Canoeing Brooklyn's Most Infamous Sink: SUST 405 Tours the Gowanus Canal
6:51 PMOne of the newer courses offered by the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies is SUST 405 Production, Consumption, and Waste. This seminar taught by Professor Carl Zimring is an elective in Pratt's new Sustainability minor. It is intended to provide students a basis to analyze ways in which waste is created, defined, and managed in industrial society, with the goal of creating recommendations for improving problems in the waste stream.
The legacy of dumping human and industrial wastes into the canal has produced a noxious stew, what residents call "lavender lake" for its pungent aroma. Beyond the smell, contaminants include several heavy metals, coal tar wastes, polychorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and volatile organic compounds. In the early twenty-first century, population continues to grow in Gowanus, and concern about the canal has led to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designating this short stretch of water a Superfund site with a plan of dredging the contaminated bed of the canal and changing the way we use the waterway to prevent future contamination.
The mild September weather was ideal for a canoe trip, and currents on the canal are weak. After a discussion of the area's history, we entered the water and began paddling up to the northern terminus of the canal before turning south and exploring the foliage, animals, and businesses that call the canal home. Our journeys revealed floating garbage and the smell of sulphur, but also swimming fish and fishing birds, scrap metal and concrete production alongside flora, fauna, and even some artwork. Here are a few examples of what we saw and experienced:
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