Recently finished filling this sketchbook. The first drawing was done just days before New York City was locked down because of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the last was done as it was starting to abate. During that year, there as the uprising over the murder of George Floyd - that's what that one drawing of Frederick Douglas you can glimpse pertains to - and that officer was found guilty a few days after I completed the book. There's also all my "Save Our Stages" drawings in there that were featured on USK Talks. Man, that was a hell of a year.
Monday, June 28, 2021
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Gowanus Canal
A tugboat moored in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY.
A local resident once complained to the Brooklyn Common Council that the raw sewage flowing into the Gowanus Canal had "injured the health of his wife" and "killed his father-in-law." A local alderman agreed with the complainant and said, "I wouldn't take this land as a present." The year was 1861, and it would only get worse.
The area was originally a series of tidal inlets. The Dutch colonized the area in 1636 and named the waterway "Gowanes Creek" after Gouwane, sachem of the local Lenape tribe. The Dutch began to harvest large oysters from the creeks, which became the first notable export to Europe from the area, and established a tobacco plantation.
By the mid-19th century, the City of Brooklyn (not yet incorporated into the City of New York) had become the third-largest city in the U.S. The Gowanus Creek became a repository for sewage run-off for other parts of Brooklyn, and the Industrial Revolution lead to the surrounding lands becoming home to a variety of industries, including stone and coal yards, cement works, slaughterhouses, tanneries, flour mills, machine shops, sulfur producers, and chemical plants, and became an important hub for maritime shipping.
The local government decided to transform the natural creeks into a straighter, deeper canal to accommodate commercial shipping needs. In 1869, the 1.8 mile (2.9 km) canal was completed, and the surrounding marshes filled in to provide increased land usage. Initial designs incorporated systems that would flush the entire waterway daily, but were deemed too expensive. Instead, the cheapest option was built, with no through-flow of water. As a result, the water became deoxygenated, unable to support life, and the continual dumping of coal, pesticides, chemical waste, and other industrial byproducts, as well as the continual flow of raw sewage into the canal, created a toxic sludge of "black mayonnaise" that settled to the bottom, at least 10' (3 m) deep. Plumes of coal tar penetrated up to 150' (46m) underground. It took on a reddish-purple color and emitted a terrible smell, and was contaminated with typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, and gonorrhea. Ships would sail into the canal with the sole purpose of using the toxic waters to cleanse their hulls of barnacles.
Industry around the canal declined drastically during the 1960s with the advent of containerization and the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Verrazano Bridge, which promoted trucking over maritime shipping. But the century's worth of pollution and waste remained, and millions of gallons of raw sewage continued to flow into the canal.
As far back as 1890, efforts were made to address the situation, as the canal became the most polluted waterway in America. Time after time, these efforts failed, even after it was listed as a Superfund National Priority site by the EPA. Dredging continues to this day - I think this tug is part of the effort - but it seems impossible to fully remediate. It's somewhat better - it's no longer purple, but has a definite green sheen, and there's no life to be found, except for weird microscopic bacteria that have been discovered. A local organization, The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, leads canoe trips in the canal and advocates for environmental reform. A "sponge park" has been built, which is designed to filter some of the waste water that overflows into the canal. Meanwhile, real estate developers are trying to build big residential complexes around the canal. The hope is that people will pay premium prices to live in luxury waterfront condos, even if that water is completely toxic.
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