Drip, Drip! One Of Many Pipes Discharges Into Gowanus Canal

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Did you know, dear Reader, that there are over 200 pipes leading into the Gowanus Canal from the uplands, discharging God-knows-what? The photos above show just one of these pipes. I took them yesterday morning on the edge of the canal on Degraw Street, under a sunny sky, so the liquid could not have been rainwater, as the rain only started hours later. Besides, it had been dry for days beforehand.

Though some of the larger pipes discharging into the canal are regulated and permitted, some of the smaller ones are not. Most of the discharge are

Combined Sewer Overflows, or CSOs.

The Environmental Protection Agency describes CSOs as:

Combined sewer systems are sewers that are designed to collect rainwater runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe. Most of the time, combined sewer systems transport all of their wastewater to a sewage treatment plant, where it is treated and then discharged to a water body. During periods of heavy rainfall or snowmelt, however, the wastewater volume in a combined sewer system can exceed the capacity of the sewer system or treatment plant. For this reason, combined sewer systems are designed to overflow occasionally and discharge excess wastewater directly to nearby streams, rivers, or other water bodies.

These overflows, called combined sewer overflows (CSOs), contain not only stormwater but also untreated human and industrial waste, toxic materials, and debris. They are a major water pollution concern for the approximately 772 cities in the U.S.that have combined sewer systems.

Since CSO's can be thought of as "urban wet weather" discharge, one has to wonder why this particular pipe was gushing into the canal on a dry day.

For decades, the city didn't bother to find out where some of these unregulated pipes came from and what substances they leaked into the Gowanus.

Luckily for us, under the Superfund program, the EPA is making sure that each one is investigated.

No wonder the City Administration lobbied so hard against the Superfund designation for the Gowanus Canal.

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