BOMBSHELL LAWSUIT THROWS GOWANUS REZONING INTO QUESTION

 

Photo by Pardonmeforaskinh

New Environmental Suit by Love Canal Lawyer Alleges Multiple Violations of Federal, State Law

 

The future of the Gowanus rezoning is anything but certain as community coalition Voice of Gowanus filed a new lawsuit today vigorously attacking the profoundly illegal rezoning, highlighting multiple violations of federal and state environmental law. The suit, filed by Voice of Gowanus, Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (F.R.O.G.G.) and area residents, goes far beyond what any other recent neighborhood rezoning challenges have alleged, setting out multiple causes of action. 

Attorney Richard Lippes, a veteran of the Love Canal and Three Mile Island environmental legal battles, serves as counsel to Voice of Gowanus. He said the suit rises to another level because of the unique cocktail of health and safety risks and ongoing environmental injustice not addressed by government officials in Gowanus. 

“I have tried many environmental law cases in my decades as a lawyer, but the Gowanus rezoning involves an exceptionally egregious set of failures to comply with the law,” said Richard Lippes of Lippes & Lippes, attorney for Voice of Gowanus. “This is one of the most complex cases I have seen: the cascading, overlapping failures to comply with state and federal laws is stunning. This is not your run of the mill environmental case. It rises to another order of magnitude entirely." 

A Different Kind of Rezoning Challenge - Multiple State AND Federal Claims 

The suit attacks the failure of the Gowanus rezoning to abide by the National Environmental Protection Act (“NEPA”) and the National Historic Preservation Act. It also asserts that the rezoning’s environmental impact statement violated the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (“SEQRA”), Environmental Conservation Law and the New York State Historic Protection Act. 

“Gowanus is not just any old neighborhood. It has a unique and complex set of dangerous toxic pollution, flooding, and sewage overflow problems that have plagued our most vulnerable populations for decades,” said Katia Kelly of Voice of Gowanus, a petitioner in the suit. “We tried to warn city officials they were getting it deeply wrong—as did the EPA and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez—but the City refused to listen. Instead they sold out to developers, putting thousands of people unjustly at risk. So, we’ll see them in court. This rezoning is rotten to its core—and it’s illegal.” Kelly is also a member of F.R.O.G.G. and serves on the EPA’s Gowanus Superfund Community Advisory Group (Gowanus CAG).  

Multiple Environmental Law Failures by New York City Planning 

The suit lays out a litany of failures by New York City agencies, each one a violation of law. First, and most glaringly, City Planning failed to file a Findings Statement regarding the proposed Gowanus rezoning as required by state law. An environmental impact statement alone is not sufficient to comply with the law, and the city chose to treat Gowanus differently than other neighborhoods while violating the law. Second, multiple state and federal agencies such as U.S. EPA were not formally included in the rezoning process as “Involved Agencies” as required. 

The suit also exposes the ways in which the city’s legally required analysis of impacts to the community was blatantly insufficient. Third, the deeply flawed environmental impact statement for the rezoning failed to account for cumulative environmental impacts of the rezoning, especially on the sewage front. Fourth, the environmental review for the rezoning failed to take a required “hard look” at multiple environmental impacts of the project ranging from climate change, sewage infrastructure, and flooding, to hazardous materials. Fifth, the rezoning also failed to engage in required state and federal historic preservation review procedures given that much of Gowanus is eligible as a State and National Register of Historic Places district. 

Fighting to Prevent Real Risks to Human Health and the Environment

“EPA has confirmed that toxic chemicals have migrated off the heavily polluted site of a former manufactured gas plant which was approved for housing and a school under the rezoning. My neighbors and I have raised our families a stone’s throw from the site, and having current and future residents exposed to noxious vapors and toxic contaminants is a grave concern,” said Steve Marcus, of Voice of Gowanus, a petitioner and also a member of the EPA’s Gowanus Superfund Community Advisory Group. “The laundry list of legal failures by the City is deeply troubling, and we felt compelled to act given the many ways this rezoning will endanger human health and the environment.”

The rezoning would subject tens of thousands of people to dire and deadly risks of flooding and exposure to toxic pollution linked to cancer, learning disabilities and other major health problems. Since the two enormous EPA-mandated combined sewage overflow tanks will not be built before the construction of massive new developments is well underway, the rezoning also risks further contaminating the Gowanus Canal and undoing the Superfund cleanup remedy. 

