Planning for Climate Change in Gowanus

On a beautiful 50-degree day in early January, Board Member and environmental consultant Richard Kampf and The Conservancy’s Director of Special Projects, Hans Hesselein, led local planners, scientists, and members of the community  on a tour of the Canal to explore the potential effects of climate change on the neighborhood. We were joined by Dr. Klaus Jacob, a professor at Columbia University, and Paul Reale, a presenter from Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project. This is one of eight world-wide Expeditions being coordinated by Climate Reality.

During the tour we discussed the local threats associated with the potential for sea level rise and more severe storms. We also examined the ways in which that the community and the City may work together to adapt to a changing climate as part of the ongoing planning and remediation initiatives that are presently underway. We are confident that with proper planning and communication we may ensure that Gowanus remains resilient.

We began the tour at the Union Street Bridge where we discussed how severe weather impacts the canal.We could hear the hoo-ing of an owl located somewhere under the bridge and were reminded that the canal is home to a unique ecosystem even today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPFftLNXwNU&context=C3718566ADOEgsToPDskJ7gfYem4eTqEgikgQvfTD6)

To donate to the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, please follow this link. Your donations will help support our green infrastructure, composting, and community art and education programs.

At 10:30 a.m., we gathered on the Union Street Bridge (Stop 1).

Living on Thin Ice Expedition Map

The expedition started on the Union Street Bridge (Photo by Richard Kampf)

(L to R) Katia Kelly, Hans Hesselein, Ryan Kovonowski, Brooke Bohnet, Annika Arnold, Richard Kampf (Photo by Benjamin Aufill)

The local threats that are posed by climate change include the potential for increased frequency and severity of storms, which could result in an increase in the frequency and duration of CSO events and urban flash flooding. On top of that, scientists expect a rise in sea level of up to four feet over the next century, which would flood parts of the New York metro and be compounded by coastal storm surges during storm events.

(L to R) Klaus Jacob, Richard Kampf, Paul Reale

Flooding on 4th Avenue at Carroll St

Dr. Jacob, a geophysicist by training and a local climate adaptation expert , is frequently called upon to assess the impacts of climate change on New York State  and has participated in the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

Dr. Jacob pointed out there are significant limitations in the maps that FEMA prepares to project the impacts of severe flooding. Current flood maps do not take into account the infrastructure limitations that result in urban flash flooding outside of the 100- and 500-year flood zones that are depicted in FEMA maps. Also, later this century, one-in-100 year storm events are likely to take place once every 10 to 25 years as a result of climate change.  The graphic below shows how the 100 year flood zone may affect the community in the future based on sea level rise predictions that assume rapid glacial ice melt.

In this video, Dr. Jacob talks more about the impacts of sea level rise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xHfpER7W0&context=C38ce499ADOEgsToPDskJ_Xr5fnstXEgLcBzvUoUXB

To donate to the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, please follow this link.

We proceeded south to the historic Carroll Street Bridge (Stop 2),  built in 1888-89. The bridges and bulkhead of the Gowanus Canal are key components of the infrastructure that may be affected by sea level rise. As part of a pilot study, the city plans to install to High Level Storm Sewers to capture 50% of the rainfall before it enters the sewer pipes, and instead divert it directly into the Canal to reduce CSOs and street flooding.

The Union Street Bridge Looking North (Photo by Richard Kampf)

The Combined Sewer Outfall at Carroll Street (Photo by Richard Kampf)

The Conservancy encourages students from local primary and secondary schools and colleges to use the canal as a laboratory for studying the natural environment. Here, at the end of Second Street (Stop 3), the Gowanus Dredgers Boat Launch provides the community with the recreational resources to directly experience the ecosystem of the canal.

The Living on Thin Ice Expedition at Second Street (photo by Benjamin Aufill)

At the Third Street Bridge (Stop 4) we discussed a proposed waterfront development within the 100-year flood zone and note the variety of concrete, wooden, and sheet pile bulkheads that are common along the Canal. Ecologists, landscape architects and engineers envision opportunities for creating softer shorelines and constructed wetlands in an effort to provide public access, improve water quality, and adapt to sea level rise.

Canal Edge Possibilities

The Conservancy is working to implement a waterfront “SpongePark”™ that will help the City achieve its goals for increasing public access, improving water quality, restoring ecological habitats, and promoting climate resilience and adaptability.

