Gowanus Canal

Subject: Re: Gowanus Canal

street shooter wrote: Does anyone know if they will ever clean the Gowanus canal or if they have plans to? Maybe it's just a pipe dream of mine. I remember something about pumping clean water into it.

Im not quite sure I want to see what is in that water

Actually, the pump has helped to significantly reduce the odor, and bring life back to the canal. Unfortunately, the pump still breaks down once in a while and things can get stinky fast. The city has been better about getting it back up and running.

I wonder if Whole Foods building on 3rd & 3rd will light a fire under someone's ass to clean it up since nice wholesome healthy grocery stores won't want a sewage tank nearby. And yeah--the smell is noticeably less ripe that it was last summer--is it algae making that stank?

erikka wrote: I wonder if Whole Foods building on 3rd & 3rd will light a fire under someone's ass to clean it up

Funny, because the canal already smells as if someone had lit a fire under someone's ass.

Yavel wrote: They reactivated a 100 year old pump that had been broken since the 60's, but I don't think it improved the water very much.

I would be very surprised if they were able to clean up the canal. That area growing up was very industrial and the city never really took care of the canal.

JoanJettofArc wrote: If they can clean up the Cuyahoga River (which caught on fire. twice.) they can clean up the Gowanus.

I really hope they do

8thandPrez wrote: I believe the Whole Foods is caught up in a brownfield nightmare. I've heard that Gowanus, for all the talk of it becoming the next hot nabe, has some incredibly major contamination issues that developers will have to deal with. Read: $$$$$

Construction of the Whole Foods has more or less stopped for now. Rumors put the reason both on the expensive remidiation it will take to clean up the brownfield and superfund sites common in the area (propertyshark.com had a map not too long ago which showed all the toxic/hazardous contaminations in NYC, but I can't seem to find it on their site right now -- needless to say, Gowanus was heavily represented :? ), and on Whole Food's efforts to purchase the neighboring lot so as to expand the store's footprint before they start construction in earnest.

As for the canal, it's actually come a long way in the last ten or twenty years -- the Flushing Tunnel pump was upgraded & re-activated in 1999, and just last year the Army Core of Engineer completed an Ecosystem Restoration Feasibility Study, examining the feasibility of dredging the canal & restoring some wildlife habitat. Fish and birds have begun to (slowly) return to the canal, as well as less-savory wildlife like jellyfish and horseshoe crabs. It's still a mess and needs a lot of work, but there are also a lot of people trying to get that work accomplished -- you can read more about what's going on here: http://www.gowanus.org/

Yavel wrote: Does anyone know what happened to the funky houseboat that was docked by the the bridge? I think it was the Carroll St bridge over the Gowanus.

You're referring to the Empty Vessel Project, I assume -- http://www.emptyvesselproject.org/. I know that they were being asked to move last month (berthing at the end of an unused street is against the rules), but I haven't been by there in a few weeks & hadn't heard that they were gone. I know they were looking for another place to berth along the canal.

steveo wrote: Apropos of not much, I'm a member of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, which offers tours of the canal and the Gowanus bay to interested community members.

(Not sure when we close down for winter, but you still might get out there this fall if you hurry.)

http://gowanuscanal.org/ Click on Reservations.

My mother would love that!! She doesn't believe me that people go canoeing
there (she grew up not too far from there). I could never get her in a canoe do the tours also use the rowboats?