Congratulations to Brooklyn for having one of the dirtiest waterways in the United States!!

Brooklyn business owner fined almost $500K for dumping illegal pollutants into Gowanus Canal

BY Erin Durkin
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Friday, February 18th 2011, 4:00 AM
Waste fills property alongside Gowanus Canal belonging to bus yard owned by Jacob Marmurstein, who’s been hit with $482,750 fine.
Riverkeeper
Waste fills property alongside Gowanus Canal belonging to bus yard owned by Jacob Marmurstein, who’s been hit with $482,750 fine.

A Gowanus Canal business owner was slapped with nearly half a million dollars in fines for illegally dumping pollutants into the filthy canal.

The state fined Jacob Marmurstein and four of his companies - including a bus yard and bus repair company - $482,750 this week for dumping concrete, rusty pipes, wood and other garbage in and along the canal.

They also dumped oil and cleaning fluid into sewers that often overflow into the canal, investigators found.

Environmental group Riverkeeper used boat and helicopter patrols to catch dumping from the properties in 2009 - just as federal authorities were planning to make the canal a Superfund site.

"There was all sorts of debris that had been dumped into the canal and was falling off the banks. There was construction debris, concrete railroad ties . . . rusted piping, wood, metal, plastic," said Riverkeeper attorney Josh Verleun.

State investigators found a spate of violations stretching from 2006 to 2010. The pollution continued even after officials warned Marmurstein to clean up his act.

"The way this facility operated was with no regard for the law," Verleun said. "They knew that what they were doing was wrong and they continued to do it anyway."

Marmurstein will be off the hook for $125,000 of his fine if he cleans up the pollution, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation said.

Marmurstein did not return calls for comment. A woman who identified herself as his wife said he was out of town, adding: "There is no story. No comment."

Riverkeeper's patrols also nabbed workers at a scrap metal yard for dumping scrap into the canal. The yard was fined $33,000 by DEC in October.

Most of the muck in the Gowanus - declared one of the dirtiest waterways in the country earlier this month - comes from decades-old industrial pollution.

But Verleun said that as the feds gear up for their massive cleanup, it's important to crack down on companies that continue to pollute.

"Enforcement like this has a deterrent effect," he said. "Otherwise, once Superfund is done with, the community still may not have a waterway they can use the way they want."

With Jake Pearson

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2011/02/18/2011-02-18_brooklyn_business_owner_fined_almost_500k_for_dumping_illegal_pollutants_into_go.html#ixzz1ESW91lOo