestions was to write into the proposed rezoning that new buildings should be required to separate gray and black water to reduce the burden on our sewers.

Neither agencies seemed eager to push that idea forward.

In the absence of logical thinking by the City of New York, it is reassuring to know that the EPA, at least is planning for the future. The 2013 Gowanus Canal Superfund Record of Decision, the legal blueprint for the clean-up of the polluted canal, specifically requires that "the capacity of the retention tanks will need to accommodate the projected additional loads  to the combined sewer system as a result of current and future residential development, including future rainfall increases that may result from climate change."

DEP and DCP better figure out what more housing, more residents, and more poop would mean to a neighborhood that has literally been dumped on for decades.

Otherwise, we as a community, have a right to tell the City that no rezoning should be allowed to go forward before adequately sized CSO tanks are completed.

Read more

Feel Betrayed By Councilman Brad Lander Yet Regarding The Proposed Gowanus Rezoning? We Do!

Community Board 6's Chair Peter Fleming

CB6's Land Use Committee Chair Mark Shames

NYC Department of City Planning's Gowanus Project Manager Jonathan Keller

NYCHA resident and Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition For Justice member Karen Blondel

One of the local residents addressing concerns about rezoning

Representatives of New York City Department of City Planning (DCP)'s Brooklyn office presenting the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal to Community Board 6's Land Use Committee last night.

The entire meeting and presentation can be accessed on You Tube here.


Dear Neighbors,
Do you remember back in 2008, when the Department of City Planning worked on the first Gowanus rezoning study?  Back then, the City was pushing for buildings that rose approximately as high as the Lightstone development at 363-365 Bond Street adjacent to the canal, which moved ahead under a special spot rezoning from manufacturing to mixed-use, though the overall rezoning of the area was halted when the EPA declared the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site in 2010.

To many in the neighborhood, the Lighstone development is all wrong for this FEMA Flood Zone evacuation area. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy flooded basement and streets in Gowanus in 2012, Councilmember Brad Lander urged the developer Lightstone Group to withdraw its plans to build its complex.

In a December 2012 letter to David Lichtenstein, the CEO of Lightstone, our Councilman wrote:
“I believe it would be a serious mistake for you to proceed as though nothing had happened, without reconsidering or altering your plans, and putting over 1,000 new residents in harm’s way the next time an event of this magnitude occurs.”

Yet the 700-unit Lightstone complex, which rises to 12 stories was built, hundreds of residents moved in, and in the past few years, Brad Lander has been pushing for the Gowanus rezoning to resume.

In 2013, together with several other local elected officials, Lander's office launched Bridging Gowanus, "a community planning process to shape a sustainable, livable, and inclusive future for the Gowanus neighborhood-in the face of ongoing change, the Superfund clean-up, and real estate pressure."

Over a few years, hundreds of community stakeholders gave hundreds of hours of their time to take part in Bridging Gowanus on the promise that this visioning process would provide them with a real chance to jointly shape a vision for the future of the neighborhood and would inform the NYC Planning Department of the wishes of the community.

Many were shocked when the final 'visioning' report falsely claimed that the community was open to high rises from 8 to 18 stories to achieve the goals set forth by Bridging Gowanus.  In reality, most residents thought that the worse case scenario for the neighborhood were more 12-story buildings like Lighstone.

To Lander, higher buildings are a trade off for providing more parkland, more schools, more affordable housing and protection of manufacturing zones in Gowanus.  "We did ask people to think hard of the tradeoffs that are necessary," Brad Lander commented. "These kinds of investments and achieving the level of preservation we just talked about costs a lot of money."

By the time the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) was commissioned to create a framework for a 'sustainable, inclusive, mixed-use neighborhood", the building density in the area had increased again. Along 4th Avenue, the framework called for 22 story buildings, though thankfully, it called for a "moderate" scale" along the canal.

That was not enough for investors and developers, who immediately cried foul. The density mentioned in the Framework did not "allow enough density along the canal to offset what they say will be the high cost of building on those sites," despite the fact that most landowners have or will clean up their polluted parcels under the New York State Brownfield Clean-up Program, which offers highly lucrative tax  breaks and tax credits, which are paid by taxpayers.

It appears that real estate pressure did have a huge influence on City Planning.
Last night, DCP's Project Manager for the Gowanus rezoning, Jonathan Keller, presented the agency's  recently released Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal to the community.

The proposal now calls for approximately 22 story buildings along the canal,  and close to 30 stories on Public Place, the City-owned site along Smith Street near 5th Street.

Councilman Lander's response to the ever increasing proposed density?
“I know that not everyone is excited about the idea of new residential and commercial development at heights taller than the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods, but I genuinely believe we are on the way to getting the balance right.”  (Brooklyn Eagle)

Most residents seemed shocked last night. This proposal almost doubles the density of what had been planned for the area in 2008.  Despite the participation of local residents in the Bridging Gowanus visioning process, this re-zoning plan guarantees few of the things that the community really cared about: artists lofts, maker spaces and parks.

