Old-School Politics Meet New Kings Democrats
By Katie DeWitt
Now that the Democratic primary season is over, two young progressive Brooklynites have found a lesser-known September primary election to start campaigning for the Kings County Democratic Committee – and for precisely the reason that few of even the most politically active residents have heard of it.
Matt Cowherd and Rachel Lauter met in a Williamsburg basement at a Brooklyn for Barack organizational meeting last year, and both have volunteered for Obama's campaign in various capacities. They petitioned during the New York marathon, participated in get-out-the-vote drives, and served as liaisons between various Brooklyn-based political groups. Ever searching for a new forum through which to be heard, they discovered an opportunity at the most local level imaginable.
In theory, New York City’s Republican and Democratic County Committees serve as a recruiting ground for candidates, the vehicle for party endorsement, a center for voter outreach, a funding mechanism for campaigns and a source of political appointments. However, Cowherd and Lauter argue that in reality, these political bodies are largely inactive and ineffective; hence, they need to create the New Kings Democrats to fill the gap.
"The more and more I tried to investigate the local political structure in Brooklyn, the more unclear it became," Cowherd said. "There was this huge disconnect between these reform-minded progressive people in Brooklyn and the traditional machine, and I thought that was weird."
The only organization of its kind in all five boroughs, the New Kings Democrats aims to recruit and prepare individuals to run for Kings County Democratic Committee in order to increase transparency and participation in local democracy. The group's first official meeting was held on Thursday, May 15.
Cowherd and Lauter have set what they call a modest goal of getting 50 new members elected to the Kings County Democratic Committee this September. This is only one percent of the approximately 5,000 seats on the Committee, but 40% of these seats are currently vacant, and few of the seats that do get filled are through contested elections.
The New Kings Democrats are not necessarily looking to unseat current committee members. They hope to increase overall participation on the Committee and activate the standing committees that have the potential to help shape policy and election outcomes.
"People may initially see what we're doing as challenging [current Committee Chairman] Vito Lopez, but we see our organization as opening up the process, recognizing the problems with the current system and coming up with creative solutions to fix them," Lauter said.
Cowherd and Lauter have not yet met with any current committee members, but they said they are hoping to do so once they have identified their candidates. Lopez, who represents Bushwick and Williamsburg in the New York State Assembly, said he does not know very much about the New Kings Democrats, but he welcomes anyone who wants to get involved in the democratic process. By the same token, he reasoned from experience that it is impractical to have thousands of people at every Committee meeting.
"After the election, we hold a meeting that everyone attends where we implement the by-laws, and from then on, there is an Executive Board that meets regularly," Lopez said. "It's absurd to have monthly meetings with two to three thousand people, and I don't even know anywhere in Brooklyn that could fit that many."
As long as there is a new critical mass large enough to make some noise, Cowherd and Lauter are confident that the New Kings Democrats can help steer the committee toward increased accountability and transparency, democratic principles which Lauter does not believe the Committee has been representing.
The New Kings Democrats is working closely with Grassroots Initiative, a nonpartisan nonprofit election committee that produced a report in 2005 called "Democracy Takes a Nap: Party Politics in New York's Five Boroughs." While the New Kings Democrats are doing all of their own recruiting and outreach, they have asked the more established and experienced Grassroots Initiative to help them train the candidates they have secured. If successful, they also hope to replicate their model across all five boroughs under the umbrella of the Initiative in the upcoming years.
Councilwoman Diana Reyna represents the 53rd Assembly District and sits on the New York State Democratic Committee, which is traditionally more active and powerful than the county committees. She applauds the New Kings Democrats’ goal to increase participation at the county level.
"There is so much potential within our communities, and anything that engages people in a truly meaningful, participatory way in politics from the grassroots level is a positive thing for our future," Reyna said.
As Lauter will be attending law school next year, she has not signed up as a candidate herself, but Cowherd plans to run for a Committee seat in Greenpoint this fall. He is encouraging his fellow candidates to run in a district near where they either work or live and to start talking to their constituents about their candidacy – even if the race will be uncontested – as soon as possible.
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Deconstructing the War on (Truck) Terror
By Adam Klasfeld
What does the Greenpoint community’s effort to stop overweight trucks from illegally using side roads have to do with a bridge collapse in Minnesota, George Orwell’s 1984, and the Department of Defense?
It depends on whom you ask.
Over the past two years, the Department of Transportation has been testing a new truck monitoring system built by American Traffic Solutions, Inc. A combination of cameras and sensors, the technology videotapes and weighs trucks driving down unauthorized roads. The DOT already has made use of legislation allowing it to install the cameras without permission, and it will add weight sensors within the next month.
