6
COURIER LIFE, MARCH 25-31, 2022
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The small boat that sank into
Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal
March 18 was a city contractor’s
vessel, and one local mariner
spotted it taking on water for a
week before it met its demise in
the noxious waters.
The vessel, a so-called safety
skiff contracted by the Department
of Transportation, was stationed
in the polluted waterway
just south of the 3rd Street Bridge
when it became submerged.
“As soon as DOT crews noticed
the boat was taking on
water, the DOT immediately
contacted the boat owner and
the vessel was removed,” said
agency rep Vin Barone in a
statement. “We have advised the
contractor to take appropriate
measures to protect the public
in the use of safety skiffs.”
DOT oversees the five bridges
spanning the canal, some of which
are more than a century old, including
the 3rd Street Bridge.
The Environmental Protection
Agency has banned recreational
boating on the canal north
of the 9th Street Bridge since late
2020, to make room for the federally
managed Superfund cleanup,
dredging a century’s-worth of industrial
and wastewater pollution
from the canal. EPA spokesperson
Stephen McBay said the incident
had no effect on their work.
The boat appears to have been
The sunken boat seen on the morning of March 19. Gary Francis
moored at the sheet pile bulkhead
at the end of the Whole Foods parking
lot since December, according
to a post on Twitter. Firefighters
responded to the scene Friday
night, and the boat was still about
two-thirds submerged the next
day, but it was gone by Sunday.
One local canal enthusiast
and experienced boater said he
spotted the little watercraft take
on water and go below its waterline
about a week beforehand.
“It looked a little stern down
on its waterline,” Gowanus resident
Gary Francis said.
Francis is a member of the
local canoe club the Gowanus
Dredgers and has paddled down
the canal and all over the Five
Borough’s waterways for years.
He has also twice set sail from
Maine to the Caribbean, and the
Brooklynite was surprised why
no one warned the owners over
the past week, despite the heavy
barge traffic from the ongoing
federal cleanup. “It’s pretty crazy
and embarrassing,” he said “It’s
just an easy thing to spot.”
Francis watched men trying
to figure out how to move the boat
Saturday, which is when this reporter
first spotted the drowned
vessel, but he wasn’t there to see
what they ended up doing to get
out of the noxious channel.
He speculated that if the boat
was left unattended, its batterypowered
pump might have died,
slowly leading it to become waterlogged
in the filth.
On March 22, this reporter
observed a boat back at the same
spot, and a worker aboard said it
was the same one and that they
were able to make it canal-worthy
again.
STINKING
FEELING
Sunken Gowanus Canal boat took
on water for a week, local says