Bloomie doesn't want Superfund status for Gowanus

From the NY Times:

The Bloomberg administration is opposing a proposal by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to add Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal to the agency’s list of Superfund sites, arguing that the designation could jeopardize planned development for the area and the city’s own cleanup efforts.

Walter Mugdan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s director of the Superfund Division for the New York region, told the several hundred people in the audience that a Superfund cleanup need not to slow or impede any ongoing efforts toward restoring the canal because all necessary work can take place in tandem.

The city’s position puts it at odds with the state, whose Department of Environmental Conservation requested the nomination of the canal to the Superfund National Priorities List. E.P.A. officials will make their decision after a 60-day public comment period scheduled to end June 6.