Concerned residents and activists started testing the water and made some disgusting finds.
"It was putrid and it still is," said Joan Salome-Rodriguez, a longtime Gowanus resident."It smells all the way up to Henry street. It smells in Industry City.""It was tens of thousands of dead fish," said Gary Francis, captain of theActivists like Francis believe the marine die-off was caused by days of heavy rainfall in July, which caused sewers to overflow into nearby waterways.
"We're starting to experience stronger thunderstorms, wetter summers," he said."We had a run of rain events that has made the canal as bad as I've ever seen it."in recent weeks showed very low dissolved oxygen and high levels of fecal-eating bacteria. "Algae like to eat it. They bloom and then they die and they decay. But the organic matter will also decay. And when that happens, it uses oxygen from the water and that oxygen is consumed and then the oxygen that the other animals can use to breathe is gone," explained Dr. Anna Weiss, community science program manager at the Billion Oyster Project.
Activists say another likely cause is the shutoff of the Flushing tunnel, which brings clean water into the canal. It was turned off for the ongoing"A great solution would be to try and introduce dissolved oxygen via the tunnel in some way that didn't affect the remediation work," Francis said. The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the cleanup, said multiple factors may have contributed to the die-off.said fish kills are common, and doesn't think this was directly impacted by sewage overflow.
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