On Feb. 18, 2009, at P.S. 32 in Carroll Gardens, the Gowanus Canal Conservancy brought together more than 40 representatives from community groups, local businesses, elected officials, government agencies and from the different neighborhoods of the “Gowanus Basin,” to discuss their environmental priorities at the Gowanus Basin Environmental Priorities Summit. Conservancy chairman Andy Simons and executive director Bob Zuckerman welcomed the audience by reading the list of Gowanus Basin community groups represented, including the Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (A.G.A.S.T.), Boerum Hill Association, Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association, Center for the Urban Environment, Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG), Friends of Douglass/Greene Park, Gowanus Canal CDC, Gowanus Dredgers, NY/NJ Baykeepers, Park Slope Civic Council, Park Slope Neighbors, and Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corp.

Dr. Franco Montalto, Ph.D., civil/environmental engineer and member of the Conservancy board, welcomed two speakers: Alexie Torres-Fleming, founder and executive director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, and Joan Byron, board member at the Bronx River Alliance and director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative of the Pratt Center for Community Development. Both of these women told success stories of community and public/private involvement in reclaiming the area by the Bronx River.

Stirred by these inspiring accounts, participants broke into eager focus groups to discuss the environmental issues they had brought from their groups and neighborhood, identified a total of twenty-five environmental priorities for the Gowanus Canal Basin Community, and then cast votes for the “top three”. Although many of the individual priorities identified were cross-cutting, land-based environmental priorities were ranked highest overall, followed by water, infrastructure, and air. In a tie for first place of the individual priorities were cleaner sediment and water quality in the canal, and improved waterfront access with greenways. Collectively, the top three priorities suggest that the participants in last Wednesday’s event would like to see the local watershed restored to create new open space and waterfront access opportunities, and a cleaner canal. In a tie for fourth place were improving the community’s combined sewer system, restoring wetlands and other kinds of habitat, increasing green industry, controlling building heights, and converting the canal into a multi-purpose waterway.

Priority Rankings