Talk about some nosey neighbors!
Carroll Gardeners who claim to be plagued by putrid smells coming from a decades-old heating oil depot alongside the notoriously toxic Gowanus Canal are a bunch of whiny hipsters newcomers who think they can barge into an industrial neighborhood and wag their fingers at established businesses, says the business owner.
“I’m being harassed by the community,” said Vincent Allegretti, who operates the Bayside Fuel Oil Depot Corporation site on Smith Street. “It’s this new crop of people that are moving in and gentrifying the neighborhood.”
A strong chemical smell emanates from the depot between Garnet and Centre Streets and leaks into nearby homes, say community members who have settled near the banks of the Brooklyn’s nautical purgatory — of 147 neighbors who filled out a survey on the smell, 133 said they have smelled oil or gas near their homes, 97 said the smell was “frequent” during the winter months, and 54 said they would describe the smell as “strong” while 30 went so far as to call it “overwhelming.”
The odor is so disturbing, say locals, its frequent presence is marring their quality of life.
“I’m talking about a smell like if you stuck your nose in the open gas container of your car,” said Timm Chiusano, who moved to the neighborhood five years ago and lives two blocks from the depot with his wife and three-year-old daughter. “You have to keep your windows shut at night entirely or it will linger within your house.”
Chiusano — who conducted the neighborhood survey and is spearheading efforts to address the smell, says the stench has become unbearable within the past two years and is at its most potent when the depot is unloading oil from a canal barge.
“Through a lot of common sense and a sense of smell and seeing where it’s emanating from, there’s a lot of things pointing directly to that site,” he said.
But the depot has been there since the 1940s with no problems, argues Allegretti, insisting he runs a clean business that abides by environmental regulations and the new neighbors are just raising a stink. The smell could be coming from a number of nearby construction sites or from the putrid canal itself, he insist — and if they do happen to smell his oil from time to time, they should just chalk it up to living next-door to an oil terminal.
“It’s no different than if they lived next to a Dunkin’ Donuts and smelled coffee,” he said.
The response from environmental agencies has been mixed, said Chiusano — a rep for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection left him a voice mail on April 15 last year stating a pungent chemical smell emanating from the plant was an air code violation, while a state’s Department of Environmental Conservation rep said in an e-mail that he watched the depot fill its tanks with no apparent violations in sight or smell.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency — which inspects the depot every three months — has found no violations on the site within the past three years, records show.
The Chiusanos say they want an investigation to determine once and for all the origins of the stench — and once that has been nailed down, they want the collective city, state, and federal agencies to do something about it.
And while Chiusano knows his complaints will elicit unsympathetic scoffs from those who would never dream of settling down on the banks of the toxic Gowanus, he insists he and his family have a right to clean air, and Bayside should be held accountable for any pollutants they may be putting out.
“I can hear the collective ‘Go f— yourself’ from people looking at this from the outside,” he said. “But just because we chose to live in proximity to something the EPA is cleaning up, doesn’t mean companies have free reign to put whatever they want into the air.”