How exactly the area will accommodate thousands of new residents when our infrastructure is already at a breaking point remains unclear.

The plan offers no contract with the community that would truly guarantee us new schools, new investments in our sewers, or increased subway service.

It does guarantee years of construction and a radical change to Gowanus and surrounding neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

Many in the community gave Brad Lander the benefit of the doubt when he promised us a better, more inclusive planning process, one that would lead to a better rezoning.

Instead, it is leading us to one that seems driven by developers and politicians, which in this City is business as usual.

I hope people will remember as he prepares to run for New York City Comptroller in the 2021 election.

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After a Contentious First Try, City Planning To Come Back To Community This Thursday For "Informational Presentation" of the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal

***Important meeting coming up on the Gowanus Rezoning Proposal***

In early February, representatives of  the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP)'s Brooklyn office held a presentation of the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal in the gym of PS 32, which did not go over too well with local residents.

Instead of providing the community with a forum in which they could ask questions and get answers communally, DCP had basically printed out its online presentation on poster boards and taped them to the wall of the gym.  As one local resident tweeted, 'the city attempted to turn it into a science fair style open house', which backfired big time. It was obvious from the start that the whole thing had been designed to control rather than to engage stakeholders.

To placate angry residents, Winston Von Engel and Jonathan Keller of City Planning promised to come to the next Community Board 6 Landmark/Land Use Committee meeting for a proper presentation.  That meeting has now been scheduled.

Informational Presentation of the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal 

From The Department Of City Planning

February 28, 2019

6:30 pm

PS 133

610 Baltic Street between 4th and 5th Avenue 

Let us hope that City Planning comes better prepared to provide specific answers on this upzoning, which will impact not only Gowanus, but Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Park Slope.
We encourage everyone to attend.


Related reading:
Developers Get Their Way, the Community Not So Much: Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal Proves That Community Planning Sessions Were All A Sham 

Badly Done, City Planning! Badly Done!: City Faces Angry Residents At Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal Meeting Last Night

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Badly Done, City Planning! Badly Done!: City Faces Angry Residents At Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal Meeting Last Night

Winston Von Engel, Director of the Brooklyn office for the NYC Department of City Planning

DCP project manager Jonathan Keller

Members of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition For Justice

NYCHA resident Karen Blondel and Zac Martin of Trellis

NYC DCP's Winston Von Engel, addressing angry residents

Councilman Brad Lander (left), standing in the crowd.

Yesterday evening's presentation of the Gowanus Draft Zoning Proposal must have been very rough for representatives of  the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP)'s Brooklyn office, as they faced a mostly hostile Gowanus community.  It was entirely predictable and of DCP's own making.

Instead of providing local residents with a forum in which they could ask questions and get answers communally, DCP had basically printed out its online presentation on poster boards and taped them to the wall of PS32's gym.  As one local resident tweeted, 'the city attempted to turn it into a science fair style open house', which backfired big time. It was obvious from the start that the whole thing had been designed to control rather than to engage stakeholders.

People were generally angry that there was no formal Q and A session this late in the rezoning process. Some called it unprofessional, a total waste of time. Others felt it was disrespectful, especially since many had been involved with the community visioning process for the last two years.

Members of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition For Justice (GNCJ) tried to engage DCP in a more meaningful conversation by bringing a PA system and by setting up chairs in the gym.

Karen Blondel, who has lived in Gowanus NYCHA housing for the past 40 years and is an environmental organizer for Fifth Avenue Committee, took the microphone to demand a real public meeting. She addressed the lack of commitment from the City to '"fix environmentally unsafe conditions in local public housing."  

In support, NYCHA residents chanted:

"The Gowanus Plan is incomplete-City Hall take a seat!"

"Before you rezone-fix our homes!"

"Scope until our demands are in scope! No Scope until we're in scope!"

Other stakeholders demanded to know how the City planned to address the neighborhood's failing infrastructure,  especially sewers,  schools and public transportation once the neighborhood was up-zoned. "What happened to the inclusion of an Eco District in the rezoning plan?,"  several people asked.

Winston Von Engel and Jonathan Keller of NYC's Department of City Planning eventually tried to placate the audience by promising a proper community meeting at Community Board 6's Landmark/Land Use Committee meeting on February 28th in PS32's auditorium.

Councilman Brad Lander arrived late, so missed most of the initial fireworks,  He tried to diffuse the situation by playing Mr. Nice Guy and by reiterating that the rezoning plan  was unlikely to please everyone.

As for Councilman Stephen Levin, whose district includes all Gowanus NYCHA residents, he did not show up at all.

It was an interesting evening to say the least.

Kindergartener and mini-citizen reporter Charlie of Citizen Squirrel

Linda Mariano of FROGG and Gowanus Landmarking Coalition

Gowanus' very own Jane Jacobs

Gowanus Dredgers brought canoes to demand rezoning plan include docks and boat launches

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