The feds say Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is so contaminated they plan to declare it a Superfund site — a move that some critics said would only delay plans to build luxury housing along the toxic canal’s banks.
The Environmental Protection Agency confirmed yesterday that it wants to add the 1.8-mile canal — once dubbed “Lavender Lake” for its purplish chemical hue — to the Superfund’s National Priorities List, so it could begin investigating the cause of the contamination and determine how best to deal with it.
“The sooner we get the listing under way, the sooner EPA can begin its work, so that one day the Gowanus Canal can be used again to benefit the people of Brooklyn,” said the agency’s acting regional administrator, George Pavlou.
But Carroll Gardens activist Buddy Scotto, leader of an at-times successful effort to clean up the canal for decades, said the EPA’s decision stinks.
He said all the designation “would do is tie up development projects off the shore,” such as a luxury condo and townhouse project planned by the Toll Brothers developers.
“There’s no question the canal is clean enough now to support development,” Scotto said.
“This is all political because someone has decided they don’t want to see development near the canal, but it doesn’t make sense. How can anyone try to kill these projects during such a poor economic climate?”
The project by Toll Brothers calls for 130 of the 577 units to be marketed to low- to middle-income households near Bond, Carroll and Second streets, and the rest would go for market rate.
Other developments planned for the area around the canal include a 68,000-square-foot Whole Foods superstore on Third Street.
Normally, polluters are required to pay for cleanups after completion of an EPA Superfund review, but in the case of the canal, much of the contamination occurred well over a century ago. In these situations, federal dollars are used to pay for a cleanup.