The city's alternative cleanup plan for the Gowanus Canal would take just nine-and-a-half years to complete, officials announced at a meeting June 24.

The detailed timeline for an alternative cleanup plan, made public for the first time, reveals a fast-track cleanup the city believes could begin as soon as the current U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) feasibility study is completed.

Cas Holloway, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler and a special advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said at the meeting the alternative plan would clean the canal faster than the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed Superfund approach.

"This isn't really about the EPA versus some other management entity," Holloway said. "It's about cleaning up the canal as quickly as possible."

Under the plan, the city would work with the USACE to complete a final feasibility study and environmental impact study within two to three years from now. The design of an appropriate remediation plan would then begin, and would take another two years, approximately.

Remediation action would start in six years and be completed over a two-year span, meaning the cleanup would be finished in a little over nine years from now.

"This is not fly-by-night [plan] or a plan that was not carefully conceived," said Daniel Walsh, director of the mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation.

Walsh said the city, which has already committed $175 million to the project, has the necessary expertise to take on such a large and complicated process.

"New York City is probably the most capable city in the country when it comes to environmental cleanup," Walsh said.

In later interviews, Holloway and EPA official Walter Mugdan both insisted their respective plans were more effective.

"That timeline is based on discussions on and our work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," Holloway said. "We think that's reasonable given where we are."

Mugdan called the city's timeline "reasonable" but nevertheless said "it's of limited relevance to establish a timeline" before finishing a feasibility study to determine exactly what work will need to be done to clean the site.

He said he expected once that work is done, and due to financing complications inherent in the city's plan, there is a good chance the alternative approach would take longer than nine-plus years.

If the EPA were to guess at a timeline of its own, Mugdan said "for planning purposes we would probably have a reasonably similar one."