Massive $1.6B Gowanus Canal Clean Water Project Breaks Ground

NEW YORK CITY — A years-long effort to clean and protect the polluted Gowanus Canal took a $1.6 billion step forward.

Mayor Eric Adams joined local officials Wednesday to break ground on the first of two giant underground storage tanks that will keep up to 12 million gallons of sewer outflow from befouling the canal.

The project — which will also create 3.6 acres of new public waterfront open space — will help keep the canal clean and safe as the city deals with environmental challenges such as climate change in the future, Adams said.

"We're not stopping here in Gowanus," he said. "We want to make sure that every waterway here in New York City is clean enough so the dolphins will return, as we saw in the Bronx River."

Cleaning the notoriously polluted Gowanus Canal has long been a goal for locals, and significant steps have been taken in recent years.

For decades, the waterway grew polluted from heavy industry such a gas plants, paper mills, tanneries and chemical plants that studded along its banks. By 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the area as a Superfund site — a step that both recognized the legacy of contamination and set up the process for cleaning it up.

A dredging project that scooped toxic muck from the canal began in 2020 and ended a year later. Crews then started work on stabilizing toxic sediment and, eventually, capping it so pollutants couldn't continue to seep out.

Amid all this, the city rezoned the Gowanus area with an eye toward affordable housing and environmental protection.

The wider cleanup effort hasn't been without hiccups. A smattering of locals opposed the rezoning and the EPA set a legally binding timeline for the city to speed up building the giant underground storage tanks.

The groundbreaking Wednesday was for the first storage tank — an 8 million gallon behemoth beneath two blocks from Butler Street to Degraw streets. A headhouse building will be atop the tank, along with 1.6 acres of waterfront public open space which will include concrete block benches, granite pavers and plantings to manage stormwater runoff, officials said.

The second, 4-million-gallon tank will go underneath a triangular peninsula along a canal bend at Second Avenue and Sixth Street, officials said. An additional 2 acres of public open space, including a kayak launch, will go over the site.

The overall $1.6 billion project aims to achieve a long-standing goal of local officials with Community Board 6 and activists: clean up the traces of Gowanus' industrial past while reshaping the area in an environmentally conscious manner for the future.

“We’re proud to have worked with the Adams administration and local not-for-profits in enhancing the design of this milestone project that will advance the environmental health of our community while adding to our much needed public open space,” said Mike Racioppo, district manager for Community Board 6, in a statement after the groundbreaking.