CSI Gowanus
by Sonam Velani 
Gowanus Watermark Walk, City of Water Day, 2022. Photos by Sonam Velani and Yan Sim
Guardians of the Gowanus! Photo by Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club
Last weekend I had the pleasure of becoming an amateur hydrologist, piloting an underwater drone down into the depths of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn (you certainly wouldn’t find me swimming down in that Superfund site, so this was the next best thing!). Celebrating City of Water Day with the Waterfront Alliance, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, I got to go deep - literally and figuratively - into the storied history of one of New York City’s major watersheds.
My guide: the indomitable Eymund Diegal, an immigrant from South Africa whose encyclopedic knowledge of the canal makes the rest of us look weak (check out his hyperlocal TedX Gowanus talk!). A decade ago he started Creek Scene Investigation, or CSI: Gowanus - a name Eymund chose to pique the interest of his 12-yr old daughter Amara. Her friends were deputized as “CSI Agents,” of course.
“The Gowanus Canal is a crime scene,” Eymund said. “If you know you’ve got a crime, you have to ask what caused it.”
The early years of development along the Gowanus Canal. Map by Eymund Diegal.
The culprits: the industrial grit of New York. For over 150 years, tanneries, flour mills, coal yards, oil refineries, and industrial plants lined the Gowanus Canal. By the early 1900s, the canal was the busiest commercial canal in the US, transporting six million tons of cargo annually. All the brownstone of ‘Brownstone Brooklyn’? You guessed it, it made its way to the borough through the canal. The beauty above ground meant that the toxic sludge, raw sewage, and industrial waste went below ground - down to the lowest point of the watershed, down into the muddy waters of the Gowanus Canal.
Eymund is an environmental planner whose forensics are unmatched - he’s used everything from helium balloons to underwater drones to centuries-old engravings to map the history of the Gowanus Canal watershed, and what it means for the future of climate resilient planning in NYC. The sleuthing: finding the biggest trees since they constantly need water and often sit directly atop local springs; locating government owned property such as schools, public housing, or parks – often the least valuable land atop subterranean marshes prone to flooding; and my personal favorite: a former basin landfill at First Street full of industrial relics like the circuit boards of the 20th century.
Eymund fills up a balloon with helium, carrying cameras that photograph the Gowanus watershed from above. Photo by Dave Sanders.
Over the years, the CSI Agents have helped Eymund rediscover the many waterways that fed the 1.8 mile long Gowanus Canal - these are now buried under basements and streets and remind local residents of their existence during heavy downpours. The influx of stormwater causes the sewer network to exceed its capacity, and the combined sewer overflows full of stormwater runoff, raw sewage, industrial pollutants, and much else are still discharged into the Gowanus Canal.
With a newly minted Gowanus rezoning poised to bring 8,200 new market-rate and subsidized apartments to the area and the EPA Superfund site cleanup well underway, the neighborhood will be lined with green infrastructure including a sponge park all along the canal to absorb rainwater, swale trails along all side streets, and active rain gardens with herbaceous plants. It’s a work in progress, but the animals are already out and about - with mummy fish, blue crabs, and eastern oysters already claiming their real estate (this is New York, after all).
Gowanus Canal Sponge Park. Photo by Hill West Architects.
All this is happening in your backyard! Become a citizen scientist and go on your very own CSI adventures with the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club - boats, paddles, and clean(er) waters included!
by Sonam Velani