If the recent town hall with Green Asphalt got you fired up to tackle environmental issues on a local level, you can devote your attention to these upcoming meetings.
First, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and the developer behind 29 Clay Street are hosting a community meeting to address remediation efforts at the site. The meeting is co-hosted by Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the Department of Health, alongside Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez.
29 Clay Street recently entered into the state’s brownfield cleanup program. Several contaminants of concern were found in soil, soil vapor, and groundwater samples, primarily trichloroethylene (TCE) from the site’s long industrial history. The site will eventually turn into a 14-story mixed-use building with condos and commercial space (refer to our May article for the full scoop on the site).
The September 29 meeting will take place at 6 pm. RSVP at a Zoom link here.Â
And on October 8, the Meeker Avenue Plume Community Advisory Group (CAG) is hosting an in-person meeting to share updates about the Meeker Avenue plume Superfund site. The meeting will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at Evergreen at St. Nick’s Alliance (2 Kingsland Ave.)
I applaud the newest residents of the Greenpoint community for speaking out and standing up with regard to environmental concerns in our neighborhood. But many of them do not fully realize the very long history & legacy of industrial pollution & contamination taht has afflicted Greenpoint, and the many hard & long battles that were waged in past years by Greenpointers. This, in a time when Greenpoint was for far too long a dumping ground , an area ignored by the City and red-lined in by banks. Unfortunately some pollution problems were swept under the rug in the midst of rampant gentrification & greed. Current environmental problems may only be the tip of the residual contamination iceberg upon which many new additions to our neighborhood were quickly built – sometimes built without adequate environmental investigation or remediation. And that’s not even considering the fact that our waterfront skyscrapers are sitting ducks for the ravages of another Super-Storm Sandy (….or worse), as well as rising sea levels.