GOWANUS — Last Wednesday 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. These included 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. These were 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 women told success stories of community and public/private involvement in reclaiming the area near the Bronx River. That river (actually, more of a stream) was, like the Gowanus, once extremely polluted and was used mainly as a dumping ground.

Stirred by these accounts, participants broke into eager focus groups to discuss the environmental issues they had brought from their groups and neighborhoods, identified 25 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.

“The range of expressed interests and concern is truly awesome, but the thing that jumps out of the voting is the community’s primary areas of concern," said Lauren Collins, deputy director of the conservancy. “The summit was a very valuable exercise: the results of this collaborative effort reflect the work we are already doing and gives us guidance towards our work moving forward.�

John C. Muir, vice chair of the conservancy and a 30-year veteran of efforts to improve the Gowanus Canal, concluded that "We now have a clear arrow pointing toward the environmental future of these neighborhoods. We can see that the heaviest investment needs to be made in the realm of improving the water quality of the canal and access to the waterfront. Next step is to spread the word."

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy, founded in 2006, is dedicated to being the steward for the preservation, restoration and green development of the Gowanus Canal and environs for the greater good of the community.

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