Explore the canal’s hidden environmental history
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Discover the Gowanus Canal’s
environmental history
and how the community can
plan for a better future along
Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory
at a walking tour around
the waterway this Saturday,
Sept. 12.
The “Gowanus Watermark
Walk” will trace historic
marshlands and hidden
“ghost streams” of the waterway’s
pre-industrial past and
tie them into the neighborhood’s
future under the federal
cleanup of the canal, the area’s
storm resiliency, and the city’s
planned rezoning, according
to one of the two tour guides.
“Gowanus is an embodiment
of just all our society’s
and economy’s relationship
with nature,” said Steve Koller,
a Park Slope-based environmental
scientist who studies
the intersection of fl ood management,
urban infrastructure,
and policy design at the
University of Miami, Florida.
TOUR
Gowanus Watermark Walk
tour starts outside Mirror in
the Woods at 572 Union St.,
between Third and Fourth
avenues in Gowanus, www.
gowanuscanal.org, (718) 243-
0849. Sept. 12, 3-4:30 pm,
rain or shine. $5.
“Spending time on the canal
and learning more about the
remediation it seemed to me
like every possible urban water
COURIER L 30 IFE, SEPT. 11–17, 2020
management problem and
potential from a development
standpoint is manifested in
the Gowanus area.”
Koller wants to show how
natural disasters such as Superstorm
Sandy have affected
Gowanus and how the city,
state, and federal government
agencies are prepping for future
events, while cleaning up
the noxious channel.
He will make stops at sites
such as the century-old Flushing
Tunnel, which pumps millions
of gallons of highly-oxygenated
water from the New
York Harbor into the head
of the canal, or the Gowanus
Station House, where the city
plans to install a fi ltration facility
and an eight-million gallon
to capture raw sewage and
stormwater runoff from fl owing
into the waterway.
The shore walk is sponsored
by the Gowanus Dredgers
Canoe Club as part of the
citywide series of waterfrontthemed
event series the City of
Water Day, hosted by the Waterfront
Alliance and the New
York-New Jersey Harbor & Estuary
Program.
The Dredgers will host several
events along the canal
that day, including canoe voyages,
a street art tour, and musical
performances, topped off
by a canoe-borne brass band
blowout in the evening.
Gowanus canoer, water
sampler, and forensic geographer
Eymund Diegel will join
the educational stroll and talk
The Gowanus Canal. Photo by Kevin Duggan
about remnants of Gowanus
past, such as old streams that
can still be heard running underneath
sewer plates.
“We’ve lost touch with some
of the essential truths of the
landscape, like if you build at
the bottom of a hill in a natural
pond you will get fl ooded,”
Diegel said, pointing to paving
over the old streams, which he
believes has led to streets caving
in or in one particularly
bad case the collapse of a canal
bulkhead near the Lowe’s
parking lot in 2017.
“We need to build the landscape
so we don’t need to keep
patching it,” Diegel said.
The tour guides hope to
shed light on the area’s history
and environmental challenges
as the city eyes to rezone Gowanus
to allow for more residents
to live in taller buildings
along the canal.
Koller said the rezoning
has the potential to make the
old industrial neighborhood a
more ecological and affordable
area, but hopes that the city
doesn’t offl oad the environmental
burden on the area’s
neediest.
“Who is going to benefi t
from the amenities around the
Gowanus and who is going to
bear the cost of negatives of
being close to the canal,” the
scientist said.
BY TANGERINE CLARKE
Bedford-Stuyvesant came
alive with colorful revelers
on Saturday during the West
Indian Day Parade’s carnival
display on the Fulton Street
Black Lives Matter mural.
The event — hosted by the
Bed-Stuy Mural Collective,
the offi ce of Councilman Robert
Cornegy Jr., the Bedford-
Stuyvesant “Gateway” BID,
and others — presented costumed
performances by children
and stilt dancers, much
to the delight of a limited audience
clad in face masks.
With social distancing protocol
in place, offi cials have
had to sideline several events
associated with the West Indian
Day Parade — but that
did not stop nationals from enjoying
the Sept. 5 celebration
of the Caribbean diaspora.
The event was one of several
celebrations of this year’s
West Indian Day Parade —
themed “Back to Love” — although
organizers moved most
of the revelry online. J’ouvert
City International held a livestreamed
event from 7 am to
noon on Monday honoring
essential workers and Black
Lives Matter activists, and the
West Indian American Day
Carnival Association held a
12-hour virtual celebration
that featured a dance party
and costumes.
The Saturday celebration,
one of the few events held inperson,
featured health and
wellness activities, a musical
performance by Anslem
Douglas courtesy of 500 Men
Making a Difference, and a
steelpan medley by 11-year old
Musical Marli.
Monique Antoine, a programming
coordinator for the
event, said that the Bedford-
Stuyvesant Mural Collective
has hosted wellness activities
including yoga, aerobics, and
exercise on the site of the mural
in the weeks leading up to
the carnival display.
The group decided to continue
the wellness activities
through Labor Day weekend
and to host the Carnival event
on the pedestrian-only block
located between Marcy and
Brooklyn avenues in light of
the parade’s cancellation, she
added
“We wanted to bring the
spirit of the Caribbean to the
mural,” said Antoine, adding
that Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada,
Barbados, and other Islands
were represented at the
event.
One Trinidad-born fashion
designer said that the coronavirus
pandemic has severely
impacted her small business.
“I was unable to do fashion
shows. This is where I made
most of my money,” said Sandra
Jules of Brooklyn-based
SanJules Unique Art Creations
Inc.
“It is tough, but I had to do
something different to survive.
This has made my business
stronger, because I can
see there are new possibilities.
I work hard, and I educated myself,
to learn the marketing side
of the business, for the future.”
The carnival display is one
of many recent events held at
the site of the Black Lives Matter
mural, which was painted
in June across from Restoration
Plaza. Stakeholders have
hosted the community activities
to spread awareness of the
new pedestrian-only block —
which Councilman Cornegy
hopes to convert into a permanent
pedestrian plaza — and
to drive foot traffi c to the plaza’s
businesses.
“The goal is to bring awareness
about the mural, but not
only that, to help bring safe,
and large foot traffi c to the
businesses of Bed-Stuy,” Lynette
Battle, deputy director of
the Bedford Gateway Business
Improvement District, told
Brooklyn Paper in August.
Deep in the Gowanus
West Indian Day carnival lights up
Bed-Stuy Black Lives Matter mural
BROOKLYN
Shaking things up
Anne Rhea-Smith, publicist at FUNSATION4 and the West Indian American
Day Carnival Association, shows off her costume at the carnival display.
Que - BlacklivesMatter Collective
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/www.gowanuscanal.org
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