After we put up a post yesterday about the (possibly in violation of Stop Work Order) demolition going on at the site of a Fairfield Inn in Gowanus, we got an email from Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus about a meeting that the Department of Environmental Conservation is having on Wednesday, May 7 from 4:00-5:30PM and from 5:30-7:00PM about toxic pollution and remediation of a former Manufactured Gas Plant site that used to occupy the site of the Thomas Green Playground. The area the plant covered is outlined in the map above. It’s of interest because MGPs as they are known, left behind a horrendous soup of underground toxins starting with, but not limited to, coal tar. The tar is known to travel underground and could easily have migrated beneath the Fairfield Inn site, which borders the original property. (Presumably test well have been sunk to determine this.) The toxic issue is the same one as the one at Public Place, which is another former MGP site. None of the sites were cleaned up after the coal plants–which manufactured gas from coal–were closed.

The old Scranton & Lehigh Coal Company adjacent to the former plant.

Thomas Green Playground sits on the site the closed MGP plant.