River Keeper Action Alert: Superfund Designation For Gowanus Canal, Now!

River Keeper, New York’s #1 clean water advocate, has sent the following action alert regarding the Gowanus Canal to its New York email list. River Keeper's support for the listing of the polluted waterway as an EPA Superfund site has been invaluable. The organization has been a real ally in the effort of getting the best and the most thorough clean-up for Gowanus.

I would like to encourage everyone to join River Keeper in contacting our local officials to voice support for the Superfund designation. Just follow the link at the bottom. And if you can, forward this information to all your neighbors.

Many thanks!

River Keeper Action Alert:

In April, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it had proposed the Gowanus Canal, one of the most heavily contaminated water bodies in the nation, for the Federal Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). Once the Gowanus Canal is on the NPL, the EPA can begin a comprehensive effort to study the extent of its contamination and draft plans to conduct a coordinated cleanup.

Located in Brooklyn, NY, this 1.8 mile canal housed manufactured gas plants, cement factories, oil refineries, tanneries, and chemical plants for more than a century. Today, it contains dangerous levels of PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, sewage solids from combined sewer overflows, and coal tar.

As part of the Superfund listing process, the EPA is required to consider written comments from interested parties and members of the public and respond to them when making a decision whether to list the canal. Soon after the EPA’s announcement New York City and others announced their opposition to listing the canal and the City presented an alternative cleanup plan.

Riverkeeper believes that the City’s alternative plan is inadequate and submitted legal comments to the EPA fully supporting Superfund listing for the canal.

With the deadline to submit comments on the listing to the EPA having passed in July the EPA is still under political pressure from developers and the City to not add the canal to the Superfund list. In fact Mayor Bloomberg has publicly stated that he has personally called EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to plead his case.

Now is the time to ask your elected officials to publicly state their support for Superfund designation for the Gowanus Canal!

Representatives who have already publicly supported Superfund are not included.

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