According to a press release, Assemblyman Lentol considers it a “dream” that will solve a problem that has followed him for over three decades. Residents have long complained that the noisy trucks speed down small roads, spew pollution, damage infrastructure, and make streets unsafe for children. At one point, the homeowners got so disgusted that they formed a human chain to block traffic and send a message to the truckers. Unfortunately, the impact of the gesture was short-lived.
After grassroots efforts failed, the district tried stronger deterrents. Local police precincts regularly set up comprehensive truck traffic crackdowns, in which they inspected weight and emissions, but the problem was too big to enforce. The DOT laid tubing across the streets, and the rigs detected overweight vehicles based on how much air escaped. That was expensive, however, because the tubes constantly needed replacement.
While the department is looking for stronger deterrents, none of these measures get at the reason the trucks are using the side roads. A 2003 study conducted by the DOT shows that many of the routes are dangerous and congested. “In Brooklyn, most of the accidents occurred on the truck routes,” the report says. “Accidents were especially heavy in the northern part of Brooklyn, near and on the through routes between Manhattan and Queens… There were 640 truck accidents in Brooklyn during the two-month period covered by the data obtained from the NYPD.”
CB1 Transportation Chair Teresa Toro commented that this study has been “languishing,” and she complained that the DOT constantly says it “isn’t ready” to discuss implementing their recommendations for the roads. The only preventative action being taken is educational outreach to the companies to inform them of truck routes and regulations.
“The designated routes are reinforced and wider,” explains Amy Cleary, Lentol’s spokeswoman, “but they might not be the fastest routes or the shortest routes. Part of the effort is to make the truckers informed of where they are allowed to go, but part of it is that they want to get home to their families. So they take the shortcuts.” Cleary did not mention any proposals to make truck routes quicker and more effective, but she still insisted that “everything” had been tried before the cameras and sensors were installed.
The strategy seemed more focused on going after the violators than addressing the root causes. The press release quoted Lentol as saying, “Unfortunately, you cannot put a cop on every corner.”
Is it really “unfortunate” that every corner of the neighborhood is not under police supervision? Are the only acceptable options toward overweight freight trucks monitoring, martial law, or inaction? If Greenpoint residents don’t give up some of their civil liberties, will the trucker terrorists win?
The rhetorical parallels with the War on Terror are not only provocative. In the same press release, Lentol boasted that the technology “was adapted from that used by the Department of Defense.” It turns out that he may have been wrong about that. “We are unaware and not involved with any DoD applications of this product,” stated Josh Weiss, ATS spokesman. Still, it’s telling that the supposed military use of this technology is being highlighted in order to sell it to the community.
In the war on illegal truck traffic, a legitimate danger is magnified in order to rush through historically unpopular measures. Almost everyone agrees that the trucks on side roads threaten safety, the environment, and infrastructure. Yet spokeswoman Cleary did not have specific information to assess the level of the hazards. “Well, there was a bridge that collapsed in Minnesota,” she stated, “It’s that kind of thing that we’re worried about.” As for crashes, she said, “I don’t have the statistics.”
As with the War on Terrorism, the assessment of the problem and the solutions has been outsourced to private contractors with minimal oversight and accountability. Cleary said she didn’t know the projected costs of the project or even what had been spent already. When I tried to find out from the ATS spokesman, he suggested that I submit a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request at the DOT’s contracts office. Until one is processed, nobody will know how much taxpayer money is funding the installation without consent or notification.
Cleary claims the project will “pay for itself” once the DOT starts collecting money from summonses. In fact, people have made the same arguments about red light cameras, for better or worse. Conventionally, every time a speeding ticket from one of these cameras is paid, the state keeps most of the revenues, but the contractor also gets a percentage. Critics argue that even if the red light cameras are invasive and ineffective in certain areas, the financial incentives for both the public and private sectors make them unstoppable.
Call it the traffic enforcement-industrial-complex.
(One striking example of this comes from one of American Traffic Solution’s biggest competitors in this industry, Affiliate Computer Services (ACS), which is affiliated with America’s largest weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. When a speeding violation caught by a camera can indirectly finance a war halfway across the world, the saying “All politics is local” has been proven surreally prescient.)
Traffic enforcement cameras have been endlessly debated and studied, but weight sensors for trucks are a new frontier in the technology, according to ATS’s spokesman. In that case, the company has found the perfect spot for this pilot program. Greenpoint’s problems with overweight trucks illegally using roads that cannot accommodate them are so complex and difficult that even some progressives are supporting it.
“We're drowning in truck traffic, with no end in sight,” says Teresa Toro, the former transportation chair of CB1, who campaigned to make the area safer for bikes and pedestrians. “Using technology like this to help enforce truck traffic laws will genuinely help us clear up these big rigs from local streets.”
