State’s toxic 2-year delay
Hid Gowanus cancer data
State environmental officials waited nearly two years to alert the public that cancer-causing vapors more than 20 times the amount considered safe escaped from polluted soil along the Gowanus Canal and into a nearby shuffleboard club.
The Department of Environmental Conservation learned of the alarming levels of toxic vapors in March 2021 while conducting air-quality tests inside Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club, but the hipster haven remained open throughout, since the agency deemed the century-old building “safe.”
The agency only documented the stunning finding late last year in public records buried on its website.
On Friday, DEC spokesperson Haley Viccaro admitted to The Post that the agency could have done a better job alerting locals to the looming health hazard, and is “evaluating potential improvements to enhance this process and ensure this information is clear and informative of these comprehensive, sciencebased efforts to protect public health.”
The news came as a gut punch to Gowanus residents now battling cancer.
“I can pretty much draw a line to where I’m living to why I have cancer,” said Margaret Maugenest, 71, who lives a block away from the club and was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2019.
“There’s no history of cancer in my family; I eat well; I have a healthy lifestyle, and yet I get colon cancer,” she added.
The revelations only came to light thanks to the grassroots group Voice of Gowanus, which hired an upstate, Ithaca-based environmental database firm, Toxics Targeting, that recently discovered the damning DEC documents.
The records showed that in March 2021, air levels of the cancer-causing chemical trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, were nearly 22 times above acceptable levels at the shuffleboard club.
“The DEC in 2021 should’ve put up signs in the club, published public notices in local papers, and sent mail alerts to people in the neighborhood,” said Walter Hang, who heads Toxics Targeting. “All they did was make obscure references in dense technical documents regular citizens wouldn’t know about or can’t decipher.”
A state-approved project is underway to reduce the fumes by venting out underground contaminants. Several follow-up tests over the past two years — including one in November — have since shown the hipster hotspot’s air quality at “safe” levels.