Now it’s official: The Gowanus Canal is a real stinker.
The feds today declared Brooklyn’s long-polluted industrial waterway a Superfund site, which fast tracks a much-needed cleanup of the canal and surrounding land — and also kills a massive luxury housing development slated for its banks.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to add the 1.8-mile canal — once dubbed “Lavender Lake” for its purplish chemical hue — to the Superfund’s National Priorities List was a huge blow to developer Toll Brothers, which confirmed it’s officially dropping plans to build 450 condos and townhouses near Bond, Carroll and Second streets.
“We are very disappointed in the EPA’s decision,” said David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president for Toll Brothers. “The designation is going to make it impossible for developers to get financing to build anything along the canal, so it’s unlikely that you will see anything get built there for many years.”
DESPITE SUPERFUND, HOUSING GOING FORWARD
Judith Enck, the EPA’s regional director, said after a nearly yearlong public review process the agency “determined that a Superfund designation is the best path to a cleanup of this heavily contaminated and long neglected urban waterway.”
The anticipated $300 million to $500 million cleanup is expected to take at least a decade to complete.
The designation could signal a death knell for another Gowanus project already on life support, a Whole Foods superstore slated for Third Street. However, the city today promised not to drop its long-delayed mixed-use project, “Gowanus Green,” which would bring 774 of units of predominantly affordable housing along the canal from Fifth Street south to Huntington Street.
The EPA’s decision comes over the objection of the Bloomberg administration, which pitched its own canal cleanup plan but said it would cooperate with the EPA.
Gowanus activist Buddy Scotto, who’s led a sometimes-successful effort to cleanup the canal for decades, said the designation “stinks” because “the canal could be cleaned up quicker by the city and developers.”
He said it puts a new “stigma” on the neighborhood that could drop property values, push away potential developers and force some cash-strapped businesses along the canal out if the feds find them partly responsible.
“There will be cases where companies are accused of polluting the canal – even though the pollution was there before they arrived, so they’ll have to shell out big bucks for the cleanup or for lawyers fighting it – either way, it might be too much,” he said.
The EPA has already identified 10 parties it says helped pollute the canal and are now responsible for cleaning it up. The list includes the city and U.S. Navy – so taxpayers will be responsible for part of the bill – as well as National Grid, Con Edison, and a few petroleum companies.
Despite the objections, the Superfund designation had a groundswell of local support from various grass-roots groups like the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association and Cobble Hill Association and many local elected officials, including Rep. Nydia Velazquez and state Sen. Daniel Squadron.
“The EPA reached the same conclusion I did: designating this waterway as a Superfund site is simply the most reliable way to ensure we have the dollars and the coordination to undo years of environmental damage,” Squadron said.
After its completion in the 1860s, the canal became a busy industrial waterway, leading to it becoming heavily polluted. Although most of the industrial activity has stopped, high contaminant levels remain in the sediments, including pesticides, cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), metals and coal tar.
In the past few years, traces of the clap and gonorrhea have also been uncovered.
The EPA says it will discuss its cleanup plan Thursday during a public meeting at PS 58 on Smith Street beginning at 7 p.m.