Info on the site that’s a hazard to public health in Gowanus/Carroll Gardens: CITIZENS GAS WORKS
Affordable Housing is not affordable if you pay for it with your health or with your life because it has been built on the most polluted site in New York State.
The gas inside the large tanks in these historical photos was not shipped in—it was manufactured on this site. The small tanks held the coal tar. The most deeply polluted part of the site, where the furnaces burned coal, is where the deepest affordable housing has been sited.
By placing these parcels into the NYS Brownfield Cleanup Program (and further partitioning them), DEC gives up its enforcement powers.
The sheens on the Gowanus Canal are not from rain runoff, they come from the coal tar in the land seeping into the water. That coal tar is also migrating into our community, underneath our buildings, as it has been left behind to do for decades.
The residents of New York State, will be paying for the cleanup several times over in complete violation of “The Polluter Pays” Superfund guarantee:
We pay for the Brownfield subsidies to developers, even though there is a known polluter – National Grid
We pay as National Grid customers because they bill us monthly in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island for Site Investigation and Remediation costs
National Grid drags its feet on the cleanup and gladly transfer cleanup responsibility to the developers so it can keep cash flowing for as long as it can – it proposes 47 more years to cleanup its toxic sites
NY State has granted developers in the Brownfield program limited liability but also encourages them to buy Pollution Liability Coverage, so the State KNOWS this site is dangerous. DEC and DOH have conceded that the site poses “a significant threat to human health and the environment.”
We pay with our health as we live with this legacy pollution for decades, increasing risk of cancer, respiratory illnesses, learning disabilities, birth defects
There has been no transparency – no audit or accounting – that has been done on what this is costing or WILL cost us. Brad Lander should have demanded that analysis when he was the Council Member of this district, and done it himself as Comptroller.
The City brags that the Gowanus Rezoning has created LOTS of affordable housing, but the bulk of the deeply affordable housing has been slated for this most-polluted site.
How long is our government going to support putting our most vulnerable on highly polluted land, and in a FEMA Flood Zone A ?
CITIZENS GAS WORKS - 1926
From DEC Info Locator. CITIZENS currently, showing State and Federal remediation sites