'Clean It Before You Rezone It,' Gowanus Activists Tell City

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — With less than a week left to give their comments on the city's rezoning plan for Gowanus, a new coalition of activists gathered Wednesday to make their position on the plan clear — it shouldn't happen.

The coalition, which includes half a dozen neighborhood groups, held a press conference on the Carroll Street bridge to outline their concerns about how everything from infrastructure, to the area's most vulnerable populations could suffer under a proposed rezoning that could bring as many as 20,000 new people to the neighborhood.

But perhaps the loudest message on the group's list of qualms with the proposal, which was first released in January, was that it should wait until a clean-up of the infamously toxic Gowanus Canal is done before it is put in place.

"Standing here this morning are Gowanus area residents who have had to deal with toxins and raw sewage for decades," blogger and resident Katia Kelly said. "We say today...that bringing 20,000 new residents to Gowanus as part of the proposed rezoning before a comprehensive environmental clean-up is criminal. Completely remediate, prepare for the population and then responsibly rezone."

The Environmental Protection Agency began the long process of cleaning up the 1.8-mile canal, which it has designated as a hazardous Superfund site, about two years ago with a pilot project at the Fourth Street Basin that scooped 17,000 cubic yards of toxic muck from the waterway.

But dredging the remainder of the canal isn't expected to start until 2020, with the entire clean-up not scheduled to wrap up until 2027.

Activists Wednesday said they worry that new development along the waterway promised in the rezoning plan could make it so the sewage overflow in the canal will never be completely eliminated. The EPA's clean-up plan takes into account only the neighborhood's current conditions, not any new water pollution that the development boom may bring, they said.

The new development along the canal created by the rezoning, which will allow buildings as tall as 22 stories on the waterfront, also means more people will be exposed to the toxins, activists said.

Others contended that the rezoning shouldn't be increasing development along the canal at all, given that water levels are expected to rise as much as six to seven feet in the next century.

"It's building for the next 10, 20 years, but not for the next century," said Tom Angotti, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College. "Does it make any sense to build a new community on the waterfront, in the water, essentially?"

City officials have argued that the Gowanus Rezoning will actually protect the communities along the waterfront, given that the plan requires developers to include "climate-resilient" protections in their buildings and that the neighborhood revamp will help move environmental remediation forward.

“Cleaning up the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding neighborhood is at the absolute center of our ongoing planning work with this community," Department of Planning spokesman Joe Marvilli said. "Until we move forward, we won’t get the public and private investments needed to achieve the community’s vision of a healthy and thriving Gowanus, one with more and diverse jobs, with affordable housing, and a publicly accessible waterfront.”

The rezoning, the department has said, also includes requirements to remediate other sources of contamination in Gowanus, such as the neighborhood's brownfields. Planners are also working with city, state and federal officials to take environmental changes created by the rezoning into account, including a drainage analysis that will project sea-level rise and potential growth and development.

Other officials have argued that the increased development of taller, more dense buildings is needed to ensure that as much affordable housing as possible can be created in the neighborhood.

Advocates at the press conference, though, said the proposal's definition of affordability does not meet the needs of the poorest residents.

Among the activists were several public housing residents who said they have been stonewalled from the rezoning planning process because they technically live just outside of, or on, the neighborhood boundaries. Those in the Gowanus Houses, the Wyckoff Gardens and Red Hook public housing will bear the brunt of development even if they aren't in the center of the neighborhood, residents said.

"We're right behind you, we're on the border...but they're not trying to engage us," said Beverly Corbin, who lives in Wyckoff Gardens. "We will be strongly effected by this development. We want to speak out loud and clear and we want to be heard."

Voice for Gowanus ultimately called for a moratorium on the Gowanus Rezoning, which is currently in the review process, until their questions and demands can be answered and incorporated into the plans. Residents said the years-long process to gather feedback before the proposal was revealed seemed to have not taken their concerns into account.

"Many of the people here have been to meeting, after meeting, after meeting, after meeting," resident Brad Vogel said. "And yet, the end result we saw come out of that process still we do not feel reflects our input."