Goals of the New Voice of Gowanus Lawsuit 

What do Voice of Gowanus, F.R.O.G.G. and residents of greater Gowanus seek as relief with this new bombshell lawsuit?  The suit seeks to have the City Planning Commission’s approval of the Gowanus rezoning voided. It seeks to have all required government agencies at the table to inform any rezoning planning with their respective areas of regulatory expertise. It seeks to have the City of New York comply with all relevant environmental laws, and in so doing, meet the most basic need for environmental justice. It seeks to avoid exposing thousands of New Yorkers to very real health and safety risks. 

“The Gowanus rezoning is an unparalleled legal travesty; it almost seems to relish ignoring and violating laws intended to safeguard human health,” said Maureen Koetz, co-counsel for Voice of Gowanus. “Community members have run silent and they have run deep since the rezoning passed. They have done their homework. They are challenging this miscarriage of state and federal legal process. And they are eminently right to do so to protect all New Yorkers from such flagrant environmental injustice and abuses.” 

 

"Dangerous Times”: New York to Ukraine and Back Again, #IStandwithUkraine. #ukraine #peace #Freedom #Eastvillage #solidarity #veselkanyc

 

Scenes from NYC in Solidarity with Ukraine. 

Scenes from the Mirror, Winter on Fire, about the Ukraine Maidan protests of 2014. 

 

“Queer New York stands with Ukraine” says the sign on Christopher Street Saturday. 

“We are all Ukranians now,”  another speaker. 

My mind raced back to 1979 when a man said the same thing after the White Night Riots, during solidarity protests in Sheridan Square; we are all from San Francisco. Today, it seems we are all from Ukraine between East and West, as cold war moves to hot. 

I can’t believe Putin actually did it, I thought all week long. I can’t believe he did it. 

Ann Christine posted a link for an action. 

“US LGBT and allies stand with Ukraine” at 53 Christopher Street…US LGBTQ+ and allies stand with Ukraine:

“Eight years ago, in 2014, Russia started a war against Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and part of the Lugansk and Donetsk region. That war cost the lives of many Ukrainians, and brought serious threat to LGBTQ and human rights. The LGBTQ community in that annexed region lost access to medical treatment; homosexuality was criminalized, many gay people were tortured or ended up in psychiatric clinics. Today Putin and Russia has decided to move ever forward to take over Ukraine. Thousands of our brothers and sisters are under attack; Ukraine, as the only democratic country in the region, is under threat. QUA - LGBTQ Ukrainians in America, together with friends and allies, invite YOU to a meeting to support Ukraine and Ukraine's LGBTQ community.

American human rights organizations and New York society are powerful communities, and we can show our STRONG support with Ukraine. We CAN encourage ACTION now and use our political tools to push Capital Hill to provide MORE support and protect Ukraine.

Nobody's free until everybody's free. And if we still believe in values and democracy, we MUST show our solidarity with Ukrainian society in this challenging and dark moment of Ukrainian history.

When: Saturday, February 26, at 2 pm

Where: Stonewall monument, 38-64 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014.”

He actually did it. Putin actually invaded Ukraine, an independent democracy that had left the USSR as soon as it could, some three decades prior. 

I don't know what to do in these moments. So I try to show up and talk with others.  

Like a lot of us, I find myself playing Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition, The Great Gate of Kiev,” a majestic 1874  piece of work I’ve always adored, about a friend, a love that was lost, the drama of it taking new dimensions. 

Caroline and I watch Tartovsky's Mirror, a 1975 film about Russia, war, memory and personal history, dream sequences back and forth between a pre war period, world war, and the post war period.  The war changed everything here, mass death and persistent wounds remaining. 

Watching Anthony Bourdain's “No Reservations'' episode on Ukraine from a decade ago, I find myself thinking about Chernobyl 1986, then 1938 and 1979.  Soon enough Russia has captured the ruin I read.  What happens if it gets hit?  Tony visits there, wandering through the wreckage. The aftershocks and radiation from that disaster never quite end.  Few have the stomach for war.  But the Ukranians are fighting back, calling for Guerilla resistance, ready to make life difficult for the Russian invaders.  I remember the USSR invasion of Afghanistan, December 24th of 1979. They’d be there the better part of the next decade. 

