That stinks.
The city has sprayed “Christmas” scented perfume around the Gowanus Canal, but holiday spirit alone may not be enough to counteract the stench seeping out of Brooklyn's notoriously polluted waterway.
During an odor-elimination operation that began in February and ended last month, the city's Department of Environmental Protection used mist sprayers to release Christmas and citrus scents around the “Superfund site.”
But local residents told The Post they didn't detect any smell of city-approved spraying. New Yorker There were reports earlier this week that the black mayonnaise was not enough to mask the foul smell coming from the solidified canal.
“I didn't hear [of the perfuming] “…I can't even say it smelled like Christmas,” said the Brooklyn native, who declined to give his name.
“Yes, it does smell awful in the summer, but I've never heard of spraying it with fresh scents or anything like that.”
Another neighbor, Nikki Ramirez, agreed that the smell gets worse during the hot summer months.
“When it's hot, the smell is unbearable,” she said. “In the fall and winter it's not so bad, but in the heat of summer it's like a big portable toilet.”
She added: “I don't think it's safe to release gas into the atmosphere, especially for asthma sufferers, but I've never heard or smelled anything like it.”
According to DEP documents, the spraying of the perfume ended on July 25 after part of the toxic canal excavation work was completed, but New Yorker The department reported it had cancelled its spraying plans this summer after receiving complaints from residents about Christmas scents.
City Council Member Shahana Hanif told The Washington Post that her office has received “multiple” concerns from Gowanus residents about unpleasant odors associated with construction work that will bring new public waterfront open space to the neighborhood, according to Department of Environmental Protection documents.
The city is constructing an 8-million-gallon underground storage tank on Nevins Street between Butler and DeGraw streets to store sewage and stormwater during storms.
According to the DEP, excavation of soil at the tank's site unearthed waste from a 120-year-old gas plant, which has been releasing foul odors into the air since September of last year.
The DEP said the storage tank's location is just “one of several potential odor sources” in the area.
For nearly a century, much of the coal tar from these sites has seeped into the canal, which is said to be one of the most polluted waterways in the country and is undergoing a massive federal cleanup effort.
But as The Washington Post previously reported, residents living near the waterway are facing impacts far more harmful than just bad smells: “alarmingly high levels” of trichloroethylene, a chemical that has been linked to cancer, have been found in homes and buildings near the canal.
The Post reached out to the DEP for comment on how much the odor mitigation cost, how many mist sprayers were operated, how frequently and what the “perfume” spray consists of, but did not receive a response.
In addition to the perfumed mists, the city also tried a non-toxic odor-eliminating foam around the same time and built enclosures over equipment used in the excavation to ventilate foul-smelling air, according to DEP documents.
Also, 8 automation stations near the construction site Air quality around the Gowanus Canal is monitored for “volatile organic compounds” such as petroleum.
Excavation work and “odor abatement” projects at the site have been suspended until at least October, according to the DEP.
The next step in the project is scheduled to resume that month and won't involve digging as deeply into the contaminated soil, but the EPA is still reviewing the DEP's odor prevention plan for that phase.
Hanif said federal, state and local officials have been working with Gowanus elected officials to provide more information to local residents about plans there.
Either way, residents say the DEP's air freshener sprays and other efforts have done nothing to improve their plight, and the canal's foul odors continue to waft through nearby neighborhoods.
“On really hot, humid days, it definitely stinks,” the Brooklyn native said. “It smells like skunks, like rotten eggs. This is definitely the most toxic canal. It seems hilarious that it's branded as a 'waterfront community.'”