Next, we entered the 6th Street Corridor (Stop 5). As part of its Green Infrastructure Plan, the city is overseeing the installation of permeable pavement, tree pits, rain gardens, and green roofs rather than costly pipes and tanks, in an effort to reduce runoff, urban street flooding and CSOs. As part of the Conservancy’s 6th Street Corridor Pilot Study, we are installing a series of rain gardens that will line the sidewalks and reduce the number of CSO events at the Second Avenue outfall.

Bioswales will be constructed along the 6th Street Green Corridor

We concluded our tour at 1 p.m. at the Second Avenue Salt Lot (Stop 6), the Conservancy’s staging area for community engagement, where we observed a street-end rain garden created during one of our “clean & green” volunteer events. From here, the Conservancy coordinates its watershed stewardship activities, which include raising awareness to help ensure that ongoing and future planning initiatives consider the potential effects of climate change. This is also the location of our growing composting and urban agriculture program.

Hans Hesselein of the Conservancy discussing the Second Street Rain Garden (photo by Benjamin Aufill)

The Conservancy believes that a community-based watershed planning perspective will be a key to proper long-term stewardship. We are promoting integrated decision-making to support incremental, flexible, and robust solutions that do not preclude adaptability, and we are working to establish the link between the watershed, CSOs, and climate change through long-term data collection, management, and analysis that is needed to properly plan for the future.

To donate to the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, please follow this link.

Winter Festival 2011

Many thanks to all of our members and volunteers who made this year’s Winter Festival possible! We couldn’t have done it without you. We would also like to thank Build It Green! NYC for hosting us in their beautiful new space located at 69 9th Street in Gowanus.

A great turnout

The evening was filled with food, fun, drinks, and live music. A three course meal was supplied by Lot 2, a local Park Slope restaurant. Beer was supplied by Butternuts Beer and Ale, Captain Lawrence, and others. Live music was supplied by Amanda Palmer, The Suzan, Savoir Adore, and Ambassadors.

Items from the silent auction

Dinner from Lot 2 included chicken and sausage gumbo, coleslaw, cornbread, and apple crumble bars

Amanda Palmer

The Suzan

Savoir Adore

Ambassadors

Board Chairman Andrew Simons

GCC volunteers and Board Member Katie Osborn

Thank you to everyone who came out to support the Conservancy! Your generous support  keeps our organization running!

Gowanus Canal’s First Mural Project!

August 21st,

Volunteers helped paint the first six 4′ x  8′ panels which will be the initial murals that will be installed around the Gowanus watershed. The themes incorporated in this month’s mural making was “first industry at the Canal” and “improvements in the Canal now and then.”

It was a successful start of many more murals to come, everyone had fun painting. Experienced or not, kids, teens and adults became artists to help create great art pieces. All work was done in due time before rain clouds approached the salt lot!

We would like to thank Film Biz Recycling for the material and supplies provided and three Gowanus community residents: Julia Oppe, Bobi Ahn and Priyamvada Sinha who help developed today’s murals. We would also like to thank all the volunteers that came out to help us paint! We hope to see new and old faces at the next mural painting!

from left to right: Priyamvada, Julia and Bobi with daughter Bijou.

Gowanus Low Altitude Mapping (G-LAM)

July 31st, 2011

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy in partnership with Grassrootsmapping a subset of The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS) launched weather balloons in the Gowanus Watershed to capture low altitude pictures to be part of a larger map.  This is the third collaboration between the Conservancy and Grassroots to document and monitor the Clean-Up effort at the Gowanus Canal.

01.22.2011, First Successful Launch:

01.22.2011 A compact camera is used to take low altitude pictures from a helium filled weather balloon.

01.22.2011 Weather Balloon Launch

01.22.2011 Guiding the weather balloon in a canoe

07.31.2011, Third Successful Launch

07.31.2011 Getting ready to launch

07.31.2011 Guiding the balloon

Low altitude pictures taken from the weather balloons are sorted and complied into a high resolution map.

The first G-LAM Map is viewable from this link.

You can compare that map to the map complied in March here.

Check back soon for a map compiled for July! You can also view exciting aerial and infrared pictures taken from the Gowanus watershed on our flickr site.

As always we would like to thank the Gowanus Dredgers for supplying the canoes and PLOTS in making these aerial map projects possible.

Floating Gardens Launch Party!

