"With the NJDEP's ruling that water-purifying oysters are at too much of a risk from poachers, environmental group NY/NJ Baykeeper was forced to pull up the oysters it had cultivated along Raritan Bay. Scientists say the oysters could restore the waters to health, but the FDA is worried the oysters, which absorb toxins in the water, could find their way into the edible seafood supply. Christine M. Lynn of NY/NJ Baykeeper told us, "Everyone we work with in New York is as surprised and confused by the NJDEP decision as we are.""
It is a legitimate concern, but so is the concern that someone could eat a fish out of the Gowanus. Let the oysters grow!
A little info from the Brooklyn Paper on some color showing up on the shores of the Gowanus recently:
"Twenty-five new brightly hued birdhouses now line the 1.8-mile canal, thanks to the efforts of a foursome of North Carolinians who hatched the initiative, called the Canal Nest Colony. The project started two years ago with just five shelters.
The bad news? Birds are just as picky about their homes as the humans who shun living alongside a famously polluted canal, recently named a Superfund site. Indeed, this project is suffering from a case of the empty nest syndrome.
“The birdhouses aren’t being used yet because it takes a while for the birds to get used to them,” explained Hans Hesselein, a South Slope landscape architect who helped found the initiative along with college friends Thomas Ryan, David Moses, and Andrew Nicholas."
"It was the week of July 19 when an opossum allegedly chomped the head off a hen roosting in Unes’s backyard chicken coop, leaving the choked chicken to die in a pile of blood-speckled feathers — and so thoroughly terrified the lone survivor that she can’t even lay eggs.
Unes, who was on vacation in Oregon at the time, entrusted her Carroll Street home — and her two-chicken henhouse in her backyard — to longtime friends David Winters and Merritt Tucker, a married couple who were visiting from California.
In the early morning hours of July 22, Winters recalled hearing some sort of commotion in the backyard — and received a vague reminder of Osbourne’s notorious stage antics."
If only New York City made it legal to have roosters, none of this would have happened.
Seems like the two steps forward, one step back. Apparently the construction on Degraw and Tiffany is for the flushing tunnel for the Gowanus. From the Brooklyn Paper:
"Construction needed to improve the water in the polluted canal will disrupt the quality of life of residents living two neighborhood away, thanks to the city’s $50-million rehabilitation of a “flushing tunnel” that runs from the top of the filthy canal to the Buttermilk Channel between Brooklyn and Governors Island.
That and an $85-million upgrade of an adjacent wastewater pumping station in the Canal zone will mean road work for the next three years at several key intersections.
At Columbia Street and Tiffany Place, blocks way from the top of the canal, the project has already “been very disruptive to the neighborhood,” said Tiffany Place resident Mina Roustayi. “I understand the environmental reasons for it, but I’m concerned with the parking — we’ve already lost 10-13 spaces.”"
The disruption is regrettable, but the ends justify the means. And please, shut up about parking spaces. Why must bike lanes, clean waterways and sensible transit policy be constantly opposed by those who need their parking spaces on their block?
"“Whole Foods is now reviewing the possibilities for a future location at this site,” said a Whole Foods spokesman, Michael Sinatra. “While there is no timetable set, discussions are active and we remain hopeful to bring a store to this community in the near future.”
Two weeks ago, contractors working for Whole Foods finished excavating toxic soil and removing three underground oil tanks. The area was then capped with two feet of clean soil."
Though we'd love to see something happen to the corner, lets not hold our breaths. With the current state of construction financing, it will take a few years to even line up funds to begin construction, if that is the direction that Whole Foods chooses to go.
Of all the things to argue about. I guess we now know why the previous story on the Sponge Park had a trademark on it, and a commenter requested not to refer to it as a Sponge Park. Take it away, Brooklyn Paper:
"It turns out that “Sponge Park” is not some kind of public trust — it’s a trademarked name that belongs to dlandstudio — as do two Web domain names that use the name to promote dlandstudio’s business.
“They trademarked the name without our knowledge or permission,” said Andy Simons, chairman of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy.
Simons specifically blamed dlandstudio’s principal, Susannah Drake, for the betrayal. Strong word? You decide: For her work on the park, Drake received about $21,000, of which $16,000 came from a New York State Council for the Arts grant.
Simon’s mind is made up.
“When you are taking public money, you are not supposed to be creating something that is privately owned,” he said. “As soon as you take public funds, it becomes publicly owned.”"
The recent wacky ideas for New York Harbor proposed by architects included Oysters in and around the Gowanus (and off of the Bay Ridge Flats). Oysters are like little livers, all around the world's near-shore waters. They clean, they scrub, no wonder they aren't kosher! Oysters do have a long history in Hew York Harbor, but recent results of efforts to reintroduce them have been mixed.
