Take a few minutes to watch this great video produced by Amy Pearl for WNYC Radio.
It features John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper. Lipscomb manages the water quality sampling program for the clean-water advocacy group and was one of the first people back on the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal with his boat after hurricane Sandy and again, after the Nor'Easter a week later.
The results of these tests revealed extremely high levels of bacteria in the waters of the Gowanus after the storms. They also revealed that raw sewage discharges from Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) continued to pollute the Gowanus even after the rains stopped.
"These CSOs are not permitted to discharge in dry weather." Lipscomb explains in the video.
Talking about the effects of the storm surge in and around the Gowanus, he reflects: "Part of the horror was from the Gowanus, part of the horror was from the sanitary sewer system, and part of the horror was from whatever was the ambient stuff." He concludes: "It was like a war during that storm. You don't recover from a war instantly."
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