Giant Underground Tanks Will Handle Gowanus Sewage

Local activists are overjoyed the federally mandated cleanup of the Gowanus Canal will include not only chemical pollutants from its years as an industrial waterway but also the biohazardous overflow from city sewers during storms. The Brooklyn Paper has reported more details on just exactly how that will be accomplished: With two giant catch basins costing $78 million each buried underground at the head of the canal near Butler Street and in the middle of the canal near Third Street. Interestingly, one of the chemical pollutants in the canal is coal tar, a byproduct of the days when manufactured gas plants lined the canal’s banks. National Grid has inherited responsibility for some of that, and is one of three dozen industrial polluters who will help pay for the cleanup. As for the proposed sewer overflow tanks, they will hold up to eight million gallons of raw sewage during storms, then send the glop to wastewater treatment plants in Red Hook and Bay Ridge. As a result, discharges of raw sewage into the canal should be reduced by about 58 to 74 percent, the Feds estimate. “We have been trying to get the city to do something about the [sewer] pollution forever,” the Brooklyn Paper quoted Linda Mariano, co-founder of Friends and Residents of the Greater Gowanus, as saying. “It’s a very good thing that they are going to make the effort. That’s what we have been advocating for, for all of these years — I’m happy.”
Feds Force City to Keep Sewage Out of Gowanus [Brooklyn Paper]
EPA Unveils Cleanup Plan for Gowanus [Brownstoner]
Photo by juliandunn