Still, the idea of oysters in the canal (once other cleanup efforts have commenced) has always been an interesting idea for me. That is, until I read John Waldman's Heartbeats in the Muck, page 155, where he relays his experience with oysters in the canal:
"Our expectations that young oysters would be seen are tempered by the generally poor results Longstretch has recorded elsewhere around the harbor with his project - none worse than in the Gowanus Canal. When he hung a sack of live oysters off a bulkhead there, not only were they dead upon his return two weeks later, by the shells had shrunk as well, perhaps because of acidity in the contaminated canal. Careful inspections of the large dead oyster shells now reveals many embryonic forms-apparent oyster spat-and we are excited until on closer examination all turn out to be slipper limpets. Oyster spat, once in place, are attached for life. But the shell of the limpet, a snail-like but highly flattened creature, slips sideways when pushed."
A recent article in the Metro contained a little quote that shocked me a little. Seems like I would have heard about this. "...the city is more attuned to nature than it was in the 1950s when a shark swam into Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. Startled by the sudden appearance of the large fish, cops shot it."
In my time we've seen seals and Sludgy the whale in the canal, but no large sharks. Sure, a stray sand shark or two probably make their way in from time to time, but one large enough to be spotted and shot? Wow. This deserved a little more research. The New York Times also corroborates this assertion, stating:
"In 1952, a large shark was photographed swimming up the canal; the police shot it."
Well. Not much more information there than in the Metro article. In a variation on a theme, New York Magazine says that:
"In 1952, a shark made its way in. (The cops shot it.)"
Wow. Those par ens make all the difference. But where can we find more of an answer?
I turned to John Waldman's book "Heartbeats in the Muck", a book devoted to New York Harbor.
On page 50, he tells of the sharks that once abounded in New York Harbor: "...the regular presence until the middle of the ninteenth century of the sharks along Manhattan's commercial waterfront, particularly the East River. Not little sharks, but eight- and twelve-footers, drawn to the shallows by the raw refuse of the markets and common enough that one market worker, well known for overpowering sharks witht he customary tug-of-war gear of handheld rope tied to a chain, landed seven in one day."
Cool. So sharks were all over the harbor. But what about the Gowanus Canal? From Page 111:
"Without doubt the most noteworthy biological event within the canal's industrial history was the appearance of a large shark in 1950. Ali showed me a scrapbook about the canal that included a photograph of the shark from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Fittingly, it is a dismal scene - policemens bullets spray the water near the creature as hundreds of people watch along the bulkheads."
This is great for so many reasons. Could you imagine the hysteria that abounded in the 1950s at sharks? So misunderstood, as they continue to be to this day, that the police thought it would be a public hazard to keep the fish alive?
Just another piece of the Gowanus Canal's long and storied history!
Images from the South Street Seaport Museum, Seaport magazine, Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Heartbeats in the Muck
Hidden in (and, because of) all of the news about Superfund designation happening on the Gowanus Canal, the New York Times published a quick, dirty story about "life" around the canal.
"The news did not interrupt the unhurried rhythms of life along the shadowy canal, the toxic dividing line between two fancy neighborhoods carved into wetlands more than 150 years ago.
On the water where the E.P.A found pesticides and the cancer-causing chemicals known as PCBs bobbed the boat where John Ziegler and a friend have stayed on and off for five months, aiming to “get off the grid.”
They collect sunlight in solar panels for electricity and burn wood for heat. Mr. Ziegler, a writer and an amateur ornithologist, has seen a family of mallards, and hawks. The walls of the canal mute the city noise. The full moons, he said, are “gorgeous.”
But after a big rain, slicks of various colors and toxicities drift by the barge, so Mr. Ziegler said he was pleased that the E.P.A. had stepped in to clean up. “It’ll take a lot longer,” he said, “but it will actually work.”
Upstream from his boat and down, fuel tanks were cleaned, trucks were parked, scrap metal was collected and cars were serviced. Gene Wayda, 68, has watched it all since 1970, when he opened his machine shop on Butler Street at the canal’s northern tip.
Then, Irish schoolteachers lived next door. A Dun & Bradstreet printing plant was on the corner. Mr. Wayda played his own role in the neighborhood’s remarkable commercial diversity, constructing those hand-powered unicycles called distance measuring wheels. His patch of Gowanus had deteriorated and then stabilized. The dirty canal was a piece of unfinished business."
As first reported here, Whole Foods has begun the process of doing something to it's site on Third and Third. What it is, as they say, ain't exactly clear. A meeting last night was supposed to clear things up, but to no one's surprise, it didn't. And it is certainly understandable that Whole Foods is questioning what to do with the property. They probably can't get ANY realistic financing for development of the site, and are questioning whether or not a Whole Foods would even be feasible in this economy. So, their indecision, while certainly frustrating, is nonetheless understandable.
"John Bogdaski, an environmental consultant for Whole Foods, told members of Brooklyn Community Board 6’s environmental committee last night that site preparation work for cleanup of the two-acre site at Third Avenue and Third Street began earlier this month and that it should be decontaminated and ready for future development by the end of April.
The problem is Whole Foods is still trying to salvage the store-part of the project by finding development partners, although Bogdaski said the chain “is still committed” to building the supermarket.
