Last Night, City Talked Gowanus Alternative Clean-Up Plan, But Didn't Seem To Convince Many

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No, no, dear Reader, I was not at last night's meeting hosted by the City to once again tout their half-baked 'Alternative Plan' to clean the Gowanus Canal. I am still on a beach vacation in South Carolina, but you know that my Brooklyn neighborhood is never far from my mind.



This morning, I received a very thorough account of the meeting from area residents who attended the first of two meetings, one for home-owners, the other for business-owners along the canal. Last night's was for home-owners.



This is the report:

The city meeting was fairly interesting. Cas Holloway, Chief Of Staff to NYC Deputy Mayor Skyler. was the designated hitter for the city once again with Dan Walsh, Chief of the New York City Superfund and Brownfield Program, on deck for an occasional and ineffective pinch hit.



Walter Mugdan of the EPA was there and although he clearly tried to maintain his distance from the microphone, he was the voice of reason, calm and common sense.



There was a flyer distributed by the city which a local resident held up and contemptuously labeled, "spin"--others in the audience quickly and loudly agreed with this. There was a letter written by an unknown fifth generation Gowanus banks-grown person begging not to Superfund and a postcard from the cleangowanusnow.org folks printed up and ready to go for those who do not want Superfund.



There was an appearance and some questions from Josh Skaller, 39th City Council District candidate, and a surprise for me--a fellow named Doug Biviano, who is running for Councilman in the 33rd. He is a civil engineer, articulate and put the city right on the spot (one of Dan Walsh' moments were required here)



The city has no plan. They are trying to say that this can be done through the W.R.D.A. program, even though Walter Mugdan expressed doubts. Dan Wiley, of Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez's office, gave facts and the congresswoman's comments quoted in the June 11th article in the Downtown Star refuted the idea completely. They, the city, claim that they will kick in for some of the initial studies. The only thing they really seem to care about is saving certain parties money and getting the feds (basically, us) to foot a big part of the deep discount for the prps.



Walter Mugdan made it very clear that the timeline for the City's or EPA's plan will be the same. The City has no ability to move any faster than the EPA -- in fact starting with the City could actually cost more time because their plan is more complex. It is a matter of where the money comes from and how successfully all of the Potentially Reponsible Parties can agree to play nicely--all of it a very unlikely scenario.



When the city was asked why they are "expending a great amount of resources" (their words) in order to save a handful of PRP's money at the expense of a great deal of the community's wishes, they really did not have an answer.



They had a slide as part of their presentation that was widely criticized and will probably be excluded from future presentations. It was supposed to show how much better and faster the city plan is in comparison to EPA but it was a bust.



When the City was asked why two meetings, they said it was to accommodate everyone. When it was pointed out that notification was spotty and attendance not that great because of it, they apologized. They actually apologized a lot--and promised that there would be answers to some of tonight's questions tomorrow--like which developers they met with privately.

We asked them to bring the army corps of engineers with them tomorrow but no promises were made there--just an agreement to ask them to come.



Ellen was there from State Senator Daniel Squadron's office, but she said nothing. Tom Gray, of Councilman Bill De Blasio's office sent out a notice that no one from Bill's office would be there due to "scheduling conflicts", but he promised someone would be there tomorrow night and all meetings going forward. Did not see anyone from Joan Millman's office and Deanna Betteti of Yvette Clarke's office is in DC.

John Heyer Sr and Jr were there but I did not see Brad Lander, Bob Zuckerman or Buddy Scotto.

Part two of the city's Spinfest is tonight at PS32