Freda Daniel Le Provost Environmental Studies I

Research Paper Prof. Micha Tomkiewicz

November 13,1999 Prof. Yahuda Klein

The Gowanus Canal and its Neighboring Communities

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Gowanus Canal is considered a "Brownfield"; by EPA definition, a "Brownfield" includes industrial and commercial properties that by reason of their prior uses have or are perceived to have some contamination that requires remediation primarily under State law".

The Department of environmental Protection Agency considers the Gowanus Canal a Brownfield due to its dilapidated condition and its previous usage as an industrial toxic waste dump for prior industrial and chemical manufacturing companies.

The term Brownfield is considered by locals to be a new term for an old condition; the redevelopment of industrial or commercial sites and absolete structures that has preceded the current focus on Brownfields and the enactment of current environmental regulatory regimes.

Within the States of New York and New Jersey, the most recent evidence of demand for Brownfields site redevelopment exists at sites that have been or are being remedied under the States' voluntary cleanup programs. New York commenced an administrative initiative in October 1994 and expanded this effort with the enactment of the Industrial Site Recovery Act and related amendments in June 1993.

As the regional economy of South Brooklyn evolved from an industrial to service economy where land has become urbanized at a rate that exceeds each State's population growth rate, the potential reuses of the Gowanus Canal Brownfield site increased. In addition, economic and community factors encouraged alternative uses of the Gowanus Canal water front as a potential location for commercial retail businesses, housing, institutional and open space recreational spaces like parks.

According to the EPA, Brownfield sites have also become regional entertainment attractions. For example, the State of New Jersey has built a State-owned aquarium on a Camden waterfront, which was considered a Brownfields site. Secondly, Brownfields sites like the Gowanus Canal are being redeveloped for mixed-use projects that include both high-density housing and local commercial retail uses. A local example includes The Gateway Estates project in East Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay which involves the conversion of a site once utilized as a temporary landfill primarily for construction debris to a combined multi-family apartment complex including a local retail project.

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 made pollution prevention the national environmental policy of the United States. The EPA's definition of pollution prevention means source reduction by the active process of preventing and or reducing waste where it originates, at its source including practices that conserve natural resources by reducing or eliminating pollutants through increased efficiency in the use of raw materials, energy, water, and land. In addition, the office of Pollution Prevention and Toxins (OPPT) works in conjunction inside and outside the EPA to promote pollution prevention. This action is done in several ways, such as partnerships that provide technical assistance, funding demonstration projects and incorporates cost-effective pollution prevention alternatives into regulations and other initiatives for the improvement remediation of existing Brownfields and other dilapidated sites.

Long before the Gowanus Canal was considered a Brownfield, it was a thriving salt-water marshland with meadows that teemed with fish and other wildlife surrounding its tidal inlet once called the "Gowanus Creek," that flowed into Gowanus Bay. According to local historians, early settlers named it "Gowanees Creek" after chief Gowanee, a leader of the local tribe of Native American Canarsees, who were the Algonquin-speaking Delaware Indians who lived and farmed on the Gowanus shores. Historians have also said that Dutch farmers and others who moved in among the Indian natives used the Gowanus Creek in much the same way, for fishing and they particularly favored the succulent Gowanus oysters that sometimes grew as large as a dinner plate. These Gowanus farmers were known to pack the oysters into casks and shipped them out through the port, thus making Gowanus Oysters Brooklyn's first export. By the middle of the 19th century, the city of Brooklyn became the fastest growing city in America, and as such, Brooklyn incorporated the Gowanus Creek and farmland into the larger urban fabric that it has become today.

In 1949, the demand for navigational and docking facilities in the port of New York City grew at a tremendous rate and therefore, the New York Sate Legislature authorized the construction of the Gowanus Canal, which was completed in the late 1860's. Despite its short two-mile length, the Gowanus Canal soon became a hub of Brooklyn's maritime and commercial activity. Factories and residential communities sprang up as a result of its construction. In fact, much of the brownstones quarried in New Jersey were placed on barges and shipped through the canal to create what we now refer to as "Brownstone Brooklyn".

Due to the rapid growth of industrial businesses on the banks of the Gowanus, the Gowanus Canal became Brooklyn's location and the home for heavy industry, including coal gas manufacturing plants, cement makers, and sulfur producers, soap makers and tanneries. The rapid economic growth of the Gowanus Canal area also influenced the building of large working class residential areas like Red Hook, and lower Park Slope.

