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October 23, 2007
Gowanus Cleanup Update: Time and Money
Last night Community Board 6’s public safety/environmental protection committee held a public meeting about the Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gowanus Canal Ecological Restoration Study. The $5 million partnership to study and spur cleanup of the canal has been going on for six years, and the good news is that it’s starting to result in concrete plans for revitalizing Lavender Lake. The bad news is that the plans the DEP and Army Corps have come up with aren’t exactly going to be implemented tomorrow, and they ain’t gonna come cheap.
Kevin Clarke, the DEP’s chief of Wastewater and Water Infrastructure and Support, gave a presentation about the department’s $125 million water quality improvement plan, which the state is likely to approve and set in motion sometime next year. The DEP intends to modernize the canal’s flushing tunnel and pumping stations so they process a lot more water on a daily basis and reduce the impact of sewer overflow into the waterway; the department projects that updating the two pieces of infrastructure will take almost four years, and they want to start that work by next fall. The plan also calls for preliminary dredging of the 1.8-mile-long Gowanus and periodically sending a boat onto the canal to engage in “floatable skimming” (“floatable” is DEP lingo for street garbage that’s made its way to the canal and decided against sinking). The dredging and garbage boat plans probably won’t come into play until sometime next decade. Mark Lulka, the Army Corps’ project manager, called the canal “a puzzle,” and said the Corps’ preliminary recommendations for ecosystem restoration involved dredging and capping sediments, possibly with wetlands creation. The Army Corps hopes to finish a final feasibility report about the measures by 2009 and begin work in 2012 or 2013. Update: Gowanus Lounge has additional coverage of last night's event here.
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Comments
Except for the conrcete plant and the metal recycler, who actually uses the canal? JUST DRAIN IT AND FILL THE THING IN. It was a failure from the start and we are just throwing our tax dollars away, unless you are one of a few very wealthy speculators who own land down there. Then that $125 million is crucial. FILL THE SEWER IN!
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 9:53 AM
9:53, that canal was once a swamp and creek and is the natural drainage the land that is now Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.
Filling in the Gowanus Canal (and the flushing tunnel) would be an engineering project of enormous proportions.
I don't think it's remotely feasible, and it certainly would not be cheaper than what is being discussed.
Gary Reilly
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 10:00 AM
Filling the canal in never occurred to me but you know what - it is probably the best idea out there. If it takes 15 years to figure out how to clean it and another 15 years to do the work it is probably just not worth it. The cleanup will be far from perfect.
fill the damn thing in, put some vents in like they do for landfills and call it a day.
Like #1 stated above it was an ill conceived idea to begin with - why shoud we be burdened by it. They filled Canal Street in and no harm was done. The problem with Canal Street is that it is still a sewer.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 10:33 AM
Every time I drive past the canal I think the same thing: why are we trying to salvage this eyesore? It isn't scenic; it's not even original (it was a creek that was dredged out to become what it is today.) If we can put men on the moon, we can permanently cap the poisonous sediments down below where they can't hurt anybody, and fill the damn thing in. If it really serves a drainage purpose, then create a subterranean culvert at the same time you fill it in. It has GONORRHEA, people! Canoers can head over to the East and Hudson rivers. Birds and wildlife can stay a few hundred yards away in the much cleaner waters of NY harbor. Fill...it...in!!!
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 10:52 AM
Sorry everybody-but-Gary, but neither the Army Corps nor the Department of Environmental Conservation would ever, ever, approve filing in the canal.
Posted by: g man at October 23, 2007 11:20 AM
I like to wiz in the canal.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 11:29 AM
It doesnt need to be filled in - it simply needs to have a proper flushing tunnel (the barely working one now is no where near adequate) and some limited dredging. The water will never be 'clean' but if you got fresh water in there constantly, nature would take its course and make reasonably clean.
These 5yr plans however are simply a 'never get done' project. If enough pressure was placed the canal could be upgraded in 2yrs.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 11:47 AM
Is this the same Army Corps in charge of the levees in New Orleans? Dang, I feel confident now!
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 12:57 PM
lets put a powerplant here. it wil keep the industrial nature and keep jobs. in fact we could put a power plant on some of the canal and could put a waste transfer station at the end of teh canal.
the city is in dire need of both and if everyone thinks the canal is worthless we should just find a better use.
that wasn't really serious (in case you couldn't tell)----
really you could fill it in and create a gowanus greenway. a continuous park over a large tunnel that connects all of the over flows and dumps it at the head of the canal.
I think if you voted for a wide greenway or a waterway you know which way it would go.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 1:14 PM
Where does the flushed water go? Jersey?
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 1:18 PM
1:18, Buttermilk Channel, between Brooklyn and Governors Island
Posted by: g man at October 23, 2007 1:31 PM
I'm sorry but modern cities should not be dumping untreated waste water into public water ways. Spend the money correcting that shit storm run off problem... seperate the waste and rain water lines but stop entertaining ideas that the Gowanus is anything other than a third world ditch. They are talking about a future where the water will be able to "possibly" sustain life. What kind of goal is that. As for it being the natural drainage area for the Slope, everything below 4th Avenue is practically infill. What's natural about that? Hell all of lower Manhattan is land fill in one way or another. This Gowanus should be filled in and built over, or make it a greenway or greenbelt park for pedestrians and cyclists. The Mayor wants to plant trees here's a great place to start. FILL IT IN! FILL IT IN! FILL IT IN!
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 1:33 PM
I agree. Fill it in and fix the sewers.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 5:14 PM
If everyone doing renovation in bklyn can just take their concrete/dirt/ rocks over to the canal it would be a done deal in a year.
just a thought.
Posted by: guest at October 23, 2007 11:32 PM
The only way to fill in the canal and deal with the drainage it presently provides, would be to fill it in all the way from the top of Prospect Hill to the top of Court street. If we just filled in the canal itself, all that drainage will overtake Bond Street to 5th Avenue--just a much wider and flatter canal condition.
But if we did fill in the canal with wetlands vegetation, we could have our area wide drainage along with natures filtration systems to cleanup the yuck we spill into it.
The concrete factories have enough work without filling in the canal with concrete. Lets give some work to the gardeners and make a real sustainable fix to this problem.
PLANT THE THING UP!
Posted by: guest at October 27, 2007 10:04 AM
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