We got an email from a GL reader late last week that there was activity on the highly toxic Public Place site between the Gowanus Canal and Smith Street. Our reader wrote that “a large amount of the underbrush (trees, weeds, shrubs) have been cleared away, at least on the Smith Street side.” A trip to the future site of a big development in which hundreds of people will live (after a massive cleanup that will ostensibly render the land fit for habitation) found that vegetation is being cleared and that there are black barrels that can be used for the storage of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste on the site. (It is impossible to see from a distance how they are labeled.) Presumably the work is either routine housekeeping (which would be odd, given that we haven’t noticed any in the last few years) or has something to do with testing or cleanup. RFPs for developing the site were due last month. The site was once the home of a manufactured gas plant that left behind a stew of very toxic substances underground. It will require a very complicated cleanup before any development can happen and, even so, all of the toxins will never be removed.