Gowanus Water Quality Update: Somewhat More Icky Than Usual

[Photo courtesy of daltonrooney/flickr]

The photo above was shot by photoblogger Dalton Rooney, whose blog seriously excited! is one of our favorites and worth checking out. He had emailed the other day to say that the Gowanus is looking extra funky this week, with extra-murky water and a lot of floating debris. "The greyish-green color was really disturbing, and the water wasn't moving at all," he writes. Is the flushing system, which keeps "fresh" water circulating in the Big G and has been responsible for improvements in water quality (and is slated for a major upgrade) out of whack? There is a oil visible on the surface in the photo, which we have previously noted coming from the area around the Union Street Bridge. This serves to remind us that the Gowanus Canal Conservancy was formed earlier this year and that the Big G could really use its advocacy services.

None of this helps the Gowanus's image. For instance, take this morsel from Gridskipper: "Carroll Gardens and Park Slope are separated by a twenty-minute walk during which the fetid Gowanus Canal must be traversed."

Fetid. They said, "fetid."