In any event, the issue requires more transparency and sober analysis than it has been given. Traffic enforcement cameras are still a controversial issue throughout America and England, and our district happens to be the laboratory for its expansion. The public did not have the opportunity to decide on the measure, but it deserves the opportunity to be informed now that the wheels (figuratively speaking) are in motion.
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Hillary and the Hasidim
By Joseph Wendelken
Through all the courting of fickle donors and glad-handing from coast to coast, Sen. Hillary Clinton always knew that she had friends back at home.
She scored a decided victory in her party’s presidential primary in New York State on February 5, that superist of Tuesdays. She also bested her adversary, Sen. Barack Obama, in Brooklyn, despite the different virtual garrisons for thousands of his young, eager foot soldiers in the borough (including the indefatigable folks at BrooklynForBarack.org and the clever activists at AudacityOfParkSlope.org). In Williamsburg’s two Assembly districts, Clinton won by 25 percent points.
A staffer for the sometimes-floundering Clinton campaign listed reform-minded Jewish voters in the state and Hispanics in the borough among her loyalists.
But few constituencies in New York, and certainly no group in the North Brooklyn, remain as unflinchingly loyal to their junior senator as Williamsburg’s Hasidic Jews, according to many both inside and outside of that community.
Before Clinton’s 2000 senate run, longtime political powerbroker and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), himself an orthodox Jew, opened doors for her in the state’s different Jewish communities. But in few locales did she need more doors opened than in Williamsburg, where two or three leaders serve as gatekeepers to the rest of the Satmar Hasidic community. With the blessing of these gatekeepers comes near unanimous electoral support from the Williamsburg Hasidim.
“We vote as a community,” said Rabbi David Neiderman, the executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, which provides myriad social and housing services to the Hasidim. “This is not about individual people’s needs, this is about the community’s needs. We understand what our needs are and we look together at who is addressing those needs.”
Samuel Weider, the editor of Der Blatt (“The Page”), a Rutledge Street-based, Yiddish newspaper, estimated that 90 percent of the Williamsburg Hasidim that vote follow community leaders’ dictates. Other interviewed members of the Hasidim provided similar estimates.
In an interview in his Penn Street office, Neiderman explained that a group of 15 community leaders decide whom the Hasidim should support in upcoming city, state and federal elections.
In making these decisions, members of this unnamed group of 15 do not act as ideologues, but rather ask the questions their families and neighbors need answered, he added.
“Where are families going to live? How is bread going to be put on the table? How is the rent going to be paid?” he asked as he stood over a fax machine with his desk phone at one ear and a cellular phone at the other. “Those are the core issues, and we believe that she will be extremely responsive to them.”
As a senator, Neiderman said, she did as much.
“They like her because of their stances socially,” said David Chill, a political science professor at Touro College, a Jewish-sponsored institution with campuses throughout the city and in Israel. A Williamsburg native, Chill added: “They’re very much a minority in the sense that their needs are of the community. They have many children and they don’t have the means.”
Her economic policy even won over Hasidic voters who were less enamored with her. “I don’t like her at all,” said a Hasidic merchant on Lee Avenue, who voted for Clinton on Super Tuesday. “I couldn’t believe that I was pressing that button, but the interest of the community is number one. People are not rich here. They have 10, 12 kids; some use food stamps, Medicare.”
The merchant, who requested anonymity because his views differed from those of the area’s Hasidic leaders, said that he took issue with Clinton’s stances on “moral issues,” a statement he would not develop further.
Isaac Weinberger, a Division Avenue resident and father of 12, said that her pro-choice and pro-gay rights stances trouble him and many of his Hasidic neighbors. But, a spirited Clinton supporter, he added, “You can’t find a candidate that agrees on every issue you have. That doesn’t mean that she won’t work for you as president.”
In explaining his support, Weinberger mentioned both Clinton and her husband’s support for Hasidic Jews throughout the state, including in Rockland County and Orange County, NY. Weinberger spoke of Hillary Clinton’s efforts to improve schools in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic enclave in Orange County.
In his final days in the Oval Office, President Bill Clinton commuted the prison sentences of four Hasidic men from a Hasidic enclave in nearby New Square, N.Y. His move to grant clemency to the felons prompted accusations that he engaged in vote trading for his campaigning wife, though federal prosecutors eventually announced in 2002 that they found no wrongdoing.
While some Hasidic Jews, like Weinberger, find some of Clinton’s stances on ‘morality’ issues objectionable, many contended that her gender matters little to the Hasidim.
“We’re much more likely to elect a woman than the rest of America,” said Israel Abraham, a Hasidic, 30-year Williamsburg resident.
However, Der Blatt and Der Yid, another Williamsburg-based, weekly Jewish newspaper, along with Hamodia, a national Jewish daily newspaper, do not print photographs of Clinton or other females.
