Celebrating Community
The first Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group (CAG) meeting for the new calendar year was held on Jan. 22 without Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s presence due to the partial federal government shut-down – the longest shutdown in U.S. history, which had reached Day 32 by the meeting’s date. CAG member Brad Vogel facilitated the night’s agenda that featured the NYC Department […]
Gowanus by Design, a local non-profit urban design advocacy, made a presentation at Community Board 6’s Landmarks & Land Use committee meeting held on Jan. 24. Team leader David Briggs talked about some of the goals and impacts of NYC Department of City Planning (DCP)’s Gowanus Rezoning Framework. “What we’re trying to do is give the community a tool and […]
Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group (CAG) members received updates from government and city agencies at the general monthly meeting, held November 27. The biggest surprise involved a last minute request by the NYC DEP to substitute a giant tunnel, instead of the planned sewage retention tanks ordered by the EPA, to capture raw sewage that now is dumped into the […]
Gowanus residents and nearby neighbors were satisfied, overall, with the new schematic designs for the incoming CSO tank facility, which were unveiled at the Community Board 6 Parks/Recreation/Environmental Protection Committee meeting on October 17. This follows community suggestions made at the first North Gowanus Visioning session, hosted by Council Member Stephen Levin’s office, on July 25. The Department of Environmental […]
Are there treasures untold lying beneath the oily surface of the Gowanus canal? An organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of historical artifacts, Archeology and Historic Resource Services (AHRS), have attempted to answer this question. In a recent report they explored the identity and history of a number of large mystery items found in a 2010 sonar scan of […]
Debris removal from the Gowanus Canal will begin at the end of October the EPA announced at the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group meeting this past Tuesday. Initially, the removal of urban waste items – such as tires, shopping carts and potentially a few mystery items – was expected to begin this past August. However, at Tuesday’s meeting, Natalie Loney, […]
Of all of the mystery items scheduled for extraction from the Gowanus canal at the end October, perhaps the most interesting piece comes in the form of a sunken ship at the fourth street turning basin, beside the Gowanus Whole Foods. Locals may recognize the boat, which pokes out from the canal’s dark waters when water levels are low, along […]
Brad Lander’s office recently sent out via email an announcement reopening his Bridging Gowanus initiative – the “next step” in the reshaping of our neighborhood. It asks to complete a survey. The Bridging Gowanus website has a little button on top labeled, ‘WEIGH IN”—this is not an accident since your opportunity to weigh in can hardly be called a survey […]
At the April meeting of the Gowanus Community Advisory Group (CAG), EPA Director Walter Mugdan announced the results of a long and difficult negotiation with New York City regarding the placement of sewage retention tanks alongside the Gowanus Canal. CAG member Marlene Donnelly and others said not so fast. A public comment period was requested and received. This period, […]
The Gowanus Canal, separating Park Slope from Carroll Gardens, is one of the most polluted waterways in the United States. Over a century of heavy industrial use has left it with a highly toxic combination of coal tar as well as raw sewage deposits. It was added to the EPA’s Superfund list in 2010, which mandated the Federal Government to […]