The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“RECOGNIZING GOWANUS CANAL REMEDIAL ACTION ENFORCEMENT TEAM” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the in the Extensions of Remarks section section on pages E678-E679 on June 28.
More than half of the Agency's employees are engineers, scientists and protection specialists. The Climate Reality Project, a global climate activist organization, accused Agency leadership in the last five years of undermining its main mission.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RECOGNIZING GOWANUS CANAL REMEDIAL ACTION ENFORCEMENT TEAM
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HON. NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ
of new york
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Ms. VALAZQUEZ. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the outstanding achievements of Gowanus Canal Remedial Action Enforcement Team at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 2 office. Their outstanding efforts at the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site ensured that potentially responsible parties (PRPs) completed the main phase of full-scale dredging in the upper third of the Canal, the first of three phases.
The heavily contaminated urban waterway, a 1.8-mile-long canal in Brooklyn, NY dating from the 1800s, has been contaminated by industrial pollution and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) for over a century. The Site was listed on the National Priorities List in 2010. Since listing, EPA staff assigned to the project include Christos Tsiamis, Remedial Project Manager, Brian Carr, Assistant Regional Counsel, and Natalie Loney, Community Involvement Coordinator. Together, they managed this large complex project in a thorough and timely manner from feasibility study through remedy selection in a 2013 Record of Decision and remedial design for full-scale dredging and capping with in-situ stabilization and installation of retention tanks to protect the dredged canal from recontamination from combined sewer overflows (CSOs).
The three superfund cleanup sites in New York City fall in my Congressional district and the Gowanus Canal is the furthest along and proceeding at a precedent-setting pace nationally. The Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group is the largest and most engaged in the Country.
The Team managed enforcement with a disparate group of roughly three dozen PRPs including National Grid, the successor to the operator of coal gasification plants responsible for a significant amount of coal tar related contamination in the Canal, and the City of New York, which owns the canal and is responsible for the sewer infrastructure in the watershed. The City opposed to both the listing of the Gowanus Canal and the CSO portion of the remedy. This made community outreach and enforcement more critical and the EPA team's work in this area has been exceptional.
To achieve the timely start of dredging, Project Manager Christos Tsiamis and Regional Counsel Brian Carr worked tirelessly, issuing unilateral administrative orders in January 2020 to six PRPs, and coordinating with multiple contractors, city agencies, and legal and technical teams to achieve the remedial mobilization.
Dredging canal sediments contaminated with coal tar in this densely populated urban area posed challenges that were overcome through outstanding engineering and oversight by the team. Dredging began in November 2020, and the first phase called Remediation Target Area 1
(RTAl) was completed by mid-2021.
Mr. Tsiamis, Mr. Carr, and Ms. Loney, met regularly with the CAG, local businesses, and other stakeholders. Thanks to their efforts, the main phase of dredging was swiftly completed, setting a high bar for completion of the next two phases of dredging (RTA2 and RTA3). Although enforcement issues remain with respect to the City, obtaining its commitment for this work was a major enforcement accomplishment, a result that the team worked tirelessly and effectively to achieve. For their outstanding work, I would like to recognize EPA Region 2's Gowanus remedial action team: Project Manager Christos Tsiamis, Assistant Regional Counsel Brian Carr, and Community Involvement Coordinator Natalie Loney.
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