Fighting to prevent the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn from being labeled a Superfund site, city officials are proposing an alternative cleanup plan that they say would still be overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency but would take only about half the time a Superfund project would require.

A Superfund designation, reserved for the country’s most hazardous sites, allows the government to pursue parties responsible for the pollution and require them to pay for the removal of hazards.

In April the E.P.A. proposed adding the Gowanus Canal to its Superfund National Priorities List at the urging of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. In a preliminary assessment the agency found that the site was contaminated by a variety of pollutants as a result of the waterway’s industrial past, including pesticides, metals and cancer-causing chemicals called PCBs.

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