New York's Dangerous Gowanus Canal Situation

the history and fortunes of New York City are inextricably linked to the water resources from which it has benefited we all know the Hudson River along whose Banks the settlement developed and then there is the Atlantic of course from where many of our ancestors crossed over but there's another small Waterway connected to the Hudson that has also played a fundamental role in the city's development yet it's widely overlooked I'm referring to the guanas canal located in the of Brooklyn this Waterway connects the upper New York Bay bordering neighborhoods like Red Hook Carol Gardens and guanas there are Seven Bridges crossing the canal from north to south and five from east to west and as you might imagine several important industries have developed along its banks making the canal a vital location to the historic development of the city these days however the area looks decrepit run down and suffers a high pollution rate making the guanas canal a shocking Showcase of urban Decay but how did this once vital Waterway end up as a monument to nothing stay tuned to find out as today we discover the history of New York's guanas canel I'm your host Ryan soash and you're watching its [Music] history the guanas neighborhood was originally surrounded by guanas Creek a saltwater Marsh with several navigable creeks and large green areas that was home to a variety of animals the area was therefore sparsely populated except for small groups of Indians at least until the first half of the 17th century during the Dutch occupation between 1630 and 1644 the government issued several land patents throughout the area now known as Brooklyn to allow the establishment of settlements then in 1636 the leading citizens of New Netherlands purchased the area around guanas Bay and in 1639 they cleared the less marshy land for tobacco plantations the name guanas was given during these years in honor of the chief of the lenpy tribe who lived in the area and cultivated some parts of the shore in 1645 the first water Mills appeared built by some former members of the Dutch West India Company with the first Mill being located just north of Union Street a second Mill Denton's Mill also known as the yellow Mill was built on Denton's Mill Pond after permission was granted to dredge from the stream to mil Pond however an important moment unfolded in May of 1664 when several other Brooklyn residents petitioned for the regulation and dredging of the canals to ultimately provide water for the other Mills that were built or were under construction in the 1700s a settler named Nicholas vetch built what is now known as the Old Stone House a testament to the growing population that occupied the area over the years it was an important dwelling used during the Battle of Long Island between the American colonialist and the British Army in 1776 the building we see today is a 1933 reconstruction anyhow in the early 18th century the area was used by some Dutch settlers to harvest large oysters which soon became an important raw material for export to the mother country you see the nearly 6ft tides of the guanas bay pushed brackish water into the bay creating an environment in which large shellfish thrived and other than that the area was more or less uneventful between 1664 in 1674 the city changed hands several times between English and Dutch Rule and somewhat critically in 1674 the area of new orange as it was again renamed by the Dutch passed definitively into English hands but there were no major changes in the canals area until the second half of the 18th century when the entire area was trans transformed after the American war of independence in 1774 the New York City Government initiated a series of procedures to merge the various waterways into one large stream to facilitate Water Maintenance and above all to impose more precise taxation on those who used the neighboring Land by the mid 19th century Brooklyn was growing rapidly and was the third most populated area in the United States the creek and surrounding Farmland were now part of an urban glomeration of villages along the banks of the creek the same river and Marshland provided both transportation and an informal sewage system for the growing city wealthier residences tended to live inland in the Hills to avoid the smells and inconveniences of this type of area industries that needed water for processing transport and waste disposal moved to the SES along the coast as the local population grew and the industrial revolu ution of the 19th century came into Brooklyn the need for larger shipping and docking facilities also started to be noticed former Colonel Daniel Richards a successful businessman advocated for the construction of an additional Canal to serve existing Inland Industries and the draining of surrounding marshes to reclaim the land and increase property values and so in 1849 by order of the New York legislature guanas Creek was deepened for use as a 1.5 mile or 2.4 km commercial Waterway connecting to Upper New York Bay the dredging of the creek was completed in 1860 a few years later another project was proposed to regulate the various Creeks into a single channel the work was completed in 1869 financed partly by direct taxes levied on Brookland residents and partly by state funds and this is where the modern history of the ganas canal actually begins in a very short time an important industrial sector developed around the canal there were all kinds of activities such as Stone and coworks flower mills cement and gas plants tanneries paint ink and soap factories machine shops chemical plants and sulfur producers and although financially speaking this was a blessing for Brooklyn there was a downside you see all these industries