To avoid mixing of the genders, female members of the Clinton campaign staff held at the back of a procession that moved through Williamsburg as part of a Clinton rally on February 3. (The few austerely dressed women in Williamsburg approached during the reporting for this piece, many in apparent preparation for Purim, turned away unresponsively). The candidate did not attend the rally.
Despite its photograph policy, Der Blatt published an editorial on January 31, 2008 stating, “Hasidic leaders from New York State urge you to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton and not to take it for granted. Her office is always open for any Jewish organization. What she needs is our help.”
Wieder maintained that the nonprofit Der Blatt did not endorse Clinton, as it never endorses candidates for office. But he said that she has the newspaper’s support because Hasidic voters “just care about the issues.”
He added that because of modesty issues, the newspaper very rarely runs pictures of males either and that it has never featured a photograph of Obama, despite the articles about the primaries in almost every edition.
“Maybe there is a single guy somewhere (among the Hasidim who finds her gender problematic),” he said. “But if the leaders say something, we have confidence in them.”
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The Death and Life of the Industrial Business Zone
By Katie DeWitt
It is 7:55 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and Leah Archibald and her cheery staff at the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corporation (EWVIDCO) are thrilled when the coffee arrives just before the guests.
“The coffee is here; now we can get started,” she announces, ensuring that those who have been around all morning helping set up get first dibs before she pours herself a cup. As the local business owners and event sponsors begin to trickle into the conference room, she greets them all by first name with a handshake or a hug and then points them directly toward the coffee and breakfast.
Archibald, Executive Director of EWVIDCO, is hosting an “Incentives and Energy” breakfast to help raise awareness among local businesses about the types of government incentives and energy programs they might qualify for because of their location in an Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) – or Ombudsmen Area, among other City and State designations.
Her organization, which has been in place since 1982, is one of many local development groups that received a boost in 2006, when the Bloomberg administration identified 16 of the most productive manufacturing zones in New York City to be designated IBZs. Each IBZ is administered by the City in partnership with organizations such as EWVIDCO.
“Our staff is much better trained than ever before about available incentives and programs for local businesses,” Archibald said. “Most of our businesses are too small to hire consultants to help them figure this stuff out, and we are now able to offer these services for free.”
EWVIDCO oversees both the North Brooklyn and Greenpoint Williamsburg IBZs and Ombudsman Areas, which include over 800 businesses. Businesses that choose to locate within an IBZ are offered a one-time tax credit of $1,000 per employee, as well as the real estate certainty that they reside in an area where the City has committed not to support the rezoning of industrial property for residential use.
These zones, and the larger Ombudsmen Areas, are also eligible for expanded assistance services and incentive programs that are intended to make it easier for industrial businesses to operate in a market that heavily favors residential and commercial development.
Jerry Staub, who runs a tool-distributing company in the Greenpoint Williamsburg IBZ, said receiving the designation is what ultimately deterred him from moving his company to New Jersey.
“Bloomberg has been particularly good on helping out industrial businesses from my perspective,” Staub said, “and EWVIDCO has helped us find the tools to reduce costs and take advantage of opportunities that we don’t have time to seek out ourselves.”
The creation of the IBZs lies in the core of Bloomberg’s industrial retention policy. Their identification came out of a former In-Place Industrial Park (IPIP) designation that lasted through several administrations in a much looser form. The current Mayor’s allocation of resources to the IBZ program represents a consensus on the areas of the city that should be preserved for industrial use.
But at this point, the IBZs are no more than a mayoral policy initiative, due to expire with the end of Bloomberg’s term in January 2009. For Archibald, this would mean the end of EWVIDCO as she knows it.
“If [the IBZ designation] were taken away, our organization would lose almost all of its operational funding,” she said.
A movement has arisen to institutionalize the IBZs both at the local and citywide level. Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), a North Brooklyn-based community organization that advocates for environmental justice and smart development, is working with the New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN) on a proposal to implement Industrial Employment Districts (IEDs) through zoning legislation.
The Districts would require special permits for uses such as hotels, superstores, and offices in light and heavy manufacturing zones, where they are currently allowed as of right.
“In terms of industrial retention, the city has delivered on the money portion of its policy, and we really like the fact that the Administration decided to set aside certain areas to preserve industry,” said NAG member Michael Freedman.
Freedman suggested that this loophole allowing incongruous uses in M-1 zones may have been an oversight by the city, which was so focused on preventing residential conversion that it did not anticipate other ways the industrial fabric areas like Greenpoint Williamsburg could be significantly altered, such as turning the area into a nightlife hotspot.
But one longtime Williamsburg resident is more skeptical. Philip DePaolo, who has been an active community member since he moved here in the late 1970s, said what was once an active industrial neighborhood with walk-to-work residents with good jobs and benefits has dwindled down to a threadbare industrial core.
