S3 E6: “Once you zoom out a little bit, you realize how universal so many of these issues are.” Back in Christina’s neighborhood in Brooklyn, something huge is developing… The Gowanus Canal has a reputation for being beyond gross -- brimming with industrial pollution, sludge, and sewage. Just over a century ago, the Gowanus Canal was one of the country’s busiest waterways, and, over time, it became a superfund site, an eyesore, and one of New York’s smelliest landmarks. Christina is joined by Natasia Sidarta and Diana Gruberg from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, an organization advocating for the transformation of the canal into a resilient, vibrant, and open space. They discuss how this major clean up effort and long term management plan could be an important model for future resilience projects.
S3 E6: “Once you zoom out a little bit, you realize how universal so many of these issues are.”
Back in Christina’s neighborhood in Brooklyn, something huge is developing… The Gowanus Canal has a reputation for being beyond gross -- brimming with industrial pollution, sludge, and sewage. Just over a century ago, the Gowanus Canal was one of the country’s busiest waterways, and, over time, it became a superfund site, an eyesore, and one of New York’s smelliest landmarks. Christina is joined by Natasia Sidarta and Diana Gruberg from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, an organization advocating for the transformation of the canal into a resilient, vibrant, and open space. They discuss how this major clean up effort and long term management plan could be an important model for future resilience projects.
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[00:00:44] Christina Thompson: Really sunny, beautiful day here on the canal. When we kicked off this third season of A Little Green, we talked a lot about the work that can be done in our own backyards. Alright, so we're coming up on the dead end... How even the smallest of changes that we make in our own lives can ripple out from there. First Street, yeah, this is First Street, which jets up against the canal, and my goodness, there is a lot of activity this morning. So, in this episode, I want to investigate my own backyard, which just so happens to be the Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Red Hook area of Brooklyn. Here Hammy, walk around that. Thank you. And if it's ripples of change that we're looking for, a few blocks away from my own door, something huge is happening. Oh man. Busy, busy, busy. I'm Christina Thompson, and this is A Little Green Podcast. Is that statistic that I've heard before that the Gowanus Canal was the most polluted body of water at one point, or even now, true?
[00:01:52] Natasia Sidarta: I think so. Yeah, the Gowanus Canal is up there for sure.
[00:01:58] Christina Thompson: The 1.8 mile Gowanus Canal runs from Boerum Hill to Gowanus Bay and borders a bunch of neighborhoods near me. Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Sunset Park, and Cobble Hill. Its reputation precedes itself.
[00:02:14] VOX POP: ...Well, the Gowanus Canal is disgusting...
[00:02:16] VOX POP: ...Because it's so polluted...
[00:02:17] VOX POP: ...The smell...
[00:02:18] VOX POP: ....Not very inviting to sit next to...
[00:02:21] VOX POP: ...Dirty sewer water...
[00:02:23] VOX POP: ...It's a putrid, poisonous, filthy body of water...
[00:02:27] VOX POP: ...Person on a boat here swimming. I'm like, "You're crazy. You're going to come out with, like, four legs." You know, something very crazy...
[00:02:33] Christina Thompson: It's been called "putrid," "murky," "a cesspool smelling of sulfur, burning rubber and sewage..." but it's also a place people gravitate to.
[00:02:44] VOX POP: ...I like that it doesn't feel like New York City. It feels like it's kind of a place that you can go to and escape a little bit...
[00:02:52] VOX POP: ...I think it's both creative and industrial, which is nice...
[00:02:55] VOX POP: ...Kind of, uh, represents, um, a little bit of nature in, uh, otherwise, you know, concrete jungle, pretty much...
[00:03:03] Christina Thompson: It's just, like, there's no place like this in New York that I can think of. Like, it's like Chicago, you know, this beautiful, like, body of water just running through, through your city. It's almost, like, Venetian. Well, maybe I shouldn't go that far. Not quite Venetian.
[00:03:29] Natasia Sidarta: And currently, the microphone is perched on a book, on a shelf, on my filing cabinet. Very secure though.
[00:03:38] Christina Thompson: I'm using a bench with books, uh, that are holding the computer up, so...
[00:03:45] Natasia Sidarta: Oh, okay.
[00:03:45] Christina Thompson: I think it's, like, a very New York, Brooklyn apartment set up.
[00:03:50] Natasia Sidarta: Great.
[00:03:51] Christina Thompson: That's Natasia Sidarta, and she works with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, an organization that advocates for transforming the canal into a resilient, vibrant, open space.
