Gowanus Canal Cleanup Will Continue Despite Threat From Trump Budget, Agency Says

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — Funding for the Gowanus Canal cleanup will continue despite cuts threatened by President Donald Trump's budget plan, Patch has been told.

Trump's proposal would slash more than $300 million from cleanup efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency's "Superfund" sites -- which include the badly polluted Brooklyn canal.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and other local politicians warned that those budget cuts could cripple efforts in Gowanus and project manager Christos Tsiamis seemed to confirm those fears when he told the project's community advisory committee last week that federal funding had dried up and cleanup would stop April 18 if no money could be found.

"There’s need of money and without that money nothing can be done, that is the truth," Tsiamis said, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

"We have made a request for additional funds to continue oversight and the silence has been deafening. We haven’t heard anything yet."

Tsiamis said he asked for between $400,000 and $500,000 from the agency but hadn't heard back. That which would cut his six-person team down to just himself, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

"Without the funds to fund my team, the project is going to slow down significantly, there’s no other way," he said. "Instead of taking six months, it will take two years or something like that to complete the design."

But in an email, EPA spokeswoman Mary Mears told Patch that isn't the case.

"Work on the Gowanus is expected to continue using funding that the EPA already has and, as is the goal of the Superfund program, relying on the work being conducted by those parties responsible for pollution at the site," Mears wrote.

"The regional office has not requested additional funding from EPA’s national office."

Mears said that orders are in place to complete "design work and a dredging and capping pilot" and that "work is expected to begin later this year on the pilot in the 4th Street Turning Basin."

The EPA estimates that dredging work will be completed in 2022.

Lead photo by Steven Pisano/Flickr