“Even in the IBZ area, there are a lot of empty factories,” DePaolo said. “You walk down these streets, and it’s obvious they are going to become high-end housing within the next five years. All these new people of wealth that move here aren’t going to want to see empty factories. They call that blight.”
If IED legislation were put in place to effectively institutionalize – and improve upon – the current IBZs, NYIRN Executive Director Adam Friedman believes this would send a signal to the market as to what kind of uses can survive in the area. Although there would still be real estate pressure and turnover, it would emerge from competition among industrial businesses, rather than the residential or commercial market, as DePaolo fears.
“The truth is that the market has its own forces but also plays by the rules that are set, and what we’re talking about in this rezoning is setting new rules,” Friedman said.
NAG and NYIRN have had preliminary conversations with City Council members about the IED legislation as a way for the current administration to leave a legacy in industrial preservation, but no measures have yet been formalized. In the meantime, local businesses still have at least a year and a half to take advantage of the programs and incentives currently in place.
“Most of us are so busy with our day-to-day operations that we don’t really have time to think that far ahead,” said Babu Khaifan, who runs a signs and decal corporation in Williamsburg. “Until recently, I didn’t even know about the tax abatements and other programs I could qualify for, but Leah and her staff have really brought this place to life.”
It must be something in the coffee.
Check out: www.ewvidco.com/ for more information.
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Domino Effect
What the Conversion of the Domino Sugar Factory Means for Williamsburg
By Anna Vallye
Well, it’s finally here, the answer to the question that has been on our minds since 2004, when the Domino Sugar Refinery ceased its factory operations: What will happen to the beloved Domino buildings?
It should surprise no one. Just months after the factory closed, its building complex, with the 11.5-acre waterfront site on which it stands, was sold to the partner developers C.P.C. Resources and Isaac Katan. Their plans for the New Domino, a 2,200-unit condominium complex designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners, were revealed in detail for the first time in February.
The development is massive: nine towers, ranging in height from 20 to 40 stories. The scale is especially striking in relation to the existing urban fabric that, due to its relative distance from the L train, has so far escaped the vigorous residential development in areas to the north. This is our first intimation of changes just around the corner; while they show the Domino site, the architects’ renderings make visible the Williamsburg of the imminent future.
However, the proposed additions to the only landmarked portion of the sugar factory complex - the brick Romanesque Revival building of the refinery - have proven the most controversial. Designed by Beyer Blinder Belle, the repurposing of the building would include a five-story glass addition for penthouse apartments. This rooftop structure has drawn the ire of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, whose members have called it “awful” and “architecturally incongruous.” (The L.P.C. must approve any alterations to the building, and no date has yet been set for a vote.)
The architects’ task was to balance the developer’s prerogative of maximum profit against the constraints of landmark preservation. Their solution is uninspired: the glass box is too big in relation to the rest of the building, rentable volume trumps proportional harmony too obviously.
But the design concept itself is flawed. It is, of course, the other glass box that is wedded in our minds to the Domino – the multicolored one sitting on top of the square tower to the south, right above the “Domino Sugar” sign; the one that has been a fixture of the Williamsburg waterfront for as long as most of us can remember, beacon-like when lit up, mysterious in the day; the one that is about to be razed, together with the tower and the sign. Beyer Blinder Belle would give us the market-rate version.
Similarly, two large bay windows added to the south façade are meant to recall the conveyor bridges connecting the refinery to the tower – while maximizing desirable river views. In attempting to echo what it will replace while prioritizing profitability, the design offends by making the ongoing transformation of the industrial waterfront only too apparent, and reminding us only more of what will soon be lost.
The skyline is the marker of this city’s identity. Just think of the fraught Liebeskind Freedom Tower, or the Twin Towers before it. Williamsburg’s skyline is one of the new frontiers in the Bloomberg-sponsored transformation of New York from the capital of business and finance to a high-end residential community. The main front of this campaign is the waterfront. Everywhere, from the West Side Piers, to the South Bronx, to Red Hook, the industrial waterfront is being converted to leisure and recreational uses. This is perhaps inevitable, and not at all bad – for those who get to live here. Much on the same model, the New Domino will provide a public park along the water, where there is currently no public access. But who is the public that will ultimately benefit from the changes proceeding today under the slogan of “public access”?
A suggestive answer is offered by the ever-growing row of luxury condominium towers facing the river on Manhattan’s West Side. Designed by world-class architects, many of these are more attractive than Viñoly’s New Domino grove; and they elicit little dismay. But both the Manhattan and the Williamsburg versions are the new face of the city as seen in its skyline. In 1900, the architect Cass Gilbert memorably called the New York skyscraper “a machine that makes the land pay.” Today, these machines are no longer corporate, they are residential; and this represents the changing character of the city as a whole.