[00:04:01] Natasia Sidarta: So I should probably go all the way back and say that the Gowanus Canal used to be the Gowanus Creek. [Water sounds]
[00:04:07] Christina Thompson: Because we all love a little history on this podcast, or, maybe just Anna and I do... Back when the canal was a natural creek, it wound its way through marshland and was teeming with oysters. Just think -- where the Whole Foods and Royal Palm Shuffleboard place is now, back then, there were vibrant villages all along this body of water.
[00:04:27] Natasia Sidarta: And the Lenape people used to fish, and hunt, and live in that area until Dutch settlers arrived. [More water sounds]
[00:04:34] Christina Thompson: So the Dutch exported a lot of the oysters that were coming from this canal back to Europe, and so the area got more and more populated. Flash forward to the 1800s.
[00:04:47] Natasia Sidarta: The Industrial Revolution was happening, there was a ton of manufacturing that needed to happen, and the Gowanus was central to a lot of that industry.
[00:04:58] Christina Thompson: The Gowanus Creek was deepened, straightened, and the surrounding marsh was drained and built over.
[00:05:04] Natasia Sidarta: So, over the course of a hundred years or so, manufactured gas plants, tanneries, ink factories, lots of material that built up brownstone brooklyn came through the Canal. [Water sounds] In that century of industry, that led to a lot of that legacy pollution of basically hundreds of feet of what we call coal tar, which is sort of this, like, black mayonnaise pollution that sits at the bottom of the Canal.
[00:05:38] Christina Thompson: Yeah, this stuff is so gross people call it black mayonnaise. This toxic sludge is a mix of chemicals, sewage, and petroleum products, and, unfortunately, it still sits at the bottom of the Canal today.
[00:05:51] Natasia Sidarta: At this point, the Gowanus is becoming less industrial. We are relying on other sources of energy. We're not relying on coal anymore, of course. There is still some industry, like paper recycling and metal grills are made in the neighborhood, but a lot of the area is changing. There's less manufacturing, and now more and more residential.
[00:06:18] Christina Thompson: Natasia was lovely enough to set me up on a tour of the Canal with her colleague Diana Gruberg. Can you tell us a little bit about what's happen-- where we are right now in relation to the Canal, to Carol Gardens, to Gowanus? What's happening here?
[00:06:32] Diana Gruberg: Yeah.
[00:06:33] Christina Thompson: Whole Foods nearby.
[00:06:34] Diana Gruberg: Absolutely. So, we are sort of at the epicenter of what we call the Gowanus Lowlands.
[00:06:39] Christina Thompson: Uh huh.
[00:06:40] Diana Gruberg: This is the lowlands area that surrounds the Gowanus Canal. And this is this area that was a historic salt marsh. About a 300 acre salt marsh where they used to say, reportedly, there were oysters, the size of your head. And this area kind of evolved in many ways that we can talk about more, um, industrialized...
[00:07:00] Christina Thompson: A side note, this area of New York is an audio engineer's nightmare. There's literally a train above our heads, a body of water streaming below us, and rushes of cars passing us at street level. It is one of the noisiest places I've ever had to record. It's pretty busy. There's a lot. There's 278 right there. There's a lot going on.
[00:07:20] Diana Gruberg: There's a lot going on. Yeah.
[00:07:22] Christina Thompson: But it's, like, this little, like, beautiful pocket of nature here, like. It's just... But despite all of that industry and human, manmade, noisy intervention that's going on around this place, there's a lot of potential here.
[00:07:49] Christina Thompson: Okay. Should we go down to the water?
[00:07:52] Diana Gruberg: Yes. Yeah, so we're just steps from the Canal itself. The area, the Canal itself used to be a system of creeks, and...
[00:08:00] Christina Thompson: Believe it or not, in the early 1900s, the Gowanus Canal was considered one of the busiest waterways in the country.
[00:08:07] Diana Gruberg: Um, and it was really critical for industries and people at the time. And one of the issues is that this left this legacy of pollution. These were, you know, human needs and issues that were being addressed where there were all these negative externalities that weren't thought about that, today, hundreds of years later, we're still dealing with.
[00:08:28] Christina Thompson: When the canal was originally built, and the surrounding area was drained, this caused a water circulation problem. This was an area that naturally flooded and drained itself, so all that water needed a place to go-- and it still does today.