emitted significant amounts of pollution into the water and air but then things got even worse by 1869 coal processing was a dominant industry as well by the end of the 19th century there were 22 coal Works along this canal alone and let's just say they had no concern for the environment you see these plants used large amounts of water to convert coal into Coke liquids and gas with the coal itself being used for heating lighting and powering factories whereas Coke on the other hand was made to use steel and as longtime viewers of this channel know that steel was used to make skyscrapers like the late singer Tower unfortunately Wastewater and colar were discharged directly into the Waterway other businesses also used the canale to dump waste for example slaughter houses in Brooklyn dumped blood and animal carcasses Into The Canal at the time there was no system for cleaning the Waterway the opening at the southern end alone allowed a limited exchange of water thanks to the tides of the bay the positive effects of these Tides soon failed due to the construction of wooden dkes to protect the settlement and New York Harbor within a few years the water had reached an extremely high level of pollution described as purple red in color and emitting a nauseating odor its sticky consistency led to it being renamed black mayonnaise so in 1889 it was decided that the canal and its Waters needed to be cleaned up and a special commission was established the first step in improving the pollution of the canal was the construction of the Bond Street sewer in 1890 which carried sewage from the harbor the system proved inadequate and hence an additional sewer was built between Mercy Avenue and prosper Heights but it also proved inadequate for the area's waste which continued to be dumped into the canal and all the while industrialization continued to grow rapidly in fact according to some sources as many as 700 new buildings were constructed each year in the early Decades of the 20th century all the sewage from these new buildings flowed directly Downstream into the guanas until ultimately in 1910 it became necessary to build a tunnel for water exchange and purification the pumping station was built on Butler Street and opened in June of 1911 this solution too proved in effective although the pollution rate had improved slightly the water in the canal was still not adequately cleaned the Clean Water tunnel suffered numerous technical problems mainly due to the corrosive saltwater from the guanas river finally decades later things came to a head at the end of the 1960s when a series of accidents put the sewer out of use and for several years in part due to the bankruptcy of the New York City Government the area was essentially abandoned and I need to emphasize here that this transformation into dereliction was really unprecedented as for much of the 20th Century 6 million tons of goods passed through this canal each year making it one of the busiest canals in the United States throughout the 1960s industry had moved to other parts of the city and shipping traffic now passed through the verzano Naros area guanas essentially became a derel open a dump and remained so for almost three decades by the 1980s the large space left by the industrial warehouses had attracted new businesses such as art and architecture Studios music venues bars and gyms even so the area had a long way to go as by the early 1990s there were still only 24,000 residents along the banks further damage was caused in 1984 with the closure of the Carol Street Bridge one of the main local access points it was only reopened in 1989 for the 100th anniversary by 1993 only one company was actively using the canal for shipping the few remaining barges carried mainly fuel oil sand gravel and scrap metal for export the area was absolutely deric and by the end of the 1990s pressure was mounting for redevelopment between 1999 and 2000 congresswoman Joan milman advocated several $100,000 to the guanas canal Community Development Corporation this was done to develop Solutions and projects for the Redevelopment of the area and the canal Governor George G Pataki provided an additional $270,000 in 2001 to create a revitalization plan in 2002 $100,000 in capital funding was also allocated to implement a pilot project on the waterfront then in 2003 congresswoman n of alasas allocated a further $225,000 to create a comprehensive community plan all of these funds and projects led to a series of Major Works and ultimately they resulted in a breakthrough you see in 2003 the area immediately east of the guanas neighborhood was rezoned for high density residential use with a strong commercial component this was followed by another breakthrough in 2009 when the New York City Government granted a zoning change to the developer to brothers incorporated this allowed for the construction of a 480 unit 12-story residential project the first permitted along the Waterway around this time the city also reserved land for a mediums scale development of 3,200 homes 25 blocks were allocated for 60 sites which were expected to generate a total in $500 million a year in tax revenue and just when things were headed in the right direction there was a major setback the Toll Brothers abandoned the project in 2010 after the guanas canal was declared a super fun site a status that absolutely scared away any potential residents but also allowed faster access to funding of new projects to clean up the canal and given how vile this Waterway was it was a good decision in June of 2017 the ganas Canal Conservancy began the process of Designing a Redevelopment plan for the area by the end of that year progress was concentrated around the northern half of the canal which was successfully redeveloped