By Gary Buiso
It’s not a 10-ton gorilla sitting in the back of the room, it’s 219 tons of live ammunition lurking at the bottom of Gravesend Bay—and the city is refusing to take it seriously, a state lawmaker charged last week. As part of its plan to bring a waste transfer station to 1824 Shore Parkway, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) intends to dredge the bay, creating more depth for trash barges to maneuver. The problem, according to Assemblymember William Colton, is that on March 6, 1954 a barge loading live ammunition from the aircraft carrier USS Bennington capsized in the bay, dumping 15,000 live anti-aircraft shells into the water. Dredging—already unpalatable to opponents who worry that toxic sediment will be disturbed, and distributed—may now prove dangerous. Colton said dredging could endanger “the entire community,” especially if shells are detonated too close to nearby the Bayside Fuel Depot or the 20,000 gallon fuel tank on the site. Colton and Rep. Vito Fossella urged the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the bay. In a letter to Fossella and Colton, Assistant Secretary of the Navy BJ Penn, had this to say about the matter: “My office has already assembled a team including our Naval historian, explosive ordnance experts, and the Army Corps of Engineers dredging experts, who are actively collecting this data.” “Although the federal government said it recovered the explosives soon after they were lost, our goal is to get the information we need to ease the concern of Gravesend residents,” Fossella said. While the U.S. Navy has vowed to study the matter, the city has not examined the situation closely enough, Colton insisted. “The Navy is treating this in a way that it should be treated—as something that should be looked at,” Colton said. “Two hundred and nineteen tons is something that should be looked at.” As for the DOS, Colton said, “I don’t think with all their million dollar consultants that they really looked at all the problems associated with this transfer station. They didn’t look for any problems.” “Don’t you think this is something the city should at least consider before they begin digging up Gravesend Bay?” In a recent statement to this paper, the agency said it sees, “no relation between Colton’s allegations and the proposed Southwest Brooklyn Marine Transfer Station.” “Based on a New York Times article of January 7, 1955, the Navy located and recovered the lost shells. This was confirmed by the Navy. The site where the shells were recovered is two miles away from the Southwest Brooklyn Marine Transfer Station and does not impact this project,” the DOS continued. The Southwest Marine Transfer Station is one of several waste transfer facilities planned throughout the city as part of the Department of Sanitation’s Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP). The state Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to grant a permit to allow the construction of this particular facility.
