Toll Brothers Gowanus Watch: Effluent for the Affluent

We ran still photos of the crap flow on the Gowanus after a heavy rain a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the Toll Brothers have shown their hand and the plans for the property bounded by Carroll Street, Second Street, Bond Street and the Canal. If the development gets the go-ahead and if it is actually built by 2011 (the latter being especially doubtful, given that no one is even certain what kind of toxins are in the soil), residents will be dealing with conditions similar to what's in the video until 2013-2020, give or take. The canal gets about 300 million gallons a year of raw sewage and storm sewer runoff, and some people think that is a serious underestimate. Even with improvements by the mid-2010s, hundreds of millions of gallons will still flow into the Gowanus, assuming that storm conditions don't become more severe due to shifting weather patterns because of global warming.