12/01/2010

Gowanus Flood Prevention

A tire, a log and sandbags will hopefully do the trick. Sort of looks like some sort weird art installation of a strange bed except it's not,these are cellar doors being battened down on Carroll Street.

Anyway it's old news at this point that Whole Foods is now saying that they are going to start to set up shop on 3rd Street after years of delays. It's a well known and documented fact that the area that surrounds the site and around Gowanus Canal sits in a flood zone (hence the need for the Root Hill Cafe to go the measures that they do) It should be interesting to see what happens when Whole Foods puts their foundation in, it will be sure to fill with water whenever it rains. That site was full of water until a couple weeks ago, it was like a little swamp most of the time. Anyway I saw foundation flooding happen repeatedly on the Scarano building on Bond Street and it took YEARS to finish that stupid looking thing. So, in closing I really hope that the D.E.P really did magically re-mediate the toxic plume that runs (or ran?) beneath the soil on the site for the sake of the construction workers health and also the local communities.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Only those people who want to shop at a Gowanus Whole Foods would care if the place was routinely flooded--leaving one to wonder how healthy the food would be.
What the neighborhood is concerned about is how the large foundation that they want to build will displace the water drainage throughout the area, making flooding conditions worst for the whole area.
Somehow this doesn't seem like real "waterfront" planning. The whole FEMA flood area planning is a complete joke in this city.