June 19th, 2011

Gowanus Floating Gardens, Tire Gardens launched June 19th, 2011

Standing at the end of 2nd Avenue, you may be able to see what appear to be tires, concrete blockss and sticks floating in the Canal; but wait, they have plants in them!

Floating Concrete Gardens, aren't they cute?

The idea behind this art and science experiment is to explore the possible beneficial applications of floating gardens to provide wildlife habitat, filtration and oxygenation of Canal waters. Most importantly, however, this project will draw attention to environmental issues related to water quality in the Canal. This project was an initiative driven by volunteers, proactive neighbors and friends of the Canal. The gardens were made by compiling used-tires, casting special concrete planters and weaving tree branches into floating pods. We hope that these small islands will be able to help filter the nutrient-heavy, sewage infused Canal water. While we do not expect this small garden initiative to have a significant impact on the overall water quality, we hope this experiment will help to evaluate the feasibility of a larger, more effective floating garden project.

Gowanus Floating Stick Gardens launched by hand, TIMBER!!

These stick gardens, launched by hand, constitute an experiment in dispersing native plants and seeds into the compromised and toxic environment of the Canal via floating islands. The goal of this project is to establish robust germs of functioning ecologies along the shorelines to promote healthy habitats, capable of sustaining life.

Close-up picture of the stick gardens, visit httpl://gowanusseedproject.wordpress.com for more information

Stick Island

The Floating Gardens have been designed to address a variety of habitat types and environmental constraints such as vegetative gardens with salt-tolerant plants, shellfish cages and colonization substrates, fish habitat, bird perch and nesting platforms, trash collecting skimmers and micro algae pads. We are currently exploring several of the ideas described above, we hope that aquatic plants will prove useful at absorbing nutrients in the Canal; their dangling roots should also provide ideal places for aquatic invertebrates and small fish to hide and forage.

Native mussels are ideal targets for re-population to help filter the Canal’s water and provide additional habitat for other organisms. They are found to be colonizing bulkheads along Canal edges.

Volunteers leading the floating gardens into place.

Volunteers preparing concrete gardens for launch.

Volunteers carefully planting vegetables.

Beautiful plants being watered.

After all the hard work, volunteers were treated to a BBQ lunch

Delicious grub cooking on the grill

This Clean & Green proved again to volunteers and organizers alike that community activism can be fun and rewarding.

From the designers of this project to all the volunteers, thank you for making this exciting venture possible. Our partners in this project include the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, the Gowanus Dredgers and the Brooklyn New School. Sponsors include the Film Biz Prop Shop and Ozzie’s Coffee. Thank you for the continued support

Chimney Swift Tower

May 21st, 2011

Gowanus Chimney Swift Tower Rendering

The chimney swift is small, insect eating bird na­tive to the Eastern United States. In pre-colonial times, this bird lived in the hollow spaces of dead trees. As European settlers spread across their range, cutting down trees and replacing forests with cities, swifts were able to adapt and found a new niche for itself, learning to live in smoke stacks and chimneys. Over the last fifty years, swifts have again faced habitat loss as viable nesting sites have begun to disappear, and chimney swift numbers have been in slow decline.

Swift nesting site in Oregon

We are building a chimney swift nesting tower along the canal to attract new birds to the neighborhood. A strong local swift population will help to control the summer swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and flies.

Nest inside a tower in Texas

The tower is modified by a design from the Driftwood Wildlife Association in Texas, which has been doing chimney swift research for decades. The tower is constructed of  a plywood tube with ridges facing inward, giving the swifts a place to perch and attach their nests. The plywood is surrounded by a layer insulation to keep the swifts cool in the hot summer sun. The outside layer of folded metal cladding will help the tower blend in to the industrial aesthetic of the Gowanus neighborhood.

An amazing volunteer effort of many minds and hands has raised the tower from the concrete foundation to its full height of 14 feet, and the only work that remains is installing the folded metal cladding on the outside, which will be completed in the next few weeks. Hopefully by next summer a family of  swifts will have moved in and the neighborhood will be filled with their darting flight and twittering calls.

Tower footing

Raising the tower. Volunteers! Construction! Awesome!

On the banks of the canal

Thank you to everyone who has helped make the tower a reality, especially John Rowden at NYC Audubon for giving us the initial idea.

