It smelled pretty bad–here’s what I observed and what you should know.
By: Emma Rosenberg
May 25, 2025
BROOKLYN–Going canoeing in the Gowanus Canal is a top ten moment in life and a bucket list item on a list that didn’t exist. It’s fascinating to see the dichotomy between luxury glass buildings going up on nearly every corner, mixed with older brick buildings containing artists’ lofts. The neighborhood has a lot of history and is constantly evolving, but with that comes a host of issues. It smells, and it smells bad, especially when it rains. But if you didn’t know anything about the canal or the neighborhood, you’d never guess behind the reflective glass that the neighborhood is one extreme weather event away from a sewage nightmare.
I spoke with Corinne Brenner, a volunteer with the Gowanus Dredgers, a community group dedicated to restoring and advocating for the Gowanus Canal. She explained that the area used to be a marsh, which makes sense since it’s at the southern end of Park Slope. The natural bowl-like topography makes it vulnerable to flooding. Pair this with the old 19th-century sewer system designed for a smaller population, and you get combined sewer overflow (CSO) when it rains. This is a fancy way of saying raw sewage (poop and other nasties) gets dumped into the canal.
“So when it’s dry weather, our sewer systems are actually great and they do a great job,” Brenner said. “It’s just that when we have rain events, it can’t do both things.”
The sewer system cannot separate water and sewage, leading to combined sewer overflow when it rains. And now, thanks to climate change, rain events are becoming more intense and frequent. Combine this with all the shiny new developments popping up–more large buildings, more toilets—and it’s not hard to wonder what will happen if the entire system collapses under pressure. The Unified Stormwater Rule (USWR) requires new buildings to retain their water to avoid adding to the CSO.
“The water’s gonna find a place to go. More construction is displacing water in new ways. We live in a subtropical system that gets a lot of rain and pressure just making the problem worse,” Brenner explained.
But not all hope is lost. People and groups are working on solutions, but solutions take time and cost money. There is hope that future infrastructure projects will allow for separate sewer systems, one for water and one for everything else, effectively keeping stormwater and sewage apart and hopefully keeping poop out of the canal.
In the meantime, Brenner explained, groups like the Community Water Quality Testing Group monitor the canal each week during summer, tracking levels of bacteria like enterococcus to understand how pollution levels change.
“ It’s not hopeless. It’s changing. People are doing stuff. It’s really slow and hard and expensive,” Brenner said.
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