The Gowanus Canal, a stagnant open chemical sewer running through much of South Brooklyn, was today designated a Superfund site by the EPA.
This was done over the objections of the Bloomberg administration, which had wanted to start its own publicly funded clean-up efforts right away—rather than wait, possibly years, for EPA studies to identify the polluters, and for lawsuits against and negotiations with those polluters to provide the funds for the clean-up. Presumably, the Bloomberg administration was willing to jump into the lead on the Gowanus to placate developers, who were worried about how they’d be able to sell hugely expensive waterfront high-rise apartments, if the apartments were going to be next to a Superfund site (apparently they had been planning on selling the apartments to people who have never heard of the Gowanus Canal).
Newtown Creek next?