in a very short period with with a new master plan for the area in 2019 several developers had purchased abandoned or unus sites along the Waterway and it's here that we need to point out that despite these changes and the decreasing pollution in the water this is still one of the dirtiest and most polluted areas in America as there's really been no long-term program of water quality monitoring due to the funding issues the canal contains high levels of pathogens many of which are harmful to humans a 1974 report by microbiologist at New York City's community college found that the water contained typhoid chera denter and tuberculosis in addition a 2003 report of the New York Harbor found that the guanas canal had the highest level of pathogens of any location in the entire Harbor in 2009 a local Environmental Group called River Keepers tested the canal Waters immediately after heavy rains and Sewer flooding the results were putrid the teroc Coti were found at levels of 17,32 cells per 100 ml and anything above 104 cells for 100 ml is considered dangerous teroc kaky are considered an indicator of other possible pathogens things were not improved much in 2013 feal matter was still present in the water of the guanas at levels of parts per 100 a more common measure for Waterway would be parts per million the contamination of the guanas canal also extended into the guanas creek at the mouth of the canal in 1982 the USAC published the results of a report on navigation in the creek even back then the report found non-existent oxygen levels high concentrations of feal coliforms and significant concentrations of oil and grease but there was also an interesting observation as the canal indeed is toxic to humans it may Harbor previously unidentified species of organisms in 2008 there were reports of the presence of white clouds of bofilm floating above the mud at the bottom of the canal investigation suggested that the white stuff was a Cooperative mixture of bacteria protozoa chemicals and other substances the parts of the mixture worked together to find food well the biological components EXT changed genes and excreted materials that acted as an antibiotic to protect themselves from the toxins in the water also analyzed in 2014 was the so-called black mayonnaise a deadly mix of oil coal pesticides rotting debris raw sewage and chemicals that as we have seen have been present in the canal since the 19th century the measurements also indicated the amount of oxygen present leading researchers to conclude that as far back as the end of the first world war this Waterway was insufficient for life to multiply all these studies of bacteria and pollution in the guanas have had very important and practical implications for example bioengineers have studied the behavior of certain bacteria in the black mayo and were amazed to find that they somehow survived the breakdown of toxic components these discoveries have shed new light on studies to use microorganisms in the reduction of water pollution around the world other Studies have focused on staf caucus which is also resistant to certain substances in the canal and this analysis of the bacterium has provided a better understanding of the behavior of organisms in developing resistance to antibiotics and with that in mind I'd like to point out that despite its fearsome reputation the guanas has actually found its way into New York City pop culture lore in 2014 an issue of the comic book series tales of the night Watchman published a title called it came from the guanas canal this issue featured a story about a toxic sludge monster residing in the canal seeking revenge on a gangster who had previously dumped bodies there then in 2015 the publisher also collaborated with the ganis souvenir shop to produce a fake movie poster based on the book in 2017 a sequel of the comic was produced called it came from the guanas canal again and in this sequel the monster returns to take revenge on the criminals responsible for the boy's death but the night Watchman must protect one of the killers to stop the monster then in 2015 Gothamist a website dedicated to New York City published a video of a fisherman claiming to have just caught a three-eyed catfish in the canal although the story was subsequently published by several media Outlets experts expressed skepticism about the fishes story a New York Times article suggested that the three-eyed catfish was a hoax perpetrated by an artist finally the famous daily radio show and podcast the majority report which broadcasts from Brooklyn refers to the canal at the beginning of each show stating quote broadcasting live from the industrial devastated guanas canal in America's Heartland Brooklyn New York in conclusion the history of New York's guanas Canal is a microcosm of challeng Transformations and hopes for the future from a time when it was a crystal clear River and a vital element of the local community to its transformation into a polluted and neglected Waterway the guanas embodies the complexity of human relationships with the environment in recent decades however Redevelopment and restoration efforts have shown that there is hope for its recovery and that significant progress is being made to clean up and restore this important historical and environmental site a otion that perhaps brings us full circle but if you thought that episode was interesting don't miss our live show the archive where I interview one of the sources that inspired not only this story but many topics on its history otherwise I thank you all for watching and until next time this is Ryan soash signing off

Channel: IT'S HISTORY

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Id: Pr2ZWgk5I7Y

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024