March 2, 2010 Gowanus Canal Gets Superfund Status By MIREYA NAVARRO

The Environmental Protection Agency designated the Gowanus Canal in
Brooklyn a Superfund site on Tuesday and announced plans to clean up
more than a century’s worth of noxious pollutants there.

The decision ended a contentious debate and was a blow to the
Bloomberg administration, which had proposed a cleanup without such a
designation. The city had argued that the label could set off legal
battles with polluters, prolong the dredging operation and spook
developers leery of the stigma of a Superfund listing.

But in a conference call with reporters, Judith A. Enck, the
E.P.A. administrator for the region, said the Superfund designation
would guarantee the best result for residents and the environment and
ensure that the polluters cover all the costs.

“We believe that it would get us the most efficient and comprehensive
cleanup,” Ms. Enck said.

From Gowanus Bay to New York Harbor, the agency has found contamination
along the entire length of the clouded 1.8-mile canal in a preliminary
assessment, including pesticides, metals and the cancer-causing chemicals
known as PCBs.

The agency estimates that the project will last 10 to 12 years and cost
$300 million to $500 million. The city estimated that its approach would
take nine years.

The E.P.A., which proposed the Superfund designation last April at the
urging of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,
made its decision after a public comment period that involved more
than 50 meetings with city officials, developers, community groups and
others. Nine other Superfund sites across the country were also designated
on Tuesday.

“It was the right thing to do,” said Marlene Donnelly, a leader of
the neighborhood group Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus. “It’s
the beginning of a plan to start the restorative process for the Gowanus
area.”

City officials expressed disappointment but struck a conciliatory tone
and pledged to cooperate with the cleanup.

“It’s disappointing,” said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg. “We had an innovative and comprehensive approach
that was a faster route.”

“But we are going to work closely with the E.P.A. because we share
the same goal: a clean canal,” he added.

Carved out of tidal wetlands and streams in the 1860s, the Gowanus
evolved into a busy waterway for oil refineries, chemical plants,
tanneries, manufactured gas plants and other heavy industry along its
banks. Industrial waste and raw sewage gushed into the canal for over
a century.

Most of that flow has halted since the 1960s as maritime shipping
faded. Today the 100-foot-wide canal is used for commercial and
recreational purposes by neighborhoods bordering it, including Park Slope,
Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook.

Yet even as kayakers glide alongside the banks and fishermen catch
striped bass for sport at its mouth at Gowanus Bay — the fish are
too contaminated to eat — residents complain about the odors from
continuing discharges of sewage and unsightly debris from scrap metal
yards and other industrial enterprises.

The E.P.A. has already identified the city, the Navy and seven companies,
including Consolidated Edison and National Grid, as potentially
responsible for the past discharges. It is seeking additional information
from at least 20 other companies so it can map out the financing of
the cleanup.

“This is a historical puzzle we’re putting together here,”
Ms. Enck said.

Caswell F. Holloway IV, a former mayoral aide who helped design an
alternative cleanup plan for the Gowanus and is now the commissioner
of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, said he had no
estimate of New York’s financial liability for what federal officials
said included contamination from various facilities, including an asphalt
plant and an incinerator in the area. He said the city would work with the
E.P.A. to ensure that costs are recovered from all responsible parties.

“The city has an obligation to ensure that the burden is shared
fairly,” Mr. Holloway said.

He noted that the administration had already committed $150 million to
reducing odors and preventing sewer discharges and had shared the cost
of a feasibility study for an environmental restoration project by the
Army Corps of Engineers. E.P.A. officials said they saw those projects
as complementary and expected them to continue.

Mr. Holloway said it was uncertain how the Superfund designation would
affect economic development in the area.

One developer, Toll Brothers, said it would scrap its plan for a $250
million project with about 450 housing units and retailing space on
three acres by the canal. “We wouldn’t be able to obtain financing
to build, and we’d have difficulties obtaining insurance,” said
David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president with the company, citing
factors like uncertainty on how long the cleanup would take.

But Gowanus Green, a $300 million project for 774 units of new housing
in nine buildings as well as retailing and community facilities, mostly
financed by the city, is going forward.

“We’re in full support of the project, and we’ll work with the
E.P.A.,” said Aaron Koffman, a spokesman for the Hudson Companies,
one of the companies in the project’s consortium.

Eager to preserve such development potential, the city had proposed an
approach under which the federal agency would allow the polluters to
pay for the cleanup voluntarily.

But Ms. Enck said the city’s plan lacked “financial certainty”
because it relied partly on federal allocations that would require
Congressional approval. Agency officials also worried that having the
Corps of Engineers and the E.P.A. both tackle the cleanup would complicate
an already messy challenge.

In advocating for a Superfund listing, Ms. Enck had rejected arguments
that it would keep investors and lenders away.

“Banks look at the environmental conditions of the properties,”
she said at a meeting with reporters last week. “It is not a secret
in Brooklyn that the Gowanus is contaminated. The notion that Superfund
is going to create a stigma just doesn’t hold up.”

Agency officials said the cleanup, which will focus chiefly on the
sediment in the canal, had effectively begun, with sampling already
under way.

The timetable calls for completing the sampling and assessments of human
and environmental risks by the end of the year. A full cleanup plan is to
be drafted by 2014, with the work then unfolding over at least five years.

Walter Mugdan, the agency’s regional Superfund director, said that
most of the canal would probably be dredged.

Additional steps include eliminating all sources of continuing
contamination, like overflowing sewage and the migration of contaminants
from groundwater under old industrial plants.

A photograph that appeared earlier with this article was published in
error. It showed Newtown Creek, not the Gowanus Canal.