New Gowanus Canal Health Report: The 10 Scariest Excerpts

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — On Wednesday, after years of preparation, state officials finally released their official, 86-page "public health assessment" on the Gowanus Canal, as they're required to do at all sites on the federal Superfund list.

But as any good New York humble-bragger knows, the Gowanus Canal isn't just another Superfund site. In fact, in its 150-year lifetime as the abused wastebasket/Porta Potty of urban planners, oil magnates and other industrial pioneers looking for a cheap and easy way to dispose of their unmentionables, the canal has earned a name as "one of the nation's most extensively contaminated water bodies," in the words of the new State Department of Health report.

Or, in the words of Christopher Swain, the environmental activist who infamously swam the canal in full Hazmat gear to make a point: "The canal reflects back to us who we are and the choices we've made."

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Perhaps due to the canal's elevated celebrity status, state officials have taken their sweet time compiling its final health report. (It's been three years since the public-comment period ended on a previous draft.)

But this week, at long last, it's in our hands.

Here are the 10 scariest excerpts.

1. This paragraph (below) about how crazy and cancer-loving you have to be to swim — or even touch the water — in the Gowanus Canal. (We're looking at you, Christopher Swain.)

In short, officials found enough cancer-causing chemicals on parts of the water's surface to cause "moderate to high increased cancer risk" upon repeated exposure.

In some locations, exposure to chemicals in the surface water is also a potential health concern for swimmers. While most water samples from the Gowanus Canal contain chemical levels that are estimated to pose a minimal or low risk for health effects, about 8% of the samples taken in 2007 contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particularly benzo(a)pyrene, at levels that could pose a moderate to high increased cancer risk if people are exposed repeatedly over a long period of time (for example, 30 years) at those specific locations only.

2. This "DON'T EAT" chart with heartbreaking drawings of the animals forced to make their homes in our urban sludge pile. (And its footnote mention of "soft green stuff.")

3. This sentence recommending the best times to avoid the Gowanus Canal — basically, all the time — so as to "reduce exposures to biological and chemical contaminants."

People using the canal can reduce the risk of becoming ill by avoiding the canal water after periods of effluent discharge, rainfall, when the water is cloudy or turbid, or when pollution is clearly visible (for example, petroleum sheens).

4. This simple yet frighteningly diverse list of the types of contaminants found in the Gowanus Canal.

Contaminants identified include biological organisms, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), coal tar wastes, metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

5. This history lesson on the Gowanus Canal, in which we learn that it's such a literal toilet that billions of dollars must be poured into constructing new "flushers" every few decades. And that when these flushers break, as with a toilet, everything goes to sh*t.

The Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel was designed to pull water, via a propeller and underground tunnel, from the Buttermilk Channel in the East River and discharge it to the head of the Gowanus Canal. The Flushing Tunnel added about 300 million gallons of water daily to the canal and it operated from 1911 until 1960 when it failed mechanically. With the flushing tunnel not operating, canal water once again became heavily polluted.

To reduce sewage discharge to the Gowanus Canal, the City of New York built the Gowanus Canal Pump Station at the head of the canal in 1947 and the Owl’s Head sewage treatment plant in 1952. However, in 1984 the Gowanus Canal still had thirteen related outfalls: nine combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and four continuous dry weather sewer discharges. They discharged 16.6 million gallons of raw sewage and four million gallons of combined sewer overflows into the canal on a daily basis [Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation 1984]. The CSO discharges to the Gowanus Canal caused a buildup of sludges and sediments that were not removed by tidal flushing. Sewage discharge to the Gowanus Canal was reduced, but not eliminated, after the construction of the Red Hook Treatment Plant in 1987. In 1999, the Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel was reactivated and pumped about 150 million gallons per day of water. The flushing tunnel is now undergoing renovation and a large scale oxygen bubbler pipe is in place to aerate the upper third of the canal and reduce stagnation.

6. This demographics table showing the (blindingly white) racial makeup of the Gowanus neighborhood's human population, compared to the rest of the city.

7. These brain-frying findings on the cancer-causing chemicals present in the "middle reach" of the canal — aka, the main stretch, running from 2nd Street down to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

In short: PAHs are chemicals released by burning gasoline, oil, charcoal or garbage. They can cause cancer. A bunch of them were found in the canal at levels many, many times the max for New York drinking standards — mostly due to tar in the water.

Aka, do not open your mouth anywhere near the Gowanus Canal.

Elevated levels of contaminants, primarily PAHs, were found most often in the Middle Reach area of the canal. A single sample from the Middle Reach of the canal contained the highest levels of the PAHs benz(a)anthracene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(b)fluoranthene and chrysene, which ranged from 50 to 130 mcg/L. This sample also contained elevated levels of benzo(a)pyrene. The highest level of benzo(a)pyrene in surface water (85 mcg/L) was also found in the Middle Reach of the canal. All of these levels exceeded or equaled the MCLs for these PAHs (see Appendix B, Table 1). The samples were taken in an area of the Middle Reach where the investigators observed tar-saturated sediments, creosotetreated bulkheads, heavy petroleum sheens and surface water turbidity. Since tar is known to be a source of PAHs, these tar-like materials may have contributed to the levels of PAHs found in the canal.

8. This graph showing contaminant levels in soil along the banks of the Gowanus Canal (first two columns), compared to goals set by the state for soil in places where people live (third column). As you can see, some contaminants — including lead — are present at levels hundreds of times higher than the goal.

"Lead in some of the sediment locations could increase a child's blood lead level if a child frequently contacts sediments in these high lead locations," the report found.

9. These two sentences about poop.

Of 85 Middle Reach samples, 72 contained fecal coliforms and 10 exceeded the standard for bathing beaches. Of 30 Upper Reach samples, 20 contained fecal coliforms and three exceeded the standard for bathing beaches.

10. This moment of tragic irony in the public comment section, in which a community member's concern about the Department of Health's "mild language" surrounding Gowanus Canal health risks is answered with more mild language.

Comment 6: Why is the language of the PHA so mild, given the dire warnings of the risks – from lead poisoning to cancer – that could result just from wading through canal water, let alone eating fish or swimming in the Canal?

Response 6: The language in the health assessment attempts to present a balanced evaluation of the health risks associated with exposure to canal contaminants based on accepted exposure and risk assessment methods. These methods do not allow us to predict with certainty whether or not people will have health effects, but to present the probability of health effects based on several different exposure assumptions, and that under certain conditions, those risks are high enough to warrant actions on the part of individuals to reduce them.

Lead photo by Steven Pisano/Flickr