Along the Gowanus Canal
The controversial Whole Foods supermarket along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn has gone from topic of years-long debate to near-reality. After more than five years’ delay (due to community opposition—traffic, artists neighborhood, upped real estate prices), the Gowanus branch of this ‘natural-only’ supermarket is slated to open in December. Complete with rooftop greenhouse, bar and restaurant. Sitting at the nexus of innumerable increasingly fashionable Brooklyn neighborhoods (Park Slop, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill,…), I noted today that it, surprisingly, also brings with it canal-side benches and sculpted gardens.
While I love waterside benches and gardens as much—if not more than—the next person, the ideas of Gowanus Canal and watered leisure have in the past been close to oxymoronic.
Built in the mid-1800s, when it served as industrial transportation route for tanneries, chemical plants, paper mills, and more, the 1.8-mile long Gowanus sits on a former saltmarsh. A designated Superfund site, it’s best-known not for its beauty but for its total contamination—hazardous industrial waste; sewer overflow from surrounding neighborhoods. The EPA calls it one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the country. A little over a year ago, after rising floodwaters from Hurricane Sandy inundated the surrounding area, anxieties ran high—raw sewage, toxic sediment, hazardous waste in streets and flooded basements.
Benches along a Superfund site?