The analogy is worth considering. 

With Paul McCartney waving a blue and yellow flag at his show, Saturday Night Live beginning with a Ukrainian Chorus performing “Prayer for Ukraine”, and mass protests in cities around the world, including Moscow, the world is solidly against Russia’s move. Hopefully the bands will be too. 

“Stop Putin! Stop Russia!” people scream on Christopher Street Saturday. 

Calls for Solidarity only spread all weekend long. 

In between it, I find myself talking with friends at the Brooklyn Inn and Clockwork, Princeton and the East Village, up to Greenpoint, everyone is wondering what happened.  We still go out, but you feel it, in the streets, cold war raging again. People wear blue and yellow on the Staten Island Ferry to celebrate with Nadette, lady liberty in the distance, the tides rolling to and from as we rode back. 

Images of Ukranians resisting, fleeing, in the shelter in Kyiv’s subway station.  Gene dropped a pic of a childhood cottage where his family used to vacation before he moved here. He would have been drafted into the Afghanistan conflict if his family had not fled. 

Of course, Trump thinks it's wonderful. 

And so does Fox news. 

But this might be the end for Putin or Putinism, just as Afghanistan was the end for the USSR, at least I hope.  There is only so much spinning one can do when the world attempts to freeze bank accounts and downgrades your currency. 

Around New York, people express their solidarity, reminding us where they are from.

They fill our favorite restaurant, Veselka in the East Village

@mcsorleysoldalehouse posted:

“The East Village has for decades been affectionately called Little Ukraine. And East 7th street, with the magnificent Saint George's church out front our doors, could be considered the heart of the Ukrainian community in NYC. In fact, our dear bartender 'Pepe' (real name Steven Zwaryczuk), with us for over 40 years, was born and raised in the building directly in front of McSorley's on 6th street after his parents arrived in America after WWII.  With that said, we at McSorley's stand in complete solidarity with our beloved neighbors of the East Village and at Veselka and Baczynsky's and with every Ukrainian near, far and wide. God bless Ukraine.”

 

“As a child, I grew up with stories told by those who lived through World War 2,” said Cleve Jones in a post from Feb 20, referring to those by members of the armed services, refugees and survivors of Nazi death camps.  “When i finally traveled to Europe in the early 1970s one could still easily discern which neighborhoods had been destroyed and, of course, Germany was still divided. The war and its aftermath defined an entire generation and helped shape the political psyche of the generation that followed. I spent many years traveling in Europe and lived for some time in Munich, which was carpet bombed by the Allies from April through July of 1944, close to the end of the war. 90% of the old city was damaged, over 81,000 homes were partially or completely destroyed and over 300,000 inhabitants left homeless. Over 6500 people were killed and over 15,000 wounded. Every day I spent in Germany I thought about the war because there were so many visual reminders, including shrapnel scars in the old building in which my friend Scott and I rented a room. Today we see Europe again on the brink of war. With every day that passes it seems more likely that once again terror will rain from the sky, thousands will die, hundreds of thousands will be displaced and a new wave of refugees will surge across the borders. If you believe in some Greater Power or God, then please pray for peace. Pray for the people of Ukraine, pray for the young soldiers - Ukrainian and Russian alike - pawns forced to fight each other by cynical leaders who will not share their wounds or lie with them in the blood soaked mud. Pray also for the people of Ukraine's neighbors: Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania and Hungary. Wars, like wildfires, spread easily.  These are dangerous times.”

“Its Spain against Franco for many Europeans,” says my friend Ann Christine d’Adesky. “Lets pray Ukraine holds the line and then the Russians gain the courage to overthrow Putin.  The bulk of Russians want the same thing as Ukraine.

#IStandwithUkraine.”

So do I.  

If you ever wondered if Ukraine would fight for their freedom, or if they could hold off the Anne Christine suggests watching Winter on Fire, a 2015 documentary about the 2013 and ‘14 protests in Ukraine.  Some 125 people were killed, thousands more injured, with dozens missing during the 93 days in Maidan. Freedom is precious to this generation. 

 

All week, we talk about what we can do, what regular people can do, to get out, speak out, see the differences between today and 1938, support the resistance, be kind and show support. 

It's up to all of us to stand with Ukraine.

On the streets, trying to make sense of it all week long.