[00:08:43] Diana Gruberg: Um, so, most of the time when it rains, the sewer system, which includes both storm water and sewage from buildings, just can't handle the capacity, and so it overflows. So we've had a lot of sewage overflow events, which then reduce the dissolved oxygen in the Canal, and of course, increase really, you know, toxic things like enterococcus. Um...
[00:09:06] Christina Thompson: Diana told me that the water needs to move to have dissolved oxygen -- essentially, the air that the fish and other aquatic life need to breathe. As we continued the tour, we ran into Jen who also works for the Conservancy. We found her crouched by the Canal, busy taking some samples. What's she working on right now?
[00:09:28] Diana Gruberg: So, Jen is doing water quality testing.
[00:09:31] Christina Thompson: We convinced Jen to take a little break to tell us about what she's working on. Have a seat. You were just testing the water quality?
[00:09:38] Jen Kepler: Yes.
[00:09:39] Christina Thompson: How is it today?
[00:09:40] Jen Kepler: Inconclusive. I think I have to start over.
[00:09:43] Christina Thompson: What are the things, like, types of things you test for?
[00:09:46] Jen Kepler: We test for temperature, salinity, the turbidity, which is how cloudy the water is. We test for dissolved oxygen. I also drop off a water sample to a lab, and we test for enterococcus bacteria, which is, like, a gut bacteria in, like, a lot of warm blooded animals. So leave your imagination to figure out where that comes from.
[00:10:13] Christina Thompson: Yep.
[00:10:15] Diana Gruberg: But, one of the ways in which we've used this water quality data is to send it to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup, uh, and saying, "Hey, do something about this."
[00:10:27] Christina Thompson: In 2010, after years of advocacy from the community, the Canal was declared a Superfund site by the EPA.
[00:10:33] Diana Gruberg: That was, that designation basically comes with a bunch of money to clean it up.
[00:10:39] Christina Thompson: What's the timeline on that? If, if it was declared in 2010, and it's 2023 now, what are we...?
[00:10:44] Diana Gruberg: Yeah, there's at least three different scopes of work. Um, so I...
[00:10:48] Christina Thompson: Scope of work number one: build underground storage tanks to capture the sewage overflow that would otherwise go into the Canal during storms.
[00:10:55] Diana Gruberg: There's also the dredging in the Canal, so that's happening in three phases, and they're, essentially, they're dredging out sediment in the bottom of the canal, which is full of this substance called coal tar.
[00:11:06] Christina Thompson: AKA black mayo.
[00:11:08] Diana Gruberg: So they're dredging that out. And then, in some cases...
[00:11:11] Christina Thompson: That's happening now.
[00:11:11] Diana Gruberg: That's happening now. They already completed it for the first section north of Third Street. And in order to do all of that work, they're replacing all of the bulkheads, the edges along the Canal. So, essentially, I think within the next 10 years, this will all be complete. There's a lot of moving parts.
[00:11:27] Christina Thompson: And there's more to this whole cleanup effort.
[00:11:28] Diana Gruberg: So, in addition to the Canal itself being con, contaminated, most of the land around the Canal is also polluted. So, there are certain sites, including the manufactured gas plant sites that are getting cleaned up, that are being overseen by the state and by the responsible parties under the Superfund. And then there are other sites that are getting cleaned up by private developers who are required to clean them up before they can build new commercial, new housing. All of that.
[00:11:55] Christina Thompson: And new housing is on the horizon of this area. Boy, is it ever. In 2021, our former Mayor de Blasio introduced a rezoning plan. Okay, let me see if I can count how many new constructions: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I know, I know zoning can seem pretty boring -- at least 11 that I can see -- but zoning has massive implications for our neighborhoods. They're hidden. Um, it's insane. When done in a historically wrong way, they can hinder voting, reinforce inequity, and exacerbate climate injustices. But, when done right, they can be a powerful tool in the face of climate change.
[00:12:46] GNCJ CLIP: ...In that fight together. So I'm saying we won't back down. Won't back down! [Group chanting] Won't back down!
[00:12:54] Christina Thompson: Thanks to the GCC and other community advocates, this zoning plan is a good one.
[00:12:58] GNCJ CLIP: And I appreciate the fact that this community, this part of Brooklyn is becoming a model for the rest of the world. How we can find those social, cohesive moments...
[00:13:11] Christina Thompson: And it means that any new development in the area cannot, by law, pollute the Canal.
[00:13:17] VOX POP: ...Yeah, I think it's been going well from what I've seen...
[00:13:20] VOX POP: ...We're standing across from this, uh, really insane development here...
