On the banks of Brooklyn’s heavily polluted Gowanus Canal, Major Eric Adams on Wednesday ceremonially broke ground on the first of two long-delayed underground sewage overflow tanks, designed to prevent further pollution of the waterway, and a total of 3.6 acres of public space that’ ll top both tanks.
Together the tanks — costing a combined $1.6 billion — will be able to store up to 12 million gallons of sewage overflow that comes from heavy rainstorms, the major said.
“Sewage overflow has long been a problem in the Gowanus area, and especially during heavy rainfalls,” Adams said. “These tanks, and the improved drainage, and pumping infrastructure around it, will keep the Gowanus Canal cleaner and provide more space for recreation and community activities.”
Adams made the announcement along with Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 Administrator Lisa Garcia.
Rendering via Selldorf Architects
The tank going where Adams was digging Wednesday — the larger of the two, dubbed the Head End Tank — will hold up to 8 million gallons of sewage water. The smaller tank will be able to store as much as 4 million gallons, he said.
The $329 million Head End Tank will sit at the north end of the Gowanus — surrounded by Nevins, Butler, and Degraw streets — and will run underground nearly two blocks between Butler and Degraw. The project will also include a new “headhouse” building — which will contain the electrical systems, odor control, and filters to take debris out of the sewage. It will be surrounded by 1.6 acres of open space with a waterfront esplanade.
The smaller tank, dubbed Owls Head, will be located in the mid-section of the canal on a triangular peninsula at the intersection of 2nd Avenue and 6th Street. It will also include a headhouse and two acres of community space with features like an amphitheater, plazas, and an ADA-accessible launch, according to City Hall.
Adams’ office said the preparation of the site is on track to be completed before this June, when the EPA is due to finish its dredging up of toxic materials at the canal’s bottom.
In his remarks, Adams reflected on the canal’s 1.8-mile history of serving as a dumping ground for the waste products of industrial sites along its shores for much of its 160-plus-year history.
“In the 1860s the tidal creek was converted into a canal where heavy industrial waste and chemicals were dumped,” Adams said. “It was a thought that no matter what you put in our waters, there was just such a vast amount of water around the city that you could never pollute it and it could never destroy the internal structures. That was wrong. And we’re now really having to deal with the sins of the past. It’s now being passed down to the children of today.”
Rendering via Selldorf Architects
The EPA declared the canal a Superfund site in 2010, but didn’t start its cleanup of the contaminated waterway until 2020, according to a report by Brooklyn Paper. The cleanup process involves scraping 581,000 cubic yards of toxic “black mayonnaise” from the bottom of the Gowanus and capping the canal’s floor to prevent it from being recontaminated.
In order to keep sewage from flowing immediately back into the canal during heavy rainstorms, the EPA ordered the city in 2014 to construct the two overflow tanks, which will store stormwater and allow it to drain slowly, staving off recontamination of the waterway.
But construction of the two tanks has been delayed multiple times over the past several years, potentially imperiling the federal Superfund cleanup. As recently as last year, the city said it expected to complete construction on the larger tank by 2032 and the smaller one by 2030; that’s three and two years after the EPA said they needed the work to be completed, and seven and nine years after the agency expected to finish its dredging of the canal this year.
The city ran afoul of the EPA under former Major Bill de Blasio for those timelines and revised them under Adams. A spokesperson for Adams said the administration is now projecting the smaller tank will be completed by 2029, while the larger one will be finished in 2030.
Aggarwala, during his remarks on Tuesday, said the Adams administration has been working closely with the EPA to see the work completed on schedule.
“The EPA has worked with us on a monthly basis,” he said. “We’ve had monthly check-ins that Lisa Garcia, the regional administrator, and I have jointly chaired. There’s been lots and lots of staff coordination between that. And it really has been a wonderful example of when government levels choose to work together, we really produce partnerships.”
Andrea Parker, executive director of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, said the public spaces included in the project were added through a hard-fought battle by the Gowanus community.
“The Gowanus neighborhood is severely lacking in parks and green space and has long been disconnected from the canal itself,” she said. “The community fight is really hard to make sure that planning for the tanks includes real commitments to both preserving Thomas Green Park, right there, the one big park that we have, as well as providing more public space in the neighborhood.” — Additional reporting by Kirstyn Brendlen
Editor’s note: A version of this story originally ran in amNY. Click here to see the original story.
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