Gowanus
Nina and I walked up to the Double D pool this am. The Fulton Works Manufactured Gas Plant was on this site. It then became a park in the 1930s.
I know that there is a significant amount of contamination under the cement and the plastic of the pool liner. I don’t know if that means it is dangerous to use the park. How does one manufactured gas plant site become a public park without any remediation whatsoever while another like Public Place can have such a different fate? And yet that site hasn’t been remediated either. It is fenced off, without progess year after year.
The area underneath the handball courts is also toxic.
After checking out the pool, we walked one block over to the canal.
In the water, we saw a crab moving along this tire. There also appeared to be an air conditioner and an old bird cage in the water next to the tire.
Turning to go back up Degraw Street, it already felt really hot.
On the Union Street Bridge, I think I saw a Black-Capped Heron. Quiet a morning for nature watching.
Sunset Park
I went to Sunset Park this am to photograph the Empire Electric site at 5100 1st Avenue.
This building, now abandoned, originally housed an electrical power system for the city’s trolleys.
Then in the 1950s it was purchased by Empire Electric and used for reconditioning electrical apparatus.
The building itself including the floors, walls, and ground beneath the building is all thought to be contaminated with PCBs.
Peter explained to me that PCBs were chosen to insulate around electricity because they are so stable. This is also what make them so difficult to get rid of. They do not easily degrade so they hang around in the environment.
Right next to this site between 52nd and 54th is an oil installation over what was Kings County Works Manufactured Gas Plant.
Bush Terminal, Sunset Park
Nina and I photographed at the Bush Terminal in Sunset Park on Saturday. Manufactured goods used to move around the yards by rail to the piers and then out across the world.
Now things are pretty quiet. Quiet enough for raccoons.
As you come out to the waterfront, there is a monument to four firefighters that died on 9/11. In front of this statue is Upper New York Bay.
The old piers, rotting and contaminated, are now fenced off. In the 70s, hazardous waste was dumped there and now these old piers are in the State Superfund Program. This area is also in the Environmental Restoration Program and so appears twice on the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Environmental Site Remediation Database.
Boats docked here in what must be relatively deep water.
A rail went all the way out to the end of the piers inside the now brownfield area. Another rail still operates on the 51st street side.
This area is now going to be developed as a park. At least so it was announced on July 22nd in the Sunset Park Waterfront Vision Plan as mentioned in Brownstoner.com. There were bulldozers there and it looked like work had started. Theoretically, there is $37 million is slated to build the Bush Terminal Piers Park, which will add 22 acres of open space for recreation. however, what happened to earlier money dedicated to remediating this brownfield? Whatever part of this plan that can improve the old rail system and reduce truck traffic is good. It is unclear to me what kind of remediation is planned. Digging up the soil a few feet and trucking it to Pennsylvania?