In the early parts of the Twentieth Century, South Brooklyn was largely populated by families of Irish and Scandinavian descent. With as many as 700 new buildings per year, the South Brooklyn neighborhoods grew at a remarkable rate. These new buildings however required a sewer connection that ended up discharging its raw sewage into the Gowanus Canal. By the turn of the century, the runoff from storm and sewage system had rendered the waterway a repository of rancid odors, known to residents of the South Brooklyn community as "Lavender Lake".

With property values increasing, the noxious problem of the Canal had to be addressed. The solution was to create a tunnel from the head of the Canal at Butler Street, which is located East of the Buttermilk Channel. The first attempt of a project to cleanse the Gowanus Canal took place on June 21, 1911. A new system to flush out the putrid industrial Canal was activated. A twelve-foot diameter brick-lined tunnel was built, as an enormous ship's propeller was used to suck the putrid waters out of the canal only to expel them into the relatively cleaner waters of the harbor.

The Boerum Hill neighborhood north of the Canal was reduced to rubble when the Gowanus Houses were built followed by the neighboring Wykoff Gardens public housing in the next decade. City planners showed no mercy as they bulldozed neighborhoods for automobile expressways. The Gowanus/Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was the catalyst leading to the eventual decline of the Gowanus Canal. The expressway marked the beginning of truck distribution and in 1955; the Army Corps of Engineers gave up the regular dredging of the Canal as no longer cost effective. New York's loss of industrial jobs during this period was evident on the Canal and by the late 70's, it was estimated that over 50 percent of the property in Gowanus were unused and derelict. It was concluded that the Gowanus Canal had outlived its usefulness and was discarded like any other piece of refuse. The final deathblow to the Canal happened in 1961 when the flushing station broke and was abandoned for the next thirty-seven years.

According to the 1990 census and conventional statistics, the South Brooklyn area is now a low-income community of over 55,000 people. About 51 percent of residents are Hispanic (predominantly Puerto Rican), 23 percent are non-Hispanic whites, 21 percent are African-American, and 4 percent are Asian or other. South Brooklyn's median household income (according to the 1990 census) was only 85 percent of New York City's median. More than 39 percent of all households, in the Gowanus area, had incomes below the federally defined poverty level. Overcrowding rates are also well above the City median in the Gowanus community.

However, lower Park Slope and Carroll Gardens have long been characterized by a rich diversity of assets. The area's residential streets, featuring stately Brooklyn's brownstones side by side with multi-family apartment buildings, for a community of racially and economically diverse families and individuals. And in the community's industrial section, along the Gowanus Canal, manufacturing businesses employing between five and fifty workers comprise one of the city's oldest industrial districts, located within a short distance of the Red Hook Waterfront, which was once a shipping hub for New York City.

It is said that one of the great strengths of South Brooklyn is its cultural diversity and the active involvement of its residents on all issues, which concerns their community. The neighborhood's economy and housing stock have supported both a wide variety of commercial activities and a mixed income residential population. Many groups and institutions in the area, schools, churches, libraries, social service groups, and civic associations have bridged the cultural and racial divides by engaging its residents in all aspects and issues regarding their community's welfare and prosperity.

Increasingly, however, the community's capacity to remain diverse and to offer opportunities to all has been challenged. The cycle of disinvestment and fiscal crisis that hit New York in the early 1970s left housing and commercial properties abandoned. New York City's loss of over a quarter million manufacturing jobs has changed the complexion of work in the neighborhood, and as a result, residents with lower levels of skills or education find it increasingly difficult to find and retain jobs which can enable them to support their families. However, city policy to encourage large-scale retail in industrial zones is posing new challenges both for the community's remaining manufacturing base and its traditionally diverse retail mix. In addition, because of the vitality of the Gowanus community and its close proximity to higher income neighborhoods like Boerum Hill, and Park Slope, the Gowanus community is considered a work in progress as well as a potentially attractive place to live. The Gowanus neighborhood has also become subject to the pressures of gentrification, and lower-income residents whose families have lived there for many generations now face the specter of displacement.

On the horizon and on a quest to remedy the stagnating issues of the Gowanus Canal community is two very capable non-for-profit organizations. The Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC) located in Park Slope and the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (GCCDC). Both organizations have been dedicated to the revitalization of the Gowanus community since 1970. The Gowanus Canal Development Corporation is a neighborhood preservation non-for-profit organization dedicated to the revitalization of the Gowanus Canal in South Brooklyn.