He said in the coming weeks contaminated soil and three leaky underground storage tanks containing benzene and other cancer-causing substances would be removed and trucked away.
The cleanup of the site was originally supposed to be done in conjunction with construction of a new store. Instead, Bogdaski said the site would be covered with two feet of clean fill in preparation for potential development."
Everyone who lives around and studies the Gowanus Canal knows that the long-term issue is heavy metals, industrial history and lack of current. However, adding fuel to the fire are the CSOs, Combined Sewage Overflows. Basically, the waste and storm water flows share the same drain, and when stormwater flows heavily (i.e. during a rain event), the excess capacity overflows into the Gowanus. Once in the canal, it sits for weeks until it breaks down, since there is no tidal or other flow to bring it out to the bay.
One Park Slope resident think that he has a idea for this problem, and it involves disseminating real-time information to residents in close proximity to the canal, hoping to reduced wastewater flow when stormwater is heaviest. From Courier-Life:
"His system collects rainwater from buildings, and stores it in large, 750-gallon cisterns if a signal alerts that an overflow event is imminent. “Once you get that signal, it will close the valve because you don’t want to be dumping that water anymore.”When the system can handle it, the water is released back into the sewer line. “This is smart technology — it sees the action before it occurs and reacts to it,” he noted.
Presently, 377 million of gallons are discharged into the canal eachyear from 11 combined sewer overflow pipes along the waterway, Chezar said. Even with the city’s recently announced plan to reduce the overflows, there will still be 250 million gallons dumped in the canal, he noted. “Any gallon you can prevent from being discharged reduces that number,” he said.
Chezar’s hope is that his system will be installed in representative homes, institutions and businesses in and around the Gowanus. If it is shown to be effective, he is suggesting the city provide a discounted water rate to homes or businesses that employ the technology.
The plan would offer a variety of modes of communication — text messaging, Twitter, e-mail — to alert resident that an overflow event was likely. A small subgroup of homes would even receive a remote signal to a MIT-designed cube-shaped device that will change color when the canal is in danger of being overwhelmed by sewage.
The theory is that the person would then modify their behavior, say, forestall washing their dishes, until after the danger of polluting the canal has passed. “This isn’t Big Brother,” Chezar said. “It is basically telling you what’s going on.”"
Reported by Pardon Me For Asking and the Cobble Hill Association, Congresswoman Yvette Clark will be hosting a Community Roundtable at Christ Church (Clinton and Kane) on Monday, January 11th, at 7:30 pm. If history serves, one issue will likely dominate the night, that of Superfund status for the Gowanus. From PMFA:
"I believe that Congresswoman Clarke owes her constituents an explanation for her failure to take a stand on the proposed listing of the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site. She has been tiptoeing around the issue for months claiming she is doing due-diligence. As opposed to Congresswoman Velázquez's strong pro-Superfund statement, Ms. Clarke's fence-sitting has been deplorable.
I had lengthy conversations with the Congresswoman's staff about this very important environmental issue and hope to have an opportunity to finally hear directly from Ms. Clarke."
I hope that the Congresswoman and her staff are prepared for the constituents' ideas.
As first reported here on Thursday, the Gowanus / Park Slope / Carroll Gardens / Boerum Hill Whole Foods site is continuing with it's environmental remediation (as much as capping can be considered remediation), which seemed to bode well for the prospects of those who love their foods whole. But today, the Daily News is reporting that the news from Whole Foods' lawyers may not be so positive:
""No decision has been made," said spokesman Michael Sinatra. "We're kind of taking it step by step." Plans to open the upscale natural food chain's first Brooklyn store at Third Ave. and Third St. were thrown into disarray when leaky oil tanks were found buried beneath the site in 2006, contaminating the soil with cancer-causing chemicals, such as benzene.
At the time, store officials said they would clean up the toxic 2.1-acre site and open in 2008, but the deadline sailed by with little progress. Now, the company is vowing to clean up the mess, but may never build a store. "When [the cleanup] is done, it will be reassessed and [Whole Foods will] determine what will happen, whether a store will open or won't open," Sinatra said. "Eventually we'd like to bring a store to Brooklyn. Whether or not that will be the site, we're undecided at this point.""
Persistent rumors abound that the Whole Foods site will eventually be developed for residential uses, which makes the decision to cap all the more interesting, as that would not suffice as remediation for many residential uses. Perhaps they are capping so that the land may retain some commercial value in the interim while the Superfund status is decided?
"With the NJDEP's ruling that water-purifying oysters are at too much of a risk from poachers, environmental group NY/NJ Baykeeper was forced to pull up the oysters it had cultivated along Raritan Bay. Scientists say the oysters could restore the waters to health, but the FDA is worried the oysters, which absorb toxins in the water, could find their way into the edible seafood supply. Christine M. Lynn of NY/NJ Baykeeper told us, "Everyone we work with in New York is as surprised and confused by the NJDEP decision as we are.""
