What's to be done about the Gowanus Canal? Any ideas? If so, the Department of Environmental Protection wants to hear them. The DEP sent out a notice indicating it is seeking proposals for how best to remove storm water from the sewer system and how best to treat it before it is discharged back into the Gowanus Canal watershed and Flushing Bay. The agency plans to award grants totaling $2.9 million to the potential projects, equally divided between the two areas. You better hurry though, because a retired engineer, Bart Chezar from Park Slope, thinks he has a plan that "will not only prevent raw sewage from continuing to foul the already polluted waterway, but also modify the behavior of local residents so that they do their part to keep the waterway clean."
During rainstorms, sewage and storm water exceed the capacity of sewage treatment plants and end up overflowing directly into the Gowanus Canal. “We need to reduce that as much as we can,” Chezar tells the Post. His proposal, called the “Remote Drain Controlled Rainwater Collection Cistern,” uses regulators to indicate when the system if overtaxed, and closing off a component of the system to prevent an overflow. His system collects rainwater from buildings, and stores it in large, 750-gallon cisterns if a signal alerts that an overflow event is imminent. “Once you get that signal, it will close the valve because you don’t want to be dumping that water anymore.” When the system can handle it, the water is released back into the sewer line. “This is smart technology — it sees the action before it occurs and reacts to it,” he noted.
Not everyone is happy about the idea, however. For some developers, the idea of looking for proposals and possibly declaring the area a Superfund site would only hurt business. One such developer, Toll Brothers, is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit after signing a $21.5 million contract with owner Joseph Phillips and now refusing to pay. According to The Daily News, after the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the canal to its Superfund list, the developer said it would scrap the project if the EPA cleanup went forward—contending the stigma of a Superfund site would make it impossible to sell condos. Toll Brothers' lawyers claim they shouldn't have to pay up because the Superfund listing was "unforeseeable" and made it impossible to build housing.
