The sun was out, but the slanted light of fall did little to warm the small crowd gathered at the Carroll Street Bridge in Gowanus the morning of Nov. 16. But despite winds that whipped bare hands and quickly chilled the hot cider they held in paper cups, members of Gowanus Dredgers, an organization that promotes waterfront stewardship at its namesake canal, needed no cheering up. They were celebrating the start of dredging works on the waterway, the culmination of two decades of advocating for the cleanup of one of the country’s most polluted places. Carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under a Superfund mandate, the dredging will remove the combination of tar and sewage known as “black mayo” that has accumulated at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal for well over a century. Once dredging is completed in 2023, the underlying riverbed, which has also been contaminated by the area’s industrial past, will be capped with cement and absorbent clays to keep pollutants from seeping back into the clean canal. The whole process is expected to take another decade to complete.
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Owen Foote, a founding member of the Dredgers, stressed the important role that raising community awareness and interest around the canal has played in finally materializing their efforts. “Without people knowing about this problem, this may not be happening today.” A similar sentiment was expressed by Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez later that morning at a nearby waterfront esplanade, where EPA and elected officials gathered to mark the start of dredging. Velazquez credited community engagement as the main driver behind securing a Superfund designation for the canal in 2010, a move she said was controversial at the time because real estate interests feared it would disincentivize investment. “That was so wrong. Superfund listing was the only way we were going to properly clean up the Gowanus Canal. By the way, I hate environmental noise, but today I welcome it!” said Velazquez, referring to the cacophony of heavy machinery coming from the waterway behind her, where dredging barges had already begun loading up on generous scoops of the black mayo. “We are on an ambitious timeline. We have a long way to go, but we are finally in full implementation of what we have planned for many years.”
A ways to go with many inevitable hiccups, said Brad Vogel, a member of both the Dredgers and the Gowanus Community Advisory Group, which liaises with the EPA. Moving forward, it will be important for locals to keep the various actors involved in the canal’s remediation accountable for their respective duties, he added. Members of the advisory group have in the past expressed particular frustration with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is tasked with the construction of two retention tanks that will capture sewage overflow into the Gowanus Canal. The EPA, to which the city must answer, rebuked the DEP last summer for what it described as “significant non-compliance” with its obligations. The federal agency also rejected an 18-month extension request submitted by the DEP in June for the construction of one of the tanks.
Cash poor city
The day dredging began, DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza wrote a letter to Councilmen Brad Lander and Stephen Levin stating that accusations of non-compliance were “completely without merit.” Sapienza further stated that, against its better judgment, the city was proceeding with the construction of the tank at the EPA’s directive, despite the pandemic-induced budgetary woes it had cited as the reason for its extension request. As a consequence of this, Sapienza wrote, the Municipal Water Finance Authority now foresees an increase of 6.1% to New Yorkers’ water bills in order to make up the revenue gap. The estimated completion date for both tanks is 2032.
Because nearly a decade will elapse between the canal cleanup and the tanks’ completion, recontamination from sewage overflows during that time will be inevitable. But in the same letter, Sapienza refuted the idea that overflows have significantly contributed to the historical contamination of the canal, writing that such claims have “no scientific basis.” He also reminded the councilmen that the city will, in any case, perform a “maintenance dredge” on the canal once it completes the retention tanks.
“It’s bad planning,” opined Vogel about the timing. An eventually clean, remediated canal is the tacit backbone of any plans vested interest groups might have for Gowanus as part of the city’s hotly debated rezoning proposal, which is slated to be certified in January. And yet, according to the Department of City Planning’s last environmental impact study, rezoning could bring a tenfold increase in sewage overflows to the canal, which locals like Vogel worry might imperil it anew. “I hope the rezone doesn’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
Gowanus Green again
While the neighborhood’s transformation will likely span decades once land-use changes are approved, the city continues to build on its designs for what is bound to be one of the waterfront’s defining features, the Gowanus Green housing complex. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and a cohort of private partners revealed their updated vision for the campus, which will occupy the six-acre lot at the intersection of 5th and Smith streets, during a virtual presentation to Community Board 6 on November 19th. HPD’s new plan, touted as “100% affordable”, calls for half of the project’s 950 units to be set aside for low-income renters who earn less than 50% percent of New York’s Area Median Income, or around $51,200 for a family of three, with 15% of rentals reserved for formerly homeless households. Meanwhile, 40% of rental units will be dedicated to moderate-income households that earn between $81,920 and $122,880. Sixty-seven apartments in the complex will be co-ops, allowing moderate and higher-earning households—those earning up to $133,120—to carve a path towards homeownership.
