By Gary Buiso
The noxious remnants of the Industrial Revolution will continue to linger beneath a Smith Street site for at least another year before their exorcism will begin, officials said this week. Experts from the state Department of Environmental Conservation updated Community Board 6’s Executive Committee about the status of the Public Place, as the site is known, which has been a priority for many in the neighborhood for decades. The entire site is a total of 11.5 acres, and is bounded by Smith Street, 4th Street, Huntington Street and the Gowanus Canal. From 1860 to the 1960s, manufactured gas plants called the site home, including the Citizens’ Gas Company and Brooklyn Union Gas, which was merged into the KeySpan Corporation. At the plant, coal was converted to a fuel that illuminated lamps and heated homes and businesses. The city assumed ownership of the largest parcel in 1975, when the property owner could not pay his taxes. The site consists of a total of four parcels, with most of the contamination found on the first, which is vacant, and the second, which is leased by the city to a cement plant. The third parcel is a clothing distribution warehouse and the fourth is a truck maintenance facility and commercial truck lot. KeySpan has assumed responsibility for cleaning the site, and is under consent order to work with the DEC, which will oversee the project. The site, which is zoned for manufacturing use, has the designation ‘public place,’ indicating its availability for “passage, access, or future city use.” Coal tar has been discovered in the soil at depths below 10 feet at several locations throughout the site. Tar, a byproduct of gas production, comprises PAHs (poly-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and VOCs, (volatile organic compounds), both of which have adverse impacts on human health. “As manufacturing gas plants go, Carroll Gardens is a pretty big one,” said Gardiner Cross, an engineering geologist with the DEC. The site is certainly not rare; statewide, there are about 300 similar sites, Cross said. “Coal tar gas has gone farther here than other sites. It’s spread widely and deeply away from the original property,” he said, adding that it continues to discharge at a slow rate into the already polluted Gowanus Canal. Coal tar, which has a consistency of motor oil and smells a lot worse, has been found as deep as 135 feet below the surface, according to Amen Omorogbe, the DEC’s project manager for the site. Cross said the objective is to make sure the site will be “as clean as it can be,” but conceded that with sites like this one, the goal is rarely achievable, and “basically impossible.” Still, “quite a bit” will be done on the site, including removing “all structures that still have tar,” including the removal some eight feet of contaminated soil and replacing it with clean fill. The contaminated fill is trucked off-site, and the tar is literally scorched out of it. A barrier wall will also be constructed at the site’s perimeter, facing the canal, Cross said. Tar recovery wells will also be installed, officials said. The design phase of the clean-up could take up to another year, Cross said. Remediation will follow and could last a year and a half, the DEC said. KeySpan spokesperson Karen Young said the company has not yet submitted remedial alternatives, as the investigation phase is still underway. It will take a year to review and finalize those alternatives, she said. No cost estimate is available yet, Young said. “It will be available when the plan is approved,” she said. The agency vowed to return to the board next month to provide another update. The agency is still awaiting the results of a sediment study of the canal; contamination here could have come from a host of sources other than the gas plant, Cross said. Cross said it was not his agency’s concern what will one day rise on the site, but he did preclude the arrival of a farm and single-family homes, as there would be a concern from the Department of Health that homeowners might dig where they ought not be digging. The clean-up, he continued, will support, “virtually any redevelopment.” Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6, said that next month, the board will begin discussing development options on the site, which in large part will dictate the remediation plan. “Part of the plan will be dependent on the ultimate end use,” he said. The Department of City Planning will play a significant role in the site’s future, which will be part of the agency’s broader look at the Gowanus area as a whole. If anything other than a park comes to the site, the agency will be charged with weighing the zoning change requests. Dr. John Collins, a senior risk assessor for GEI Consultants, contracted by KeySpan Energy to investigate contaminants on the site, has said that without exposure to the soil, humans—and local wildlife—are not at risk, since most of the contamination is not near the soil’s surface. For those with an interest in the neighborhood’s growth, the clean-up can’t come too soon. “You can understand a level of impatience,” said Salvatore ‘Buddy’ Scotto, founder of the Carroll Gardens Association and the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation. “We’ve been asking for a clean-up since 1968,” Scotto said. The DEC said it has received the message. “There’s quite a lot of interest to get this going…we hear you,” Cross said.
