this incinerator plant, shut down in 1994, is on the site of the proposed Marine transfer station. but there are still some lingering issues from the last waste disposal system on the site! 

Assemblyman William Colton (D-Brooklyn) has announced that he and nationally acclaimed environmental attorney Joel Kupferman have called on the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare Gravesend Bay ‘Graveyard Bay,’ citing over 30 years of illegal incineration at the site of the former Southwest Brooklyn incinerator, Shore Parkway and Bay 41st Street. The incinerator was torn down in 2004 and the Sanitation Department plans to build and operate a waste transfer station at the exact site.

 

Both Colton and Kupferman are urging the EPA to declare the Southwest Brooklyn site a Superfund, a legal term that refers to sites that have fallen victim to environmental neglect. The Superfund program began in 1980 when Congress passed legislation authorizing the EPA to locate, investigate, and clean up the most hazardous sites nationwide.

 

By placing the former incinerator site on the National Priorities List and declaring it a Superfund site, the federal EPA has the authority to implement a comprehensive environmental assessment and remediation program for the environmentally sensitive area. The clean-up effort would be undertaken through a partnership between federal, state, and city agency officials working with local community organizations.

 

“Nothing short of an enormous environmental assessment and remediation program can help undo the damage that an illegal incinerator has done to Gravesend Bay for over 30 years,” asserted Assemblyman Colton, who has spearheaded the effort to stop the New York City Department of Sanitation’s plan to operate a waste facility at the foot of Gravesend Bay, Brooklyn. Many in the community strongly believe that harmful toxins released by the former incinerator seeped not only spewed into the air, but also seeped into the adjacent bay.

 

A recent study compiled by Dr. Peddrick Weis of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, confirms what Colton describes as an “environmental ticking bomb” in Gravesend Bay. Dr. Weis’ study revealed alarmingly elevated amounts of mercury and lead from surface samples taken in Gravesend Bay. In his report, Dr. Weis referred to the samples as ‘black mayonnaise” and warned the city of the dangers of dredging in the bay. Toxins dredged and dug up in the bay would be stirred like a toxic stew and pushed into neighboring bodies of water such as Coney Island beach, Lower Bay, and beyond.