After more than a century of toxic pollution, Brooklyn’s infamous Gowanus Canal is finally being cleaned up. This November, the Environmental Protection Agency kicked off the first phase of its plan to dredge the entire length of this industrial waterway, scooping out the thick layer of “black mayonnaise” which has settled at its bottom. A small fleet of barges and tugboats is now removing this noxious sediment, which is laced with heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals.
Dredging and capping the Gowanus Canal is expected to take at least a decade to complete, and is just one part of the EPA’s larger Superfund cleanup process, which began in 2010. The canal’s coastline is also now being remediated to keep buried toxins from seeping out into the water, with workers excavating polluted soil and putting in new bulkhead barriers. The first phase of this cleanup is taking place at the northern end of the 1.8 mile canal, in its most densely populated area, giving local residents a close-up view of this $1.5 billion project.
The dredgers will remove 10 feet of sediment from the bottom of the canal, which is polluted with industrial chemicals, liquid tar, and heavy metals like mercury and lead. After it is dredged, the bottom of the canal will be capped with layers of sand, concrete and gravel.
The Gowanus Canal is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States, and the communities around it have been advocating for it to be cleaned for decades. The canal’s sediment – its notorious ‘black mayonnaise’ – is a lethal mix of oil, coal, pesticides, rotting debris, raw sewage, chemicals, and heavy metals, which includes arsenic, benzene, chromium, mercury, and lead.
The canal’s waters are tainted by millions of gallons of sewage every year, which, in the 1970s, led to it being contaminated with typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis. In more recent years, it has been diagnosed with gonorrhea. The canal’s coastline has been poisoned by a century of industrial use, including chemical factories and manufactured gas plants, which left behind coal tar plumes that have sunk 153 feet underground.
Author Jonathan Lethem describes the Gowanus Canal as "the only body of water in the world that is 90 percent guns" in his book Motherless Brooklyn. And many old timers mention bodies....lots and lots of bodies
https://gothamist.com/news/gowanus-canal-superfund-dredging-photos-epa-brooklyn
https://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2020/12/dredging-in-polluted-gowanus-two-whole.html
My neice lives in Brooklyn, and belongs to a cooperative studio called the Gowanus Studio Space, which is near the Gowanus Canal. They have woodworking and metal shops for artists and craftsmen (sorry, "craftspeople") to use to make art, furniture, etc. It's a good idea for people in a big city who don't have their own shop to work in. When you posted about the Gowanus Canal, I knew I had seen that name before.
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