A very special thanks goes to the Aguayo Realty Group in Park Slope for sponsoring the tower. While its a little different from the real estate they are typically involved in, the tower is  an ambitious project that couldn’t have been completed without their support.

Street Tree Watering, Summer 2011

After we installed the 20 street trees with the help of New York Restoration Project and Americorps, we are required to maintain them and ensure their survival. The most important consideration is making sure that the trees receive enough water, which requires a weekly visit from one of our dedicated volunteers. In order to coordinate this process and make it as easy to perform as possible, we have created 2 watering zones, mapped out below. We always need more dedicated street tree stewardship volunteers.

If you are interested in helping to care for street trees within the Gowanus Canal watershed, please contact Hans: hans@gowanuscanalconservancy.org

Street Tree - Watering Zone 1

Street Tree - Watering Zone 2

Clean & Green 05.20.2011 – Street Tree Planting

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy worked with a large contingent of extremely motivated Americorps volunteers on Friday morning, May 20, planting 20 street trees in the neighborhoods around the Gowanus Canal. This project was coordinated with the help of NYC Parks Department (DPR) and the New York Restoration Project (NYRP). In preparation for this project, the GCC walked around the neighborhoods within 2 blocks of the Canal with NYRP project manager Britt Zimmerman and identified appropriate locations for street trees. NYRP purchased the trees and had them delivered to the Conservancy’s Salt Lot for installation on the Planting day.

The Americorps Volunteers!

On the morning of the Clean & Green, several dedicated NYRP field staff members worked extremely hard to transport the street trees from the Salt Lot to their destination in the field. Some of the trees were so large that it was necessary to rent a bobcat for their transport.

Street trees waiting at the Salt Lot.

Americorps volunteers showed up around 9:00am and were instructed regarding proper tree-installation techniques. We passed around fliers produced by NYRP and DPR, which depicted best planting practices. After instruction, the volunteers were divided up into groups, handed maps showing tree locations and dispersed throughout the neighborhood.

Volunteers install a street tree at the corner of 2nd Ave and 9th St.

Team leaders with horticultural experience led the groups and oversaw the installation of the street trees. The Americorps volunteers did beautiful work and all 20 trees were planted, staked and mulched within 3 hours.

Gowanus in Bloom – 05.01.2011

The Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) are still blooming their heads off in the 2nd Avenue Garden, right next to the Salt L0t.

Redbud in bloom at the 2nd Avenue Garden.

Floating Gardens Experimentation

Some of our volunteers have a beautiful idea to create floating gardens in the Gowanus Canal, which could serve a number of purposes. To name a few:

1) Habitat creation

2) Water filtration and oxygenation

3) Provocative design project

We’ll see how the gardens fare, but the project is an intriguing one. Some of the concepts that we’ve explored are creating gardens that create floating plant masses, shellfish gardens, fish boxes, and algae substrates. We’ll post some of the sketch iterations later, but here are some shots of our first site mockups.

The frayed rope provides a substrate that oyster spat can colonize.

Orange construction netting encloses buoyant object, which floats on the water’s surface. Algae and shellfish can grab onto the netting to begin colonizing the buoy. The frayed rope “tail” dangles freely in the water and provides a surface which is suitable for colonization by juvenile oyster spat.

Mussels are secured to a floating burlap ball.

The mussel ball is assembled by wrapping a floatable section of wood in burlap, which is slotted to provide homes for mussels. The mussels are then inserted into the slits and the entire assemblage is carefully wrapped in twine to bind it all together. The ball floats in the water, turning and rotating under the tide’s influence, providing a suitable habitat for mussels.

A tire is filled with floatable materials and tested for buoyancy in the Canal.

We filled a tire with sealed plastic bottles and spray-foam insulation and tested the prototype to see if it would float. The orange netting in the bottom of the tire is used to hold mulch and organic soil substitutes as a planting medium.

The tire garden prototype succeeded!

The plant is unlikely to survive because it is not an ideal species but it was the most suitable plant we had on hand: Chasmanthium latifolium Sea Oats. Ideally, we will try a native marsh grass that is much more salt and wet site tolerant, as these plants will have to withstand constant exposure to wet conditions. Still, the fact that the garden floats and looks moderately attractive is some cause for celebration.

* These experiments have been made possible because of generous material donations from our friends and partners at Film Biz Recycling. This project is also a collaboration with the Gowanus Dredgers, Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and the Brooklyn New School.