Preserving Livable Neighborhoods: Gowanus Canal

Brad strongly supports EPA Superfund designation and cleanup of the Gowanus Canal. The Canal – including the sediment at the bottom, the water, and the land around it – is highly toxic and demands comprehensive cleanup. Brad supports the listing of the Canal on the EPA’s National Priorities List so that we can turn the Gowanus Canal area from a toxic remnant of mistreatment of the environment into a sustainable community resource for decades to come.

The EPA’s Superfund process can best provide the framework, research and analysis, assessment of responsibility, coordination, and necessary resources to clean the Canal. The complexity of this process also demands coordinated action by Federal, State, and City government, and both public and private actors.

Read Brad's full statement on Superfund designation of the Gowanus Canal.

The opportunity to renew the area around the Gowanus Canal provides a chance to invigorate our community in a way that respects the people who live and work here.

Brad has helped to convene the "Gowanus Summit," a coalition of civic, housing, labor, manufacturing, planning, and environmental groups to create and fight for a detailed platform for responsible redevelopment – one that would require affordable housing, keep existing good jobs and create new ones, respect neighborhood context, promote the genuine mix of uses that gives the Gowanus area its character, and improve the infrastructure and environmental quality of the Canal and the surrounding area.

Learn more about the Gowanus Summit.

The Public Place site in particular presents an extraordinary opportunity to get redevelopment right, with a safe and well-monitored cleanup, affordable housing at a wide range of incomes, open space along the Canal, and a range of neighborhood-oriented retail and community facilities. Brad is excited about the Fifth Avenue Committee's plans for the site.

At the same time, we must limit out-of-scale development in Carroll Gardens by downzoning its residential streets. Brad is pleased that the NYC Department of City Planning has agreed to move forward with this effort.