The latest incarnation of the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site, with a cleanup pricetag of over $500 million, has provoked a real estate bubble in Brooklyn before remediation has even begun. The prospect of a waterfront promenade with cafes, bars and bookstores has prompted real estate grabs of buildings and empty lots along the two-mile stretch of “black mayonnaise.”

A 2012 report compiled by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection found that the toxic chemicals in the water included copper, lead, mercury, carcinogenic PCBs, DDT and other substances. The water also teems with bacteria and viruses that, depending on the strength of one’s immune system, could incite a case of nothing, mild diarrhea, dysentery or worse.  

Through an international competition, a community-based urban design advocacy, Gowanus by Design, invited architects and designers to map conditions relevant to the Gowanus area. These analyses would become the basis for their design of an Urban Field Station that will serve as a public resource. A collective mapping of the watershed surrounding the canal will be used to facilitate the community’s grassroots collaboration in the continuing evolution of the neighborhood, supported by the Field Station. 

The winning team, BKbioreactor, composed of Matthew Seibert and Ian Quate of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects and Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff of Weill Cornell Medicine, launched a biological investigation in the Gowanus Canal. Info

Equipped with DIY sampling instruments and a deep curiosity in the invisible microbiology of this toxic environment, the team and a crew of volunteers sampled sediment at 14 targeted sites along the canal. These samples were subsequently taken to GenSpace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology, to extract the DNA of the collection of organisms—or microbiome—in the sediment and store it as a genetic library. 

What the team did identify were 42 kinds of bacteria, two viruses, and five life forms from the domain Archaea, organisms that are not bacteria, fungi, plants, or animals. Many of these microbes are uniquely adapted to the canal’s extreme environment, and aren’t normally seen in healthy waterways.

These findings are on view in GbD’s social media accounts, with graphics and videos produced by data visualization specialists at Landscape Metrics.

Photo, top © Steven Hirsch from Gowanus Waters (powerHouse 2016). Info

Map, screenshot of interactive visualization by Landscape Metrics for BKbioreactor