An Education In Toxic Development

The mutations that Greenpoint gives rise to, as it transitions from an industrial working waterfront into a playground for the bourgeoisie, are nowhere on better display than in the streets of far North Brooklyn.

Here, atop and adjacent to some of the nation’s most polluted industrial wastelands are being erected some of the city’s priciest new developments. The proximity in time and space of these two urban phenomena has led to some interesting juxtapositions. Case in point: a new elementary school next to a superfund site.

The school comes at the behest of the city, which, given 10,000+ new units of housing, trumpeted the need for a new elementary school, and has been working with developers to locate and get one built.

The superfund comes courtesy of a plume of toxic waste, the legacy of Harte & Co., which manufactured vinyl siding and other plastic products in a block-wide building at Franklin and Dupont, through 2004.

In what I suppose we must consider a mistake, the company managed to spill some 60,000 gallons of phthalates and trichloroethylene sometime during their tenancy. Given the rather unsavory health effects of these chemicals — the former disrupts hormones and affects child development; the latter is a known carcinogen — the state chose to designate the area a superfund site.

Meanwhile, the City chose to designate much of the area abutting this superfund site as fertile soil for development, in their 2005 rezoning of North Brooklyn. The largest development to embrace this rezoning is the Greenpoint Landing project, emplacing half-a-dozen mega-towers comprising over 5000 new apartments within 22 acres strung along the shoulder of North Greenpoint. The development’s choppy real estate footprint mostly hugs the blocks fronting the water, but in one small area, the parcel jags Eastward, to butt up against the aforementioned nastiness of the NuHart Superfund site.

And that piece is where the new school has been proposed.

The outcry over this decision was immediate and fierce. More recently, a petition filed just last week by Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, received over 600 signatures, and focussed the attention of a phalanx of neighborhood activists. A meeting staged last week fired the first salvo of dissent, and encouraged City Council member Steve Levin to stage an additional meeting last night, convening the Nuhart site’s current developers, All Year Management, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to discuss plans for the site’s demolition, remediation, and subsequent development.

And that’s where it got interesting.

All Year Managment's foreman Eyal Amos broke down the company’s process and timeline for demolition of the building — a tricky procedure, given that the plume of phthalates is currently capped by a 3-foot slab of concrete in the building's basement, in something of a Chernobylesque solution. Bringing the building down without disturbing this slab and its underlying contents is a matter of some speculation, but Mr. Amos did throw out such reassurances as washing truck tires as they exit, and spraying the site down with water. That said, his frequent recitations of, “ we are developing a plan,” seemed to do little to reassure anxious neighbors.

Following Amos’ presentation, DEC remediation overseer Jane O’Connell took the stage to discuss the state’s role. Presenting handsome maps and official figures, Ms. O’Connell talked about how the state plans to direct the extraction and disposal of 60,000 gallons of toxic waste, in the process making clear one thing above all: cleanup is a bitch.

The problem stems in part from the fact that this sludge has little respect for the conventions of real estate. While liability obeys lot-lines — the superfund “site” is limited to the lot-lines of one parcel of the Nuhart site — the phthalates in question have oozed beyond those lines, seeping beneath Franklin and Dupont street, creeping southwest, towards the site of the proposed school.

Despite the assurances Ms. O’Connell put forth regarding monitoring wells, the plume’s current immobility, and the accuracy of the DEC’s mapping, in the end the impression given was that this is largely a process of improvisation.

For one thing, mapping a slow-moving subterranean puddle of sludge through multiple zones of ownership — city streets, private backyards, commercial parcels — is an inexact science at best. For another, much of the plume, and indeed the portion most threatening to the proposed school, underlays busy city streets, under which, in Ms. O’Connells words, “the utilities are like spaghetti,” precluding the ideal solution of ripping them up to evacuate the toxins. For stillanother, no-one really knows how this puddle of sludge will react to the earth-pounding stress of major construction atop and alongside it. And finally, there are the competing timelines, demands, and pressures: of the capital driving these developments; of the population currently exploding the neighborhood; of the slow-moving machinery of the State; and of the demolition and construction itself.

One does not envy the job of coordinating all these competing pressures; a job left largely to office of Councilman Levin. Speaking last, the Councilman made it clear that, while moving the school is a possibility, the law of unintended consequences makes it something shy of an easy decision.

“As a father of a one-and-a-half year old, who would presumably go to this school if it were built, I am directly concerned,” noted Levin. “But it is also worth considering that Greenpoint is full of pollution, and at least we know what we’re dealing with here. Not to mention that the money is allocated [from the School Construction Authority], and there aren’t a lot of alternatives, as far as local sites go.” That said, Levin made it clear that the issue was for the community to decide, and that he was merely there to play referee.

The most clarion call of the evening came from NAG board member and chemical activist Mike Schade, who has long served as the community’s preeminent watchdog of the Nuhart site. Citing both the direct but esoteric threat of the chemicals themselves, and the more pervasive but understandable anxiety of parents who must send their children to school in potential harm’s way, Schade stirred the crowd to its one moment of spontaneous applause with his insistence that we can do better. His advocacy -- clear-eyed and unequivocal -- served to remind that the fight must be fought on its own terms, rather than on those compromises imposed by the various competing interests overlaying the site.

If the meeting left many questions unanswered, it did manage to clarify the key issue driving future decisions. Namely, what do we owe our children, if not the best and safest education possible?

Anything less is just a mutation.

Those interested in being kept abreast of this issue should get in touch with both NAG or Council Member Levin'soffice.