Whole Foods has won the support of a Community Board 6 panel for its planned Gowanus Canal superstore, despite calls from locals for it to downsize. According to the Brooklyn Paper, the proposal for a 56,000-square-foot store, 20,000-square-foot greenhouse and 250-space parking lot at Third Avenue and 3rd Street, is already scaled back from a previous, 68,000-square-foot plan that included 420 parking spaces. Nonetheless, the company still needs a zoning variance in order to build more than 10,000 square feet there. The proposal has already been delayed once for environmental cleanup after the company found toxins at the site. [more]

Two of the biggest Gowanus Canal polluters are real estate development sites where remediation efforts failed, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials working on the Superfund cleanup at the canal.

One of them, the Daily News reported, is the 363-365 Bond Street site on which Toll Brothers had once planned to build 460 condos and townhouses. The developer, which was supposed to clean up the site before breaking ground, abandoned the project when the Gowanus gained Superfund status last year. (Toll had actively campaigned against the designation, arguing that it would render the development site unmarketable).

According to the EPA, it’s a good thing it did, because new investigations there have since found cancer-causing poly-aromatic hydrocarbons and other potentially harmful chemicals are present in the ground, and Toll Brothers would have never known about it because “the investigation they had done at the site was inadequate.” [more]

Waterfront residences are a costly perk in New York, but not for a group of houseboat dwellers along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. The New York Post reported that the mostly “hipster 20-somethings” who live by the toxic waterway pay no rent for their homes, other than a fee to the city for the right to park along the docks. However, while the residents have avoided city regulation for some time, a recent Environmental Protection Agency study shows they have another obstacle to dodge: the water itself. The EPA, which organized a $500 million cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, found it to be a “cancer-causing cesspool” and warned boaters not to fall in. [more]

Whole Foods will open near the Gowanus Canal, tentatively in late 2012, the high-end grocery said today. Five years after announcing plans to build, the chain will open its site — the first in the borough — at Third Avenue and 3rd Street, according to the Brooklyn Paper. The new store will be about 52,000 square feet, 25 percent smaller than the original proposal, and will include 248 parking space with recharging stations for electric cars. Whole Foods will also build a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse on its roof and grow organic produce on site. [more]

As threatened, Toll Brothers has walked away from its $5.75 million down payment on the Gowanus Canal site of a would-be 477-unit mixed-income housing development, because of the waterway’s recent designation as a Superfund site, the Brooklyn Paper reported. “It just didn’t financially make sense to close on the properties and then have to wait 15 to 20 years until we could develop them,” said Toll’s David Von Spreckelsen. Toll Brothers had been in contract to purchase three parcels on the banks of the Gowanus for $20.6 million since 2004, but fought hard against the federal government’s Superfund designation, vowing to abandon the project if it were to be delayed by an Environmental Protection Agency-led remediation, which is expected to cost $500 million. The city had also opposed the designation, arguing that it would discourage more than $400 million in private investment in the area, including the Toll Brothers plans. [Brooklyn Paper]

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Gowanus, the Brooklyn neighborhood long-derided for its toxically polluted Gowanus Canal, could sustain an extra 1,500 to 2,000 residential units, industry experts say, once the Environmental Protection Agency-mandated canal cleanup goes through, according to the Brooklyn Paper. Of course, this residential rebirth could take years and millions of dollars, with conservative estimates pegging the canal cleanup cost at $400 million. Insiders say the cleanup effort could take a decade or longer. [more]

It’s slow-going for remediation workers at the future site of a new Whole Foods supermarket in Gowanus, according to the Pardon Me for Asking blog. Although work to clear the site of toxic waste began only a few weeks ago, the site at 214 3rd Street has already been hit with two stop-work orders this month from the Department of Buildings, allegedly due to unsafe work conditions. The 2.15-acre plot, which sits near the recently-designated superfund site Gowanus Canal, is riddled with industrial waste, according to numerous environmental experts.

Two back-to-back Earth Day specials on the Thirteen public television network will make stops in New York City to take a look at its ongoing eco-friendly initiatives. The first, “Fragile Waterways,” premiers at 8 p.m. on April 22 and will profile the debate amongst residents and government agencies about the recently-designated Gowanus Canal Superfund site in Brooklyn. Following at 9 p.m., “Going Green New York” will report on a community activist-led effort to build green housing in the South Bronx and the effort to make the city’s subway system greener. TRD

The Environmental Protection Agency is on the hunt for responsible parties to pay for the $300 million to $500 million Gowanus Canal cleanup, after putting the site on its Superfund list last week. Already, nine responsible parties have been named, and 20 more — including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Kraft and Citigroup — are being questioned about chemicals used on the site and how they were disposed of. “This reads like the Fortune 500,” said Superfund director Walter Mugdan. “It doesn’t mean that those companies had facilities on the Gowanus… they acquired somebody who acquired somebody who had a facility on the Gowanus.” Many of the companies that could be on the hook for the cleanup costs are typical Superfund offenders, Mugdan said. Other potentially responsible parties include Bayside Fuel Oil, BP America, Honeywell and ConocoPhillips and more are expected to get added to the list as those already named call out other polluters in order to spread out the costs. [NYDN]

The Environmental Protection Agency has named the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site, a move that places the polluted waterway among the agency’s top priorities and allows it access to federal funding. The designation is a hit to the Bloomberg administration’s agenda, according to the New York Times. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had raised concerns that a federal cleanup would raise legal problems between polluters and agency officials. Of concern, also, has been the negative connotation of a Superfund label – - city officials had complained that the Superfund status would put off potential area developers. The EPA’s most recent assessment puts the cleanup cost between $300 million and $500 million, and projects that the project could last upwards of a decade. [Pardon Me for Asking] and [NYT]