Superfund: A Citizen's Guide
Taught by Inna Guzenfeld
Inna Guzenfeld is a planner and urban historian trained at Pratt Institute. She emigrated from the Ukraine in the nineties and grew up on the Coney Island peninsula. Her work centers on the New York waterfront, where she documents and advocates the city’s maritime past. She can often be found traversing Brooklyn’s industrial landscapes in search of stories and artifacts. She also teaches historic preservation and urban studies at CUNY.
With the Environmental Protection Agency's designation of Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek, Superfund has become a colloquial term and a buzzword in New York City.
But what is a Superfund exactly? How are sites placed on the National Priorities List? Who is a responsible party? What does clean-up entail and how does it involve communities? We will cover all these questions and more in this introduction, spotlighting Superfund in your neighborhood. We will focus on citizen participation in the Superfund process and conclude with a discussion of current and future sites in the five boroughs.
