We love the work that the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment does with education activities and tours for both adults and children about New York’s natural and built environment. We found about shopbcue.org through Sustainable Flatbush. The BCUE site provides links for businesses–most of them very eco-friendly–that will donate up to 25 percent of […]

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This is the site of the massive Edge development on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. (The photo was obviously shot before the recent bout of rain.) A massive amount of soil testing was done on the site, which is in the midst of a very environmentally interesting waterfront area. There was once a massive Manufactured Gas […]

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Our weekly check in on the Roebling Oil Field & Building found more evidence on the sidewalks that test wells on N. 11th Street are still giving up Black Gold. We also, interestingly, found barrels lined up marked “Non-Hazardous Waste” that appeared ready for shipment to some entity, possibly the Department of Environmental Conservation. One […]

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Mark down 2012 and 2013, give or take, a potentially very significant years for the Gowanus Canal. Last night, the Department of Environment Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers made presentations at a Community Board 6 Environment Committee meeting about the scope of the environmental problems in the Gowanus, the possible remedies and the […]

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That awful storm on August 8 that spawned the Bay Ridge Tornado, also resulted in a whole lot of crap going into the Gowanus Canal and New York Bay. Poop Culture author Dave Praeger sent us an email pointing us toward a blog entry he’s just done. Most of it deals with the grotesque, yet […]

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The buildings at 208 N. 10th Street, which is part of a larger site that will encompass about 1/2 of the block between Roebling and Driggs and N. 10th and N. 9th Streets, are coming down. The fence is back up, so we had to peek inside to find a little bit of what’s been […]

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You can drop off your unwanted computers, monitors, printers, cell phones and other electronic equipment for recycling in Bay Ridge next weekend at an event being sponsored by Council Members Vincent Gentile and Bill de Blasio. It takes place at Poly Prep Country Day School, which is located on 7th Avenue at the baseball field […]

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At least one more test well has been sunk to check for oil on N. 11th Street adjacent to the Roebling Oil Field and Roebling Oil Building in Williamsburg. It bring the total number of test well in the immediate area to about a dozen. The lastest well was so new when we came across […]

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Another test well was drilled yesterday on N. 11th Street across the street from the Roebling Oil Building. One of the technicians working on the project–who is very familiar with the spill area–called the underground spill “huge,” according to a resident who had a long conversation with the workers. “It’s much bigger than just a […]

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The 3rd Annual Green Brooklyn Conference is taking place today at Brooklyn Borough Hall from 11AM-4PM. Coordinated by Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, it’s billed as “Brooklyn’s largest showcase of green and sustainability issues, programs, and products.” The even is a fully day fair and symposium and “will feature workshops and discussions led by […]

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Generally, when the “rat poison” signs go up on a building in Williamsburg, you don’t even need to check city records to verify that demolition is coming. So it is with 5 Roebling Street, the building that was dubbed the Giant Fart Cloud Building by dating advice/real estate development blogger Bad Advice. The building was […]

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Our old friend the Roebling Oil Building, which has sprouted atop the Roebling Oil Field, stopped growing some time ago. Now, it is adding new details every week. We found a wall covered in green, this weekend, clearly being prepped for what is likely to be the building’s exciting exterior. Is it us, or has […]

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We will preface this by saying that we have not personally smelled the oil which is alleged in the following email that was passed along to us, nor have we personally seen evidence of it. However, given that the email comes from the office of a New York City Council Member, we think it is […]

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The state Department of Environmental Conservation and Keyspan have reached an expanded agreement on cleaning up several highly contaminated sites in Brooklyn, including two in Gowanus and one in Williamsburg. The sites were once home to Manufactured Gas Plants, which left behind an underground toxic stew of contaminants. The most prominent of the sites is […]

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If you’re in Williamsburg or Greenpoint, you can drop off your unwanted computers, monitors, printers, cell phones and other electronic equipment for recycling this weekend. An E-Waste recycling drive sponsored by the Lower East Side Ecology Center is happening on Bedford Avenue between N. 11th and N. 12th Streets (on the east side of Bedford) […]

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We often post about the issue of sewage and the Gowanus, which is one of the things that will doom any cleanup effort of the canal if left unaddressed. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that –claims in the Atlantic Yards Environmental Impact Statement to the contrary–the massive development at Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue will […]

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If you’ve ever been on the Belt Parkway, perhaps you’ve noticed the big hills along Jamaica Bay near Starrett City that don’t seem to be natural parts of the landscape. If you’ve ever thought that they look like capped landfills, well, they are. (And if you’re a longtime resident you actually remember when they were […]

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Why, you might ask, is this picture interesting? Our answer: Because it shows what happens to the Gowanus Canal every time it rains as countless hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff and untreated sewage flow directly into the canal. This photo and the pics in this flickr set were shot by Raymond Tan […]

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Could the nightmarish toxic sludge at the bottom of the Gowanus be frozen in place with a “clay-based seal” called AquaBlock? Well, it’s one of the less expensive solutions to detoxing the canal being considered by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is coming up with options for dealing with the horror show of […]

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It seems like it was only yesterday that we were sticking our nose through gaps in the fence around the Williamsburg development site we named the Roebling Oil Field to shoot photos of the oily ooze coming out of the ground. It provided us with so much joy–not to mention a collapsing sidewalk that almost […]

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The Public Place site presents some sobering environmental issues and the extent to which you will be comfortable with the cleanup will be determined by the extent to which you are comfortable with the state’s willingness to be aggressive in enforcing cleanup standards on KeySpan, which is responsible for the heavy lifting, and on the […]

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No one will ever accuse New York State of acting precipitously in going after Exxon Mobil for the awful oil spill into Newtown Creek and under Greenpoint. A lawsuit to force a faster cleanup and to impose fines was finally filed yesterday. The spill is one of the worst ever in the United States, an […]

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You have another opportunity this weekend to get rid of your old electronic devices–computers, TVs, cell phones, etc–in an environmentally responsible way. There will be an e-waste drive Saturday (7/14) through Monday (7/16) in Windsor Terrace at the Holy Name Church at 241 Prospect Park West. It’s sponsored by the Lower East Side Ecology Center […]

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We had no idea you could go online to get the, uh, water quality data for local beaches like Coney Island until the excellent blog GerritsenBeach.net posted it. (In recent weeks, the blog has broken both that weird story about the idea in Manhattan Beach to privatize the beach and about the vandalism of those […]

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Remember that big TransGas power plant on the Williamsburg waterfront that would, among other things, have a park and million dollar condos as its neighbors? You know, the one that everyone assumed had been beaten to death by community opposition a long, long time ago? Well, it’s alive and its future could be decided today. […]

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