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A Sunday NY Times roundup of development and community planning process in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn contains this hidden threat:
"Sometime in the next few months, the city plans to shut the flushing tunnel for 18 months of repairs, and that could bring back the smell of the bad old days."
What is the "flushing tunnel?" It's a pipe stretching over one mile from the harbor (Buttermilk Channel between Red Hook and Governor's Island) to the head of the Gowanus Canal. According to a press release from the Department of Environmental Protection, a 600-hp motor with 7-ft-diameter propeller can pump around 200 million gallons of harbor water into the canal each day. The tunnel was renovated and re-activated in 1999 following three decades of dormancy. It has helped to lessen the effects of local pollution, which is one reason why developers like Toll Brothers and Shaya Boymelgreen have initiated new high-end housing projects in the former marshland and industrial basin.
Faced with the prospect of more sewer-geyser eruptions during rainstorms, the Gowanus Lounge groans: "We think it's going to be a very, very, very long 18 months."
Even with the pump operating, however, some neighborhood residents have expressed concern that new construction and habitation will exacerbate drainage and sewer problems. Witness the call to action urging community members to "get serious." Community Board 6 will have a chance to voice such concerns to city planners over the next few months.
More:
Place in History: Gowanus Canal Viewing Boxes, Past and Future
DEP photos of flushing tunnel dredging and renovation
Community Board 6 Calendar of Meetings
Top photo by Gideon Fink Shapiro. Map courtesy Department of Environmental Protection. 1940 archival Gowanus photo (left) from Brooklyn Public Library Collection, courtesy Place in History
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Isnt that the hipster "artist" party boat in the background where they ask you to put sawdust on your poo in the bathroom?
I used to live in the area, and the sewage system is beyond antiquated.
When there was a big rain, the fetid smell of human waste would come up through our plumbing--I used to have to cover up shower drains and plug our sinks, otherwise the smell would fill the entire apartment.
If they're going to develop this area, someone needs to put in a modern sewage treatment plant and spend a fortune redirecting all the 1800's-era plumbing into it, instead of going directly into the Gowanus as they do now. Or, seriously, this is going to be a health hazard (as well as massively disgusting).
The tunnel has nothing to do with sewage or drainage. The single impeller tunnel is for circulation purposes only. The tunnel wasn't designed for its current use; originally it flowed in the opposite direction. The reversed impeller sees a lot of damage and has to be removed and repaired from time to time. If you live in this area, your poop goes to the Red Hook plant, current under upgrade. You also have some of the newest Pump Stations in the city.
I read that story about the closure of the flushing tunnel about six months ago in The Brooklyn Paper! Who needs the Times when we have such a great local newspaper?
Well all of that great insight aside, It's really going to stink like it did back in the [80]'s . During the summer months when we go throught the annual drought period . That smell that you get warfting off the water over there will be what you smell for the duration of the [18] month period when the city's working on the repairs . Gowanus, Red Hook, and parts of Prospect Heights get ready for the stink of the good old foul smelling days in south Brooklyn ! I must say for an antiquated sewer system, Their are few spots where there are flooded streets in the area . I guess that's a good thing .
Mr know-it-all left out some important info worth knowing here.
The sewage pipes that carry our poop from the Gowanus to the treatment plant up in the Navy Yard (after first being pumped through Red Hook) has numerous outlets that dump poop and used condoms into the Gowanus during wet weather--they are called CSO's.
When the Gowanus Canal flushing action is dismantled for at least a year and a half, that overflow accumulation will make the current smells of the Gowanus seem heavenly. During this work, there will be even less flushing action then back in the days of Lavender Lake when tidal currents moved some water from Buttermilk Channel. Here the whole tunnel will be dried our for the relaying of an old defunked waste pipe that runs inside the Flushing Tunnel.
The best part of all of this, when the work is all done, there will be little change in amount of sewage flowing into the canal during wet weather because the Ratner project will be making use of that rehabbed waste line for all their additional millions of gallons of sewage coming down to the Gowanus.
Without the Ratner project, the DEP predicted that wet weather CSO events on the Gowanus would drop from a current measure of 53 times a year, to 43 times a year. After figuring in the Ratner project, the CSO measure will only drop to 51 events a year. (Reminder, there are 52 weeks in a year). And the DEP is getting away with the claim that this is a "cleaning" up of the Canal. Yes the new flushing tunnel will "flush" out our communal toilet with more force, but the status of canal as toilet isn't changing here.