State wants to test for cancerous vapor in polluted Gowanus — but can only search buildings with owner’s OK

Residents living near Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal will be able to find out within weeks if their building is contaminated with cancer-causing vapors – but only if they can talk their landlord into letting the state come on their property and do tests, The Post has learned.

Building owners have the right to bar the Department of Environmental Conservation from entering their land to search for hazardous chemicals such as trichloroethylene — and so far only one-in-five Gowanus owners have agreed to the inspections.

DEC has now resorted to telling tenants its up to them to beg their landlords to give the ok for the tests.

“If you are a tenant, please have a conversation with your landlord to see whether or not access has been granted,” DEC Deputy Commissioner Patrick Foster said at a public meeting Thursday night at Gowanus’ P.S. 372, where cancerous fumes and other hazardous substances — including benzene and xylene — have already been found.

“And you’re having a hard time with that conversation, please let us know, and we will do more outreach to your landlord.”

The DEC has already tested hundreds of buildings and, by next month, will be sending out letters to all building owners in roughly 100 blocks around the infamous, pollution-choked Gowanus Canal asking for permission to do tests on their property.

“If you are a property owner, we have forms that you can fill out to give us access,” Foster said.

State law requires landlords to notify tenants if hazardous chemicals are found — and do costly mitigation efforts, Foster said.

But such hazards can only be looked for with the “cooperation and consent” from the owner, according to state documents. And few landlords so far have apparently been willing to take the risk that something might be found.

Of the 610 buildings solicited for testing during the first phase of the contamination study, only 20% granted access for testing, records show. Of those, about 113 buildings completed testing.

“I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure,” one property owner, who declined to provide her name, told The Post after Thursday’s DEC meeting.

The owner wouldn’t elaborate on what factors she was debating or what kind of property she owned.

“They said that they aren’t really finding patterns [of contamination], and the contaminant levels they’re finding are really low, so that’s pretty encouraging,” she said.

Some places, however, have been found to have significant contaminations — such as the Royal Palms shuffleboard club on Union Street, where cancer-causing vapors roughly 22 times the amount considered safe were detected.

Venting the underground contaminants has since reduced the fumes and recent air quality tests at the site have deemed “safe” — while unsafe levels of chemicals were found in at least a dozen other buildings.

Records show one building, which the state did not publicly identify, had levels of TCE at 450 times above acceptable levels.

Other tests conducted at a Union Street building with nearly two dozen businesses found TCE fumes dozens of times.

The state plans to install equipment to remove the harmful fumes at PS 372 by early next year, representatives said.

While vapors of TCE were found in a main reception area at PS 32 on the east side of the canal, the DEC said those levels were not serious enough to require remediation.

“In the case of that school, we didn’t really have the … concentrations that require actions,” one state representative said. “We had quite a few samples that were collected in different parts of the building, we had samples that were collected in the basement air, which … is where we expect to see the highest concentrations.” 

Some tenants, like a 53-year-old woman who declined to provide her name for fear of retaliation, told The Post that her business serves children – and is concerned that the onus falls on her and other employees to advocate for testing.

“We’re a tenant and our building hasn’t been tested and we’re just trying to figure out what we can do,” she said. 

“[The DEC meeting] had actually helpful information – but I’m not sure everyone will agree to it, even if we do all the things they say. Ultimately, it’s the landlord’s decision.”

The business owner told The Post that, while families are raising concerns regarding lack of testing, she’s afraid to speak out for fear of being asked to move out.

“We’re kind of in this awkward position of not being able to – we want them to test, apparently as tenants we’re supposed to kind of pressure them, but we can’t sacrifice our relationships,” she added.

“If they were to want us to move out or something like that, that would be devastating.”