City’s $125M Would Help Upgrade
Flushing Tunnel, Sewage Pump
By Sarah Ryley
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
GOWANUS — With the city in the midst of determining whether to allow housing along the Gowanus Canal for the first time, a comprehensive plan to clean up the toxic waterway was unveiled Monday that aims to meet this standard: “If fish were to meander into the canal, it would basically just have to survive.”
Kevin Clarke of the city’s Department of Environmental Conservation, who gave the first half of the presentation, said a more ambitious goal would be to make the water suitable for fish to breed 93 percent of the time. Currently, he said, fish can breed there less than 30 percent of the year, and can survive just over 30 percent. But because of the canal’s high level of toxicity, there’s no guarantee those fish would be born with two eyes and two sets of gills.
The plan involves a $125 million city contribution and significant disturbance over the next decade as the Flushing Tunnel is modernized and the Gowanus Pumping Station upgraded to handle and filter more raw sewage, 300 million gallons of which currently spews directly into the canal each year from 11 openings. Clarke said 750 feet of the 9,504-foot canal might be dredged — although the department would likely encounter great difficulty and expense locating a landfill somewhere to accept the volatile material. Otherwise, portions of the canal could be “capped.”
Because the land surrounding the canal, which acts as a topographical drain for that portion of Brooklyn, is nearly impervious, water floods the sewage system during every heavy rain rather than absorbing into the soil, causing the sewage overflows. Improvements to the Flushing Tunnel and Gowanus Pump station, scheduled to begin construction this year, would eventually reduce sewage overflow events to up to four times a year, said Clarke.
Expanding the Flushing Tunnel to pump 215 million gallons of “fresh” water from the Buttermilk Channel into the canal every day, up from 150 million gallons, would require it to be shut down for at least nine months, rendering the canal’s toxin- and sewage-addled waters completely stagnant, he said.
All of this is a prerequisite for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ planned wetlands and wildlife restoration project, which project manager Mark Lulka said would not be undertaken until the canal’s water quality is improved (otherwise the effort would be useless). This project would involve more dredging or capping, which would cause problems directly adjacent to the canal, “such as noise, some fumes from the dredging apparatus,” and disturbances from equipment coming back and forth.
Lulka said the Army Corps also hopes to add natural habitats somewhere along the concrete perimeter of the canal, but acknowledged that there would be difficulties finding space.
“Shoreline softening is not that likely along the Gowanus Canal because it’s all private property,” he said. “And there are limited opportunities for wetlands restoration, perhaps one of the turning basins, and that’s the only place where we would consider wetlands. And if you put a wetland there, there’s no guarantee that someone wouldn’t come along and dump oil in it a year later.”
City Planning released a proposal last month that would require landscaping as opposed to concrete in 20 to 50 percent of every front yard, but if passed, it would only apply to low-density housing. If City Planning were to allow housing along the canal, which it’s expected to do, it would likely be high-density housing, in no small part because the enormous cost of cleaning up the property would make any low-density project unprofitable.
City Planning has also enacted waterfront access requirements in places throughout the city like Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where developers are required to provide public space along the waterfront complying to city design standards. But whether those standards would include “shoreline softening” along the Gowanus, as Lulka has suggested, has not been discussed with his agency.
A spokeswoman for the department did point out a proposal that would require developers to plant trees, which also absorb water.
Lulka said, to his knowledge, his agency has not had any discussions with City Planning over potential zoning mechanisms that would address the lack of real earth along the canal. Both agencies are expected to submit their recommendations for the Gowanus next year for approval.
Lulka said work on the watershed restoration project would likely begin around 2013.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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