The
Red Hook StarªRevue
NOVEMBER 2016
FREE
SOUTH BROOKLYN’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
The Fish Gods of Erie Basin by Noah Phillips
Paulie McDonald is looking for striped bass tonight. “They’re the biggest, meanest thing out here,” says McDonald, “and that’s what I’m trying to catch.” McDonald is standing on a crumbling concrete bulkhead behind one of the long brick warehouses that define the Red Hook landscape. Even as he speaks, McDonald’s eyes are fixated on the tip of the fishing rod planted in the bucket in front of him. It’s around 1 in the morning in late October, and a bit chilly. “The fishing gets pretty good this time of year, but it’s cold, so you’ve got to be kind of diehard,” says McDonald, who is 32 and has a construction shop in Red Hook. “I’ll come out, I’ll suffer. A little bit of weather isn’t going to stop me.” McDonald and his friends have been fishing in Red Hook for more than ten years. Until recently, they caught a huge diversity of fish, from bait like bunker and minnows to larger game fish like herring, bluefish, blackfish, fluke, and striped bass. But in early October, the ecology of Erie Basin was disrupted when work began at a new development on site of the old Revere Suger Refinery. Per the local fishermen, the work has clouded the water and possibly released long-encapsulated toxic materials into the water column. “I go down there every day and I see what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it, and it just bothers my mind,” says Robbie Giordano, another local fisherman and neighborhood barman. “I haven’t seen any dead fish floating yet - that’s because most of them are smart enough that they get a taste of the water and they get out of there.”
Erie Basin
Look at a map of Red Hook, and Erie Basin immediately draws the eye. Roughly 90 acres in area, it is formed by the artificial peninsulas of Van Brunt Street on the west side and Columbia Street on the east side. The basin also separates the Buttermilk Channel to the east and Gowanus Bay to the west. Erie Basin was built in the 1840s by
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William Beard and Jeremiah and George Robinson as an offloading point for goods coming down the Erie Canal from the Midwest. It was a major part of what made Red Hook and New York - one of the biggest shipping centers in the world.
Robbie Giordano prepares his gear for a night of fishing in Erie Basin. (photo by Noah Phillips)
“Erie Basin is very deep in some places because it was created to use as ship dockage. There were ship repairs there, there was off-loading of rice, grains, sugars, big ships with deep hulls would need to go in there,” says Giordano, who has lived in Red Hook for the last ten years and has fished Erie Basin for the last eight. “A lot of people don’t know this, but Erie Basin actually has an opening on both ends.” Giordano, 45, has been fishing since he was two years old. He majored in Fisheries and Marine Technology at Kingsboro College, and worked for the New York Water Taxi until a traffic accident put him behind the bar at Verona Lounge. He says that Erie Basin’s natural geography makes it one of the best spots in New York Harbor to fish. “Erie Basin has been a tremendous source of life in terms of fish ecology and bird ecology,” says Giordano. “The water quality used to be probably the highest of any as far as clarity, oxygen levels, and condition overall than anywhere else in New York Harbor.” He says that clear ocean water is pushed along the southern shore of Brooklyn, flushing Erie Basin every 12 hours with the tide. ”You can actually see it happening. You see chocolate milk on one side and this greenish clear water moving against it on the other side,” says Giordano. “There’s a deep channel that comes all the way from the Breezy Point jetty along the Belt Parkway, all
the way along Brooklyn. The first relief point is Erie Basin.” The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) designates parts of Erie Basin as a Priority Marine Activity Zone as well as a Significant Maritime Industrial Area. The IKEA site, formerly a U.S. Dredg-
ing Shipyard Site, was restored as part of DEC’s Brownfield Remediation Program. Rodney Rivera, who works at DEC’s Long Island City office, also says that Erie Basin is prime real estate for many forms of life. (continued on page 3)
Tony Sterling case unsolved
O
by Nicole Rothwell
n October 5, 2014, Howard “Tony” Sterling was murdered in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For the last two years, Bobby Boomer and Omar Gray were held in pretrial detention, only to be released this past August and September respectively. It was a Sunday morning when Sterling was fatally shot in his home. The murder of Sterling, who was known to some as the “Santa Clause of Red Hook,” was a tragic loss for the community. In December 2014, Gray and Boomer were arrested for his murder. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s (DA) Office confirmed in an email to the Red Hook Star Revue that on August 16, 2016, Boomer was
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acquitted at trial and Gray’s case was dismissed on September 16, 2016. The DA’s office could not comment beyond this because both cases have been sealed. “There was clearly reasonable doubt, but in my opinion, I don’t think he should’ve been charged,” Lawrence Fredella, Boomer’s defense attorney, said in a phone interview. Fredella said the prosecution argued that Boomer and Gray had attempted robbery at Sterling’s residence, and that Boomer shot Sterling in his leg before leaving. “They made their allegation based on, what I thought was, faulty witnesses and also video (continued on page 5)
November 2016, Page 1