By DAVID CARUSO
Associated Press

NEW YORK - For at least 120 years, New York City officials have been promising to do something about the oily, smelly mess that is Brooklyn's Gowanus canal.

Now, federal authorities will see if they can do a better job of cleaning up one of the city's most polluted waterways.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday named the Gowanus as a Superfund site, a distinction that allows the government to go after polluters and force them to pay for the canal's restoration. The EPA has said the cleanup could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The agency made the designation over the objections of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had criticized the federal program as too slow and preferred an alternative plan in which the city would supervise the cleanup itself.

Bloomberg also worried that the Superfund label would scare away developers who had proposed new, luxury housing for the blocks surrounding the canal, which runs 1.5 miles through a narrow industrial zone sandwiched between some of Brooklyn's wealthiest neighborhoods.

A Bloomberg spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, pledged the city's cooperation with the EPA, but called the agency's decision "disappointing."

"We had an innovative and comprehensive approach that was a faster route to a Superfund-level cleanup and would have avoided the issues associated with a Superfund listing," he said.

EPA regional administrator Judith Enck said in a statement that the agency was aware of the city's concerns, but felt a Superfund designation was "the best path to a cleanup."

For more than a century, coal yards, chemical factories and fuel refineries on the canal's banks discharged everything from tar to purple ink into the water, earning it the local nickname "The Lavender Lake" for its unnatural hue.

The New York Times described the canal in 1893 as a "disease-breeding and foul-smelling open sewer." The stench was so bad it sometimes bothered residents a half-mile away.

Occasional explosions in the refineries served by the canal made the problems worse. The canal itself caught fire in 1946 when gasoline floating on the surface was ignited by a blowtorch. In 1976, explosions at a fuel terminal led to a leak of an estimated 2.5 million gallons of heating oil.

Pollution wasn't the only thing that went into the water. The canal's location on the edge of several Mafia strongholds gave it an oversized place in city crime lore. A character in novelist Jonathan Lethem's book, Motherless Brooklyn, quipped that the Gowanus was the only body of water in the world that was 90 percent guns.

Through it all, city and state officials have promised improvements.

Occasionally, they have delivered. After a flushing tunnel was repaired in 1999, the water quality improved dramatically. The stench abated.

Today, it's tough to smell the petroleum in the water until you're at the canal's edge. On many days, it doesn't stink at all. Local canoe clubs lead tours showing where aquatic wildlife has made a resurgence.

Still, on many days the water is covered in an oily sheen. The sediment on the canal's floor contains heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs and chemicals found in oil and tar. The banks are filled with toxins, too, which has complicated redevelopment plans.

In Brooklyn, the EPA's deliberations over whether to name the site to the Superfund National Priorities List has been a hot political topic, with some residents and business owners lamenting that it would kill development and beautification plans.

Toll Brothers, which had proposed building a 460-unit apartment complex on the canal's bank, said after the decision that it would scuttle the plan.

On the other side, activists distributed posters with the slogan, "Superfund Me," and said the city had missed its chance to tackle the problems.

Riverkeeper, a leading clean water group, praised the EPA's decision Tuesday.

"After 150 years of abuse and neglect the Gowanus Canal will finally get the comprehensive cleanup that the residents of the area deserve," said the group's chief investigator, Josh Verleun.