The Gowanus Canal is Getting Flushed

From the NYC Enivornmental Protection Press Office:

Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Carter Strickland today announced that the Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel will be re-activated this week for the first time since it was shut down for a full rehabilitation in 2010.  The activation of the first submersible turbine pump will bring up to 100 million gallons of oxygen-rich water to the head of the Canal each day.

Just when a largely-industrial, crapper of a non-neighborhood gets its own name, and Park Slope itself is being referred to as East of Gowanus, they start mucking around (literally) with our little piece of Venice in Brooklyn, the Gowanus Canal. Just in time for temps in the SIXTIES, they are (re)turning the Gowanus Canal into a gigantic toilet, with lots of flushing and draining and oxygenating, guaranteed to emit an odor reminiscent of what the old-timers used to call "Low Tide at Coney Island." 

They can call it a "flushing tunnel”; they can talk about turbine pumps; they can claim it’s about “dramatically improving [the canal’s] aesthetic.” But we know it’s a giant clogged toilet, and once they start flushing it, it’s going to be like that time your own toilet got clogged and shit spilled over the side of the bowl, and your bathmat and anything else on the floor got ruined . Except instead of your bathroom, and the results of one of your dumps, it’s a stretch of 4th avenue and the results of decades of countless dumps.

If you live, work, or par-tay near what NYS Senator Velmanette Montgomery enthusiastically refers to as "our beloved waterway," you're going to want a comically old-fashioned clothespin pinching your nostrils closed indefinitely. Based on my extensive experience emerging from the subway on steaming summer evenings a wafts-length away from that body of "water," the canal has been used as toilet for decades. And not just any old toilet, but a toilet for which everyone has ignored every sign in every stall in every public restroom in America: the "Please don't flush tampons or diapers down the toilet" sign.

So once that oxygen starts pumping in, the canal will likely return the favor by pumping out such noxious gases as carbon dioxide, methane or hydrogen sulfide. In other words, that putrid rotten egg smell, combined with the stench of feces, human and animal, and the aroma of rotting rat carcasses. Who knows, maybe they’ll turn up Jimmy Hoffa’s body or Blackbeard’s treasure or Paul Auster’s lost Gowanus novel.

But if the promises of the DEP are to be believed, we’re going to be looking at Prospect Park-Gowanus Canal Satellite, with allées of shade trees and petite gardens, and maybe – why not? - ladies strolling with parasols. Eventually making all the shit shoved up our nostrils worthwhile.