The same things that make New York exciting make it brutal. The free market’s accelerated pace of change is rendered here directly on the urban fabric; people get caught up in it. (It should be remembered that, when the Domino factory closed, 200 workers lost their jobs, one committed suicide. While the Manhattan “starchitect” buildings transform New York’s ordinary atrocity into spectacle, the Viñoly designs dissemble before it. The staggered towers with their mosaic of brick and glass cladding and glass tops try to respond to the local context of brick low-rises and appease the local community. This is ultimately futile, as neither will be here for very long.
Ultimately, the aspect of the New Domino proposal with the greatest promise for a truly lasting impact on the neighborhood is the 30% of units it has pledged for low- and moderate-income families. If successful, it could become a model other developers will follow here. The 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning does not include affordable housing mandates, only a voluntary program that gives developers incentives – including the ability to build taller and bigger – for making up to one-third of units affordable. It is a jolt to catch in the New Domino proposal a glimpse of what the Williamsburg of the near future will look like. But there is a struggle going on behind the facades, with the near future of the Williamsburg community at stake.
Anna Vallye is a Ph.D. candidate in architectural history and an instructor at Columbia University. Most recently, she wrote for the Berlin - New York Dialogues: Building in Context exhibition at the Center for Architecture.
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Activists Take Steam Out of Gas Plant Plan
By Marc Gabriel Amigone
When you think of what Greenpoint and Williamsburg need, what comes to mind first: a 28-acre waterfront park or a power plant? If you went with park, the elected officials, community boards, residents and activists of the area agree with you.
North Brooklyn got one step closer to adding Bushwick Inlet Park to its résumé when the State officially killed TransGas Energy's plan to build a $2 billion power plant on eight acres of land along the East River between North 12th and 14th Streets on Kent Avenue. The State siting board put the nail in the coffin on March 20th, due to the fact their proposal failed to meet health and environmental requirements. TransGas has tried to push through their power-plant agenda several times in the past, most recently 2002.
While this was a decisive victory for the park, TransGas Energy (TGE) is expected not to give up yet. Legal counsel to GWAPP (Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning) and Open Space Alliance board member Adam Perlmutter broke down the legal wrangling still left to unfold, saying, "TransGas has filed a petition for a rehearing. The City and Columbia Environmental Law Clinic compile their briefs in opposition in 10 days, on which the board will rule in 90 days."
If and when TGE's appeal fails, they then have thirty days to file an appeal with the appellate division second department on the grounds that the Environmental Siting Board used its discretion in an arbitrary or capricious fashion. Perlmutter said that TGE's chances of success at this point are extremely slim. "Those are extremely high standards to meet,” he asserted. “To say we don't expect TransGas to prevail doesn't convey how strongly I believe they're really not going to get anywhere."
Steve Hindy, OSA Board-member and Founder of Brooklyn Brewery, threw a party to celebrate the community's victory over TransGas. Community activists in attendance included Joe Vance, a prominent Williamsburg Architect and GWAPP and OSA Board-member. He commented on the long fight the community has undertaken with TransGas at which he's been at the front. "It started back in 2000 when Con Edison tried to build a power plant in Greenpoint,” he recalled, “and that's when GWAPP was formed, Greenpoint Williamsburg Against Power Plants."
Gerry Esposito, District Manager of Community Board One was also there to celebrate. His comments reflected the battle that lies ahead: "We're very fortunate that we won the battle, we're lucky to have a community to have fought so hard. Now the battle to be fought is to convince the city to volunteer the necessary money to build the park."
One can't help but admire that resolve and generosity with which people in the community lend their time and money towards fighting special interests such as TransGas.
The victory was largely possible because there is more solidarity today than ever before. "Before 2000, there were certainly six or seven groups in the community doing good things, but the problem was none of them were united,” recalls GWAPP board member Joe Vance. “There were too many little voices. The officials at the time really used that. They would say, 'Oh well, we don't see a consensus.' And that was really when we got together and decided we had to work together."
Vance was not the only person to notice this trend.
"I don't think that another community that hadn't been as organized through formal organizations and long-term planning process taking control of its land use would fare as well as we have,” Adam Perlmutter commented. “It's not just GWAPP and others; it’s the community boards 197 planning process [and] the fact that the community has taken it upon itself to become extremely sophisticated in the area environmental protection and land use. The proof is in the pudding."
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Sewage Ingenuity: Swimming Pool or Affordable Housing in Old Tank?
By Adam Klasfeld
This is how bad the open space situation has gotten in North Brooklyn. Locals are fiercely debating whether to turn the Greenpoint Sludge Tank, a former human waste storage facility, into a swimming pool or affordable housing.
