Mayor Bloomberg put the money where his mouth is today as he he announced the start of a city-funded $150-million Gowanus Canal clean-up plan that he claims would be speedier than federal Superfund designation — but opponents contend wouldn’t sufficiently clean the fetid waterway.
Bloomberg blasted the federal plan as overly litigious and too slow while touting his own “comparatively fast” proposed decade-long clean-up, which could begin in November with repairs to the wastewater pumping station and flushing tunnel aimed to reduce the amount of raw sewage that enters the waterway and nullify nasty odors.
“[The Superfund is] going to be an enormous boon for lawyers and the court system … but nothing is going to be done [to clean the canal] for a long time,” the mayor said at a press conference at the head of the putrid waterway.
Bloomberg claimed that using the Superfund to clean the vile waterway — which after more than a century of industrial use is contaminated with pesticides, PCBs, heavy metals, and even gonorrhea — could take more than two decades.
“This Superfund process would inevitably be super slow,” said Bloomberg, who has also objected to the federal plan over concerns that its stigma would halt residential development along the canal. “We think there is a better way and a faster way to solve the problem.”
The mayor said his plan to upgrade facilities along the canal would bring the waterway up to the standards required by the Clean Water Act. It will start with an $85-million renovation of the pumping station that would reduce raw sewage overflow into the canal by 34 percent by installing four new pumps and constructing a mile-long sewage pipe that connects to the Red Hook wastewater treatment.
The city will also fund a $50-million renovation of the nearly century-old flushing tunnel, which rinses out the Gowanus with (relatively) clean water from Buttermilk Channel. Workers would replace the single existing single pump with three new pumps, aimed to increase the daily flow of oxygen rich East River water by 40 percent.
The mayor — with the help of the Army Corp of Engineers — plans to dredge a 750-foot stretch of the upper section of the canal to remove sediment mounds that can cause odors when exposed during low tides.
In sharp contrast with the Superfund program, which raises its money by suing parties the federal government deems responsible for contamination, the city would pay for the dredging by soliciting donations from suspected polluters.
The mayor said that responsible parties would have an incentive to contribute money because “it settles once and for all their liability … with a known and not an unknown amount.”
A spokesman with Environmental Protection Agency told The Brooklyn Paper that the start of the city’s Gowanus Canal repairs will not have an impact on the agency’s Superfund decision.
“Today’s announcement about the flushing tunnel doesn’t affect EPA’s consideration of Gowanus Canal as a possible Superfund site,” said spokesman John Senn. “It’s an ongoing process.”
Supporters of a federal clean-up claim the mayor’s “facilities upgrades” aren’t enough.
“The mayor’s plan is not sufficient — the entire canal needs to be dredged to get rid of the toxic sediments that line the bed,” said Steven Miller, who was among a group of about five Superfund supporters who were barred from entering the Bloomberg event. “This is based in science, and unfortunately the mayor has shifted it out of science and into politics. The mayor is the only thing that is standing between us and a clean canal.”