From the Brooklyn Paper:The Paterson administration has backed away from its surprise call last year to have the federal government lead a Superfund clean-up of the Gowanus Canal — and now says the Environmental Protection Agency should “carefully review” an alternate proposal from Mayor Bloomberg for decontaminating the waterway.
In December, the state requested adding the Gowanus Canal to the Superfund list, a move that sent the mayor’s office scrambling. Bloomberg said Superfund designation would scare off the $400 million in private investment in the neighborhood that will pour into the neighborhood after the city rezones the old manufacturing district.
Some real-estate developers confirmed the mayor’s doubts and said they won’t build if the Gowanus becomes a Superfund site.
On Friday, a day after the online version of this story was published on BrooklynPaper.com, Josh Skaller, a candidate for the City Council seat that includes the canal, condemned Paterson for “buckl[ing] under pressure from a developer-loving mayor.”
“Governor Paterson has not knocked on thousands of doors in Carroll Gardens, but I have,” said Skaller, who is running in the Democratic primary for the seat currently occupied by Bill DeBlasio. “It is clear the community supports Superfund status. [Superfund] is not a perfect solution, but it’s the best way to make sure the Canal gets the clean-up needed before we can build along its banks.”
3 comments:
As slow as a superfund designation may get the work done, it will get it done. No other way encompasses all of the needed tools that the EPA can bring to bear in this project. Anything short of superfund is a guarantee that nothing serious will get accomplished.
An statement that Paterson will look at the mayor's Gowanus cleanup plan is not the same as a statement that he supports the alternate plan over the recommendation of his own DEC commissioner.
"The Paterson administration has backed away from its surprise call last year to have the federal government lead a Superfund clean-up of the Gowanus Canal — and now says the Environmental Protection Agency should “carefully review” an alternate proposal from Mayor Bloomberg for decontaminating the waterway."
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
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