According to local activist Mike Hoffman, the tank formerly converted raw sewage into fertilizer and shipped the product to Texas cattle farms. Hoffman quipped that knowing this information has stopped him from ever enjoying liver from the Lone Star State.
After the tank stopped operating, architect Meta Brunzema had an idea to convert it into a community swimming pool and recreational center, but Hoffman thinks that idea stinks. “It can also be turned into a restaurant,” he said. “If Long Island City already has the Crab House, why can’t we have the Crap House?” He argued that the walls of the tank were not lined, and no amount of scrubbing would clean what permeated the concrete. Instead, he wants affordable housing in its place.
Hoffman said that the developer Park Tower Group planned to demolish the site and construct an apartment with 2,000 units over the rubble. Still, even if the building happens according to plan, Hoffman claims that only twenty percent are called affordable housing. Of those, only half of those will be reserved for current Greenpoint residents.
Even the “affordable” units are prohibitive to some low income residents. In this case, it means between $1,300 and $1500 a month. “I know I couldn’t afford it,” Hoffman admits.
In a phone interview, Park Tower Group's senior vice president Allen Dzbanek denied any knowledge of the development.
“They might be saying that because they’re not going to push it,” Hoffman said. “My wife Laura has seen their blueprints. The lease will be up by 2014, who knows if they will do anything with it after.”
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Inside Greenpoint’s Million-Dollar Public Restroom
By Adam Klasfeld
As former organizer of the Barge Park Kids Softball League, Mike Hoffman begged the city to build restrooms near the field because the children had no place to relieve themselves between innings. “It is an embarrassment to city agencies that people are left with no other choice than to urinate on our precious trees,” Hoffman complained on a community message board at the time. After three years of delay, the children’s bladders couldn’t take it any longer, and the league closed.
Now that the team’s disbanded, a city official finally promised him to build him a “comfort station” – for $850,000.
Phil Abramson, a spokesman for the Department of Parks & Recreation, confirmed over the phone that new toilets are in the works. He could not give an exact budget, but he stated that public restrooms average that expense. The amenities that come with that price tag include men’s and women’s restrooms as well as storage space for park crews. Abramson did not believe the price tag was excessive.
The people of the San Francisco Bay Area disagree. Last May, the Oakland Tribune complained about an “expensive” public toilet at less than a fourth of the price: $200,000.
Hoffman also believes that a bathroom this expensive is wasteful, and he wanted to revitalize the park if he had less lavish latrines draining the budget. He mentioned that the playground had a sandpit, monkey bars, and swings when he moved into the neighborhood over twenty years ago. “All that stuff is gone now,” he shrugged.
Meanwhile, Hoffman joked that officials run across the room every time he stops them to ask, “Where’s my bathroom?” Brooklyn Parks & Recreation Manager Eric Peterson was more receptive after a recent encounter. He promised to propose it at the next Community Board 1 meeting.
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Enough Policing Already:
What EPA Scientists Are Saying About Government Interference
And How It Relates to The Greenpoint Oil Spill
By Adam Klasfeld
“Peer review is a pillar of the scientific method; political review is not.”
– Union of Concerned Scientists testimony before the Senate on May 7, 2008
“Who will watch the watchmen?”
– Juvenal
North Brooklyn residents and regular readers of Block Magazine probably know about a disaster referred to as the Greenpoint Oil Spill, which the Environmental Protection Agency estimated dumped 17 to 30 million gallons of petroleum into our neighborhood soils and the Newtown Creek over the course of nearly a century and a half. The EPA report showed that the plume was much larger than once imagined and that methane gas floated about local homes and businesses.
Released on September 12, 2008, the study also stated that there were “minimal” resulting health problems, despite the spread of rare bone cancers, leukemia, and respiratory diseases among Greenpoint residents as reported by the press.
At the press conference announcing the release of this study, City Council Member David Yassky ironically remarked, “This is the same EPA that told us the air was safe to breathe at Ground Zero.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) was also skeptical about the authority of our federal environmental agency. They gave EPA scientists a rare opportunity to speak without the fear of reprisal. The results of the survey were released in April. Not surprisingly, a decisive majority report that the agency faces widespread silencing.
Scientists submitted all questionnaires anonymously, and the UCS-collected responses sent to the press were edited to remove any information that might identify the authors. Even with these safeguards, the scientists took a risk by participating in the surveys asking them to share their experience of government control. The UCS report states “managers at several EPA offices and locations sent emails urging their employees not to fill out the survey.”
About a quarter responded, but it was enough for the organization to draw conclusions about the disturbing trends. They released the results this past April.
• Sixty percent “personally experienced at least one incident of political interference.”
• About half reported “‘many or some’ cases where political appointees at other federal agencies had inappropriately involved themselves in decisions.”