The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation's community based group has implemented an extensive record of initiatives and involvement in the physical improvement of the Gowanus Canal, Red Hook and Carol Gardens. To address the revitalization of the Gowanus Canal community, GCCDC took the lead of an aggressive campaign focused on the environmental degradation of the area and leveraged $478 million dollars of public funds to construct the Red Hook interceptor sewer treatment facility and to repair the Gowanus flushing tunnel. In addition, GCCDC implemented programs geared to improve the areas economic development as well as housing management and social services within the South Brooklyn community.

The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation's mission is to concern itself with the catchment area in the county of Kings with particular emphasis within the area affected by the Gowanus Canal. The objective of (GCCDC) is to revitalize the community, as defined by the catchment area, and in areas of housing, economic, commercial and social development, and the environment. In addition, the (GCCDC) Sponsors service programs in education, employment counseling, and job placement for South Brooklyn residents with a strong focus on the Red Hook community. According to (GCCDC), Red Hook is one of Americas clearest manifestations of socially and geographically isolated urban poverty stricken communities in South Brooklyn, surrounded by water on three sides and cut off from the rest of Brooklyn by an elevated highway. In addition to its apparent isolation, there are no subway lines to service the area and virtually no income earning potential in an area containing the largest public housing project in New York, (in terms of estimated population) and the nation's first federal housing project. GCCDC is actively involved in providing social service support to the community in the form of landlord-tenant counseling, workshops on resources available including home budgeting and technical assistance. The GCCDC rises to the challenge to help low and middle-income families and other economically disenfranchised residents to participate in the mainstream economy.

The Fifth Avenue Committee located on in lower Park Slope incorporates as a not-for-profit community organization similarly to (GCCDC) act as advocates, organizers, and sources of technical assistance, packagers and developers. The board includes geographic representatives elected from the North sections of Park Slope, including local merchants, chairs of housing developments, fundraising personnel, and tenants union committees. The Fifth Avenue Committee's implemented programs in the revitalization of lower Park Slope, and South Brooklyn includes the South Brooklyn Mutual Housing association which was created as a deed for vacant and dilapidated buildings in dire need of renovation. This program provides new homes for local tenants, and created a new model for permanently affordable, tenant-controlled housing for low-income tenants in South Brooklyn and lower Park Slope. Major funders and supporters of F.A.C. and GCCDC includes the Chase Manhattan Bank, Neighborhood 2000 Fund, Surdna Foundation, Tiger Foundation, United Way Strategic Alliance Fund and other public and private corporations and financial institutions.

The progressive remediation of the Gowanus Canal is very evident as Commissioner Joel A. Miele Sr. reactivated the Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel on May 3, 1999. During a ceremony at the Butler Street Station on the Canal Commissioner Miele, that "The activation of the Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel has been a high priority for this administration." He also added "it is consistent with Mayor Giuliani's efforts to improve both the quality of life for all New Yorkers and economic climate throughout the city. Commissioner Miele also added "I am proud that we have been able to develop this innovative pumping system that will not only improve water quality in the Canal and help return it to a living waterway for both recreational and industrial use, but will also contribute to the long-awaited resurgence of the surrounding Carroll Gardens community."

According to a recent newsletter from the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, the Gowanus is progressing as rapidly as they expected due to the remediation of the Gowanus Canal. The Gowanus residential population grew last month with ninety families who have just moved into the neighborhood. As rents rise in Carroll Gardens, GCCDC strives to construct more affordable housing that will retain the residents that make the community so diverse. New events and activities like the Eileen Dugan Fun Run/Walk returned to Carroll Gardens on Sunday, October 3rd 1999 with over 200 runners participating in the event. With the assistance of the Bay Keepers Program, oysters are now growing on the Gowanus Canal as an experiment to test the once toxic waters of the Canal for new possibilities of sustaining biological life. The oysters are hung from a canal bulkhead in a mesh bag to protect them from the Gowanus crabs. Attached to the bag, is a somber warning label that announces that the bag is part of an experiment and should not be touched until further testing is done on the Canal? Sadly, these oysters may never be edible because the Department of environmental Protection agency has no plans to remove the contaminated sediments at the bottom of the Canal that threatens the health of the oysters and the entire South Brooklyn community.