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Bensonhurst wants to get Gore-d

By Dana Rubinstein
The Brooklyn Paper

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An activist battling the city’s plans to build a waste transfer station on Gravesend Bay is so desperate for help that she’s reached out to the greenest celebrity of them all: Al Gore.

Nancy Petersen, a member of Assemblyman Bill Colton’s Anti-Waste-Transfer Station Task Force, wrote to the former future president of the United States, pleading for his assistance.

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She began by buttering up the newly minted Academy Award winner: “I must tell you that I read your book, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ and it was great!”

Then she launched into the nitty-gritty.

“We have an environmental emergency right here in Brooklyn. … We worry about what this new station [will] bring … when they do the required dredging and bring up the toxins left on the very bottom of the sea floor [from the trash incinerator that used to be located on the site],” wrote Petersen.

“I know that you are an avid environmentalist, having been nominated for a Nobel prize. Now, the people of Brooklyn need your help.”

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A spokesman for Colton praised Petersen’s unusual missive, but Gore’s aide said the former Veep’s office had yet to review the letter, thanks to a recent crush of mail.

“We received thousands of letters in February because of the Oscars and the announcement of the Live Earth concerts,” said Kalee Kreider. “It takes us several weeks to process them. Unfortunately, I am unable to confirm for you right now if it has been received or to give you a comment.”

©2007 Community Newspaper Group

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