As Cleanup Plan Is Set for Gowanus Canal, Violations Continue
By KIA GREGORY
The federal government is about to release its final, $500 million cleanup plan for the Gowanus Canal, one of New York City’s two Superfund sites, a long-awaited moment in the effort to cleanse more than a century of environmental abuse.
But even on the eve of its purging, the Gowanus Canal remains very much a boiler room for the city. Along the banks of the canal one recent morning, just a tin can’s toss from the oily green waters, a giant claw grabbed at a tower of scrap metal, like a crane in the arcade game. In the lot over, delivery trucks idled behind oil storage tanks. Near them, concrete mixers cranked, churned their ingredients and coughed up dust.
“Somebody needs to heat homes and recycle metal and clean out garbage,” said Mike Petrosino, co-owner of a fifth-generation, family-owned business that operates Benson Metal, one of two scrap-metal yards that abut the canal and use it for loading and unloading barges. “The canal acts as an infrastructure that supports the city.”
Loud, dirty industry has been entwined with the canal for generations, ever since barges delivered brownstone and coal to build Brooklyn’s row houses and light its parlor lamps.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/nyregion/as-cleanup-plan-is-set-for-gowanus-canal-violations-continue.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytmetro&_r=0