Pol: Don’t dredge

By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

How about a 30-year accumulation of lead and toxins with that fish?

A city plan to dredge toxic soil in Gravesend Bay to make room for a proposed waste-transfer facility on Shore Parkway has run into a brick wall in the form of Assemblyman William Colton (D-Bensonhurst).

“This is a toxic mess,” said Colton aide Carmine Santa Maria. “This would be a danger to everyone who eats fish from Coney Island to Manhattan.”

Colton’s Anti-Waste Transfer Station Task Force — which is chaired by area District Leaders Charlie Ragusa and Jeanette Givant — will hold a Town Hall meeting next week to release a recent study that indicates that dredging would disturb mercury and other toxins.

The Department of Sanitation has said that dredging must be done to accommodate tugboats and large barges needed to ferry trash from the proposed facility — but Colton feels this is a life-and-death issue.

“Residents’ lives will be threatened from the aftermath of the toxic disturbings [and] their quality of life will be vastly deteriorated with the huge influx of garbage trucks, day and night, crowding already heavy traffic,” he said. “The noise, the smells, the traffic will be unbearable and this community has had enough!

“Dredging will disturb and release 30 years of toxins of lead and mercury that settled in Gravesend Bay [and] will eventually end up in the food on our dinner plates!” he added.

The DOS declined a chance to comment on the specifics of Colton’s charges.

Colton’s anti-waste-transfer task force, Shore Parkway Jewish Center (8885 26th Ave, near Cropsey Avenue), Thursday, Jan. 25 at 7:30 pm. Call (718) 236-1598 for information.