Getting Trashy: Residents Try to Stop Southwest Brooklyn Transfer Station

Of all the proposed marine garbage transfer stations that are part of the city's new trash disposal strategy (including one on Hamilton Avenue at the mouth of the Gowanus Canal), the one proposed for Gravesend Bay has turned out to be the most controversial. Opponents have now posted an online petition to fight the station, which would go on the site of the closed Southwest Brooklyn Municipal Incinerator. That facility is said to have released dioxins, lead, mercury, cadmium and other toxins into the envioronment. Community lawsuits shut the incinerator down in the 1990s, and the possibility of another facility on the same site at Shore Parkway & Bay 41st Street, has touched a nerve. The facility would require the dredging of Gravesend Bay and stir up toxins from the incinerator that have settled on the bottom, including high concentrations of mercury and lead. There was a meeting recently at which residents expressed concerns that a "black mayonnaise" of highly toxic slime dredged up from the bottom of the bay would spread widely in the waters around Southern Brooklyn. You can see more about the problem from the community's perspective and find the petition here.