Williamsburg's Toxic Slag Heap

As Gowanus Lounge has been tracking, the future home of a Karl Fischer building on the corner of N11th and Bedford in Williamsburg could be a festering toxic mess. The lot at 95 Bedford had previously housed a lead paint plant, which, according to an alert reader, produced one-third of the US military's rust-prevention primer during WWII (used for tanks and the like). While the lot is no superfund site, it seems likely that decades of lead paint production left the property somewhat tainted. And developers have made little effort to either remediate the land or contain the mess. Piles of rubble are left uncovered, and dust regularly blows through nearby McCarren and into the yummy street vendor tacos on N11th. The good news is that rains seem to have tuned the lot into a muddy sludge pile that contains most of the dust on site.