[00:13:25] VOX POP: ...Is-- they're doing what's needed to be done...
[00:13:27] Christina Thompson: And hey, there's more good news!
[00:13:29] Natasia Sidarta: Because of a lot of rezoning that is happening in the neighborhood, there is definitely going to be more public open space in the next decade.
[00:13:41] Christina Thompson: With these resources, the Conservancy has a plan for the area that I got to visit, and it's one that's inspired by nature. One that would make this area way more livable and resilient. And not to mention gorgeous.
[00:13:55] Diana Gruberg: So the Gowanus Lowlands Master Plan is a vision for about 20 acres of parks and open spaces, really centered on the Gowanus Canal and connected to this whole surrounding sewer shed that includes the urban forest, all the trees that you see along the streets, all the rain gardens, and the green infrastructure, much of which we maintain now. And it's a place that people can come down to and enjoy, and that plants and animals can thrive and live in. Um, but it...
[00:14:26] Christina Thompson: The blueprint for the lowlands is incredible.
[00:14:28] Natasia Sidarta: The area used to be a salt marsh, and knowing that we can't return it back to its original landscape, we can create green infrastructure that mimics a lot of those natural landscapes and absorb a lot of the stormwater before it floods basements, and streets, and the canal itself.
[00:14:48] Christina Thompson: It's a plan that works with nature, rather than fighting against it. One that compliments the area, and one that could be a real beacon for the future of urban nature. It's pretty incredible, like, this is all so hyper-local and you know, it's just individuals like yourself, like, like the people here just getting it done and like you, you have wins. Like, that's amazing.
[00:15:08] Diana Gruberg: Yeah, it's a very hyperlocal, very specific, but once you zoom out a little bit, you realize how universal so many of these issues are. And we also do a lot of work with...
[00:15:19] Christina Thompson: This plan signals a promising new era for the Canal and my neighborhood. I'm really proud to live here. What if this could be a model for other projects in the city? Or in other cities? Where nature isn't resisted, but, rather, embraced. Can you imagine how much more beautiful and resilient our cities would be?
[00:15:39] VOX POP: ...Um, they've been doing better and better with developing more greenery around here...
[00:15:45] VOX POP: ...You know, a little piece of, of, uh, you know, aquatic, uh, nature in, is one of the only places you have that in this whole part of, uh, Brooklyn, if not New York City...
[00:15:56] Natasia Sidarta: There's nature everywhere, even in Gowanus, even though it is, like, one of the most, like, under-forested, under-parked neighborhoods in the city. There is so much life in the Canal and around it. There's more than just, like, a national park to, uh, to what we consider an outdoors area. There's also rain gardens, and street trees, and community gardens.
[00:16:33] Christina Thompson: So, why,, what is it about this place that you love?
[00:16:36] Diana Gruberg: I think there's a real magic in urban nature where it sort of opens your eyes to both why nature is important, particularly in cities, and that you know, that you yourself have agency over it to some degree. And I think what we do a lot is connecting that individual agency with some of those bigger things that we don't, individually we can't have an impact on necessarily. You need these bigger projects, you need these new tanks that are being built. You need infrastructural change, um, that only happens through broad advocacy. And so I think it's really linking those two, and that's the magic of this organization. That's the magic of this kind of work and doing this kind of work in a place like Gowanus.
[00:17:18] Christina Thompson: I agree with you. I feel like urban nature kind of cultivates a more of an appreciation of nature because it's not everywhere and it's, it's, it's magical. It really is.
[00:17:27] Diana Gruberg: Absolutely.
[00:17:27] Christina Thompson: It, it, I agree with you.
[00:17:29] Diana Gruberg: Absolutely.
[00:17:30] Christina Thompson: Amazing. Well, I'm just happy I'm going to walk by this place and be like, "I know this place. I like this place." So good. To learn more about the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, head to gowanuscanalconservancy.org, and check out alittlegreenpodcast.com. Or, as always, you can head to avocadomattress.com to read more on our online magazine. Next time on A Little Green, we'll hear from a group that's taking their fight to the legislative and policy making level.
[00:17:57] Lonnie Portis: People want to see these changes, and people are going to start firing and hiring elected officials based on these kind of things.
[00:18:03] Christina Thompson: A Little Green is an Avocado Green Brands podcast. This podcast was written and produced by Anna McClain, and myself, Christina Thompson. And the music you heard is written and performed by Aaron Levison. And thanks to Megan Hattie Stahl and Kelly Drake for additional production support.