Developers also plan to make Gowanus Green more resilient—and greener. The six buildings that will make up the campus will be equipped with solar panels and all of its apartments will feature water-saving fixtures. To contend with rising sea levels, the base of the buildings will be elevated to flood-proof height—six feet above what is currently required by code—and the project will not contribute to sewage overflows into the canal thanks to a combination of green roofs, rain gardens, and bioswales that will capture stormwater. The complex will reach a height of up to 28 storeys and will be flanked by a waterfront park and a public school. Construction of this new vision for Gowanus Green, however, remains contingent on whether the land it sits on, the former location of a manufactured gas plant, is stripped of its public space designation and rezoned for residential occupancy in January.
Attendees made full use of the chat function available to them during the virtual presentation, which was held on Zoom, to express their reactions to the new proposal. Some raised questions about affordability in response to the numbers given by HPD, while others had safety concerns over the decision to build affordable housing on a polluted industrial site, where toxic coal tar is present in the soil to a depth of up to 150 feet. Jack Riccobonno of Voice of Gowanus, a community organization that opposes the rezone, voiced these concerns directly to the panelists. Ira Lichtiger of the Bluestone Organization, one of HPD’s development partners, responded that there will be a management plan for Gowanus Green that will require monitoring and management of the site in perpetuity. These responsibilities will fall on National Grid, the utility giant tasked with the remediation. The company will remove contaminated soil down to 22 feet beneath the surface and box in remaining pollutants with a cover layer and a bulkhead along the canal.
Under the site’s management plan, the state and Department of Environmental Conservation will also require National Grid to perform any other necessary remediations before construction on Gowanus Green can begin. “The notion that you cannot build safely to a residential standard on a manufactured gas plant site is just not the case. We actually feel very comfortable building safely. The remedy that has been designed here has been used many times in the city,” affirmed Licthiger, who pointed to Stuyvesant Town in the East Village as an example. Mark McIntyre, director of the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, echoed these assertions, adding that remaining contamination at the site would be too deep to pose any danger to the public.
Both in comments to presenters and in the chat, many attendees also expressed strong support for Gowanus Green as a project that would address the city’s affordable housing shortage and promote income and racial diversity in the neighborhood. “We need every bit of affordable housing we can muster, and the 950 homes this rezoning offers is a great place to start,” said Will Thomas of Open New York, an advocacy group. “These affordable homes are particularly needed in White, wealthy Gowanus, where the median household income is well over six figures.” Others remained skeptical. “Gowanus isn’t majority White or wealthy,” wrote Nora Almeida. “Building a small amount of ‘affordable’ housing on a toxic site isn’t racial justice.”
Almedia may be onto something. According to data from the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey, just around 37% of Gowanus residents were White, while 30% were Black, 19% were Latino, and 12% were Asian. Data for the same census tracts (71, 75, 77, and 119) also show that the neighborhood’s average income per household in 2019 was $99,472, whereas the median income was $66,937. Only about 34% of households earned six figures or more.
Racially just rezoning
The consequences of the proposed rezoning on the demographic makeup of Gowanus has been a recurring concern, with Voice of Gowanus in particular calling for a racial impact study to gauge the effects. Such a measure would be in line with a bill introduced to City Council by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in December of last year. Councilman Lander, who also attended the virtual meeting, co-sponsored the proposed legislation, a fact that some residents repeatedly reminded him of in the Zoom chat.
Michael Sandler, director of neighborhood planning with HPD, declined to comment on any potential policy changes—like requiring a racial impact study—to the way rezones are evaluated, but he did direct attendees to the city’s recently released “Where We Live NYC” plan, which he said addresses the links between New York’s housing affordability crisis and residential segregation. “So we have done that analysis.” Lander was less reticent, saying that a lot of the data that would be gleaned in a potential racial impact study will be available in the environmental impact statement the city will produce after it certifies the rezone next year. “Most of the people asking for the racial impact study want something that’s just a hurdle or a barrier to the rezoning and not an actual conversation about what would make the area more inclusive, integrated, and affordable,” he told the Star-Revue. “It’s a conversation that we’re eager to have with everyone. That is exactly what public review is about.”