• Almost a quarter have experienced a “disappearance or unusual delay” in the publication of their reports, websites, and press releases.
• A majority was discouraged from speaking to the press about their findings and believed their divisions had insufficient resources.
The national study focused on broader environmental issues than those affecting Greenpoint, such as global warming, air pollution, fuel efficiency, mercury emissions, and pesticide toxicity. It did, however, mention the notorious report on the air quality at Ground Zero. As rescue workers died or became debilitated from crippling lung conditions, that statement came to haunt the credibility of the environmental organization.
Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at UCS, brought the message of one of these undisclosed scientists to the Senate in her oral testimony: “Do not trust the Environmental Protection Agency to protect your environment. Ask questions. Be aware of political and economic motives.”
The Lockheed Martin Connection
A little known fact about the EPA’s report on the air quality following the World Trade Center attacks is that it was partially authored by Lockheed Martin, a company that is mostly known as the world’s largest weapons manufacturer.
The military connection to the environmental organization is not as bizarre as it would first appear. According to Lockheed’s press materials, the company gained a contract for the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, an organization required to be on call in the event of a terrorist attack.
The same $143 million contract also obligated the mega-corporation to respond to environmental incidents involving the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, and CERCLA legislation, which involves environmental disasters designated as Superfund sites and brownfields.
It turns out that the Greenpoint Oil Spill falls into several of these categories, and consequently, two of the four signatories of the report were Lockheed Martin executives. Of the remaining two, one was a former Lockheed employee named Donald Bussey.
“After my report was written, it went up a chain of command,” Bussey said. He added that he never saw the final version and did not know if anybody made changes to the findings.
As Councilman Yassky noted, it is doubtful that the arms giant was any more forthcoming about the health fallout from the petroleum plume than they were about Ground Zero.
The report states that “vapor intrusion sampling in some commercial establishments” found levels of methane “above the Upper Explosive Limit.” Simply stated, this means that the businesses that were tested had too much gas for an explosion to ignite. In addition, it says that “chemicals were detected at all locations in each home” that was tested, yet the report deemed the health impact of such widespread exposure “minimal.”
By way of caveat, the EPA report also claimed that “it would not be feasible in one year to evaluate potential health risks” because heavy industry had been in the area for over 140 years.
In any event, the EPA and Lockheed Martin may have another chance to assess the damage more thoroughly. Last April, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2830, a section of which demands another investigation of the “public health, safety, and environmental concerns related to the underground petroleum spill on the Brooklyn shoreline of Newtown Creek.” It is currently on the Senate calendar, but the website does not reveal the date it will come to a vote.
Congress Determines Oil Not Hazardous
All one needs to know about the EPA’s approach to dealing with oil pollution can be found in the statues of Superfund, its most recognized program. When the state, local, or federal body designates an environmental disaster a Superfund site, the government cleans up the area, and hands the bill to the polluter. That way, the parties responsible for the contamination cannot drag their feet on the remediation or try to negotiate how much of the pollution is theirs.
How is it then that the oil companies responsible for the Greenpoint Oil Spill have been able to suck up the petroleum at their own pace? Quite simply, lobbyists successfully pushed to have oil exempted as a hazardous substance
“This was a political exemption, not a scientific one,” notes Rick Hind, a legislative director at Greenpeace.
The Clean Water Act, which made businesses buy permits to dump pollutants into storm water, handed a favor to big business under the Bush administration by amending the legislation and exempting oil companies from needing to purchase the pollution passes.
The Natural Resource Defense Center sued the Environmental Protection Agency to get rid of the immunity, and San Francisco’s United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sympathized with their arguments. Recently, on May 23, 2008, the judges voted 3-1 to strike the loophole as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Basil Seggos, president of the nonprofit group Riverkeeper and a lawyer for the case against ExxonMobil, could not be reached to comment on how the decision would affect his litigation.
History Repeating
Science always comes into conflict with powerful institutions because it obeys the laws of inquiry, observation, and experimentation, rather than those of religion, state, and industry.
The Roman Catholic Church subjected Galileo to house arrest until he died for observing that the Earth revolves around the sun. Fewer remember that the Church only apologized for this – amidst controversy – less than two decades ago in 1992. In a famous example of government fear of science, the same America that rescued Albert Einstein from Nazi Germany also saw the physicist as a threat throughout his life. The FBI collected a file on him exceeding a thousand pages.
The American tradition thinks of itself as breaking with the patterns of the past. In order to make sure that history does not repeat itself with the Greenpoint Oil Spill, government and industry need to be held accountable. The first step for that to happen would be to urge the Senate to pass the bill for a more thorough investigation. The second is to make sure that, if a new study takes place, the EPA and Lockheed Martin is kept honest and forthcoming.
Read the Union of Concern Scientists report at: www.ucsusa.org
