the development of the gowanus canal within the context of the brooklyn sewer system
december 2015
The Gowanus Canal, located in Brooklyn, New York, is one of the most infamous water bodies in the country. It is known for its retched odor, grotesque aesthetic, and the tales of mutant species that have been found living within its confines. The canal owes its infamy to the continuous discharge of raw sewage that has been occurring for over a century and a half, as well as its use as a depository of refuse from industrial gas factories that once burned coal in the 1800s. One can attribute the unsustainable use of the canal to more than two centuries worth of piecemeal planning processes that yielded the canal as we know it today. Although the canal was first conceptualized in the late 1600s, it was not fully dredged and completed until the late 1860s. The land that predated the canal, known as Gowanus Creek, suffered from abuse by the settlers who exploited it for its fertile land, natural commodities, and ultimate convenience as a trade corridor and open sewer.
In 1848, a man named Daniel Richards took it upon himself to hire surveyors and draft a formal plan and design for the canal. However, the plan was halted for over a decade. During this time, Brooklyn’s first modern sewer system was implemented, and when the canal finally took its final form in in 1869, the state of the canal was already inundated with a tremendous and increasing amount of pollution due to sewage and industrial waste. And unfortunately, the formal plan had made no effort to assess the state of the canal nor clean it. In turn, the canal still exists today in a dilapidated state. The multiple centuries worth of pollution is a side effect of the intermittent nature of planning throughout the canal’s history.