The Gowanus canal suffers from sewage and trash pollution as well as coal tar pollution.
These Discharge points smelled really bad and have a negative effect on the community.
On January 3rd My group and I went to the Gowanus Canal Conservatory for a tour. This organization focuses on the great amount of coal pollution that happened in the twentieth century, and the sewage overflow today. We met with Michael, a volunteer coordinator who lives nearby and has worked at the organization for 4 years. He took us on a walking tour down the canal where he showed us the pollution and sewage in the river. The tour was the real deal, and when were were near the sewage overflow valves it smelled horrible. The smell is not the worst part about the sewage though. These overflow valves will pour out raw sewage directly into the canal when it rains and the series are overflowing. Between this and the decades of toxic coal tar being dumped into the river, the canal is lifeless and toxic to any living organisms. It was very interesting to learn that this pollution has a negative effect on the environment and the community which I did not think of before. I definitely want to talk about this during my teach in because it demonstrates how lose water pollution really is. The Gowanus canal focusses on improving the community by adding plants and nature to the streets and nearby neighborhood. But there work is not just to improve the appeal of the neighborhood. They add little gardens that suck up large amounts of water in big rainfalls. This makes the community a nicer place, and also prevents the water from going in the sewers and overflowing them which leads to sewage being outputted into the canal. While taking up little space and look very good, they can suck up to 200 gallons of water when it rains. Michael also told us about how the site was a superfund site which means a lot of money is being colected by the government to fix the pollution problems soon. Because the coal tar will not go away, and there is over ten feet of it at the bottom, they are going to cap it off from the rest of the river with 3 feet of cement. This will get rid of the coal contamination in the canal. The government is also working to install bigger sewers that will not overflow.
