Don’t Flush When it Rains

Poop. Wait – let me back up. Last night, after scolding my daughter for filling her bath too full, she asked, “Why does it matter if I use this much water anyway?” I paused, considering how much information I could spew out before her eyes glazed over. I glanced at the clogged sink. The hairball lodged in the drain was laughing at the organic drain cleaner I had used. It was pouring hard outside. I was holding the phone, trying to get the babysitter on the line so I could attend the next forum on the Atlantic Yards. (This was a long pause – eyes were beginning to glaze, think fast…) “POOP.” This was the perfect amount of information and my reward was hysterical laughter. All environmental lessons should go so well.

Park Slope, Brooklyn – our lush and well cared for Prospect Park sits atop gently sloping streets that lead down to the Gowanus Canal. Fresh water now enters the this tidal estuary from the Buttermilk Channel thanks to the 1999 reactivation of the Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel and Pump Station. Still, the sediment remains contaminated from years of toxic pollution and will need further dredging. Industrial run-off continues to join in the slosh. The odor can be unappealing but it’s better then before. The color is occasionally a swirling green and brown. On top of all that, quite literally, is our poop. Yep – yours and mine. As they say, it floats.

NY City employs a combined sewage system. Wastewater, sewage and storm water travel together to a treatment facility. Under dry conditions, the system might work well. Add a solid hour of rainfall and the system often overloads, sending combined sewage overflow (CSO) into the canal instead. Now add large-scale development; it’s a logjam already – and it could get worse. It is possible that Ratner could do the right thing and incorporate conservation and efficiency features into the design of Atlantic Yards. In comments on the Yard’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Franco Montalto suggests that because the scope of the project covers what is currently largely impervious ground area, the site could even reduce the current runoff in our watershed area by reusing captured storm water and recycling treated wastewater. Strain could be further alleviated if surrounding neighborhoods were outfitted with green roofs, porous pavement and storm water diversion landscaping.

So, back to my daughter’s question: Why should I care? Well, because animals don’t like swimming in our poop. The over six crowd will see the bigger picture: increased bacteria, toxins and pathogens, lowered marine life biodiversity, unattractive locations for healthy economic and housing development and decreased opportunities for education and recreation.

So, you’d like to help but you’re not a billionaire developer? Don’t let that stop you. Be aware of what you put into the canal. Keep harsh chemicals out of your sinks, toilets and sewers. Consider installing a green roof on your home or business to stem the tide of storm water runoff. Practice water conservation in your home, business and school and teach your children and friends why this is important.

Be aware of what you can get out of the canal. The canal has not been widely considered a hot spot for public enjoyment or benefit but we can increase the odds for stricter water quality standards, adequate monitoring and funding for clean-up if the contamination exists in a beloved public waterway. Head over to the Gowanus Oktoberfest on October 15th and celebrate. Go for a free canoe ride courtesy of the Gowanus Dredgers Club. Board the Empty Vessel Project docked at the end of First Street for movies, lectures and more. Take the kids to see marine life close-up; crabs, jellyfish, cormorants, and heron make the Gowanus their home. Learn more about CSO’s in New York on the Riverkeepers website. Write the DEC and tell them how much you love your canal and why.

As community members, we need to appreciate and protect the value of the Gowanus as a recreational, educational and economic resource. We need to own it, understand it and encourage smart growth. Take part in community planning forums and protect it from oversized and irresponsible development and yes, from ourselves.



(This Op-Ed was not picked up by the local Brooklyn paper I submitted to... so here it is - please circulate freely. Thanks.)

Some Updates

After a wonderful, long summer upstate I am:

Back in Brooklyn.
Back in classes at CERC.
Back volunteering at Prospect Park.
Hoping to help the kid’s school embark on some new recycling adventures.
Playing piano again.
Missing my new rock garden, stone patio, stone path, nifty cobblestone collection and faux rock foundations (the rocks are real, the foundation’s really cinderblock).
Stopping occasionally to admire my new rock hard biceps in the mirror. Yeah, that'll last.

None of the vines that I thought might be Pale Swallowwort turned out to be that. There was plenty of Giant Hogweed along route 3 in upstate NY though. This was treated by someone early in the season.

I had another squirrel collision. This one was not dead. I had a friend from Brooklyn visiting and we had the two small boys with us in the canoe. The squirrel was swimming doggy paddle across the canal in Campbell’s Marsh. As soon as he saw us, he doubled back to us and tried to climb into the boat. Feeling sure that the boys would be bitten or scared and tip the boat over, I tried to gently push him away with my oar. Undaunted, he grabbed the oar and tried to climb up. Paw over paw! Like De Niro in Cape Fear. And there I was like Juliette Lewis - well, you remember what De Niro looked like after she was finished with him right? Really! So then the squirrel swam away (backstroke this time) and we paddled home.

After I tidy up my data I will do a post about the Fall Vegetation Monitor in Campbell’s Marsh. I would love to hear from any of you that have completed this and about your experience getting the job done. I felt very overwhelmed by the sheer amount of biomass. It took forever just to find my quadrat markers without doing too much damage to the vegetation or getting stung or bit and I felt like I was working my way through a jungle that didn't didn't want to give anything up to me. Like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. Yeah, and the PVC was Brando. Yeah, I know, GPS. I didn't bring it because I didn't imagine I would actually not be able to find them. Next July I'll raise one marker on each quadrat about five feet.

Books. I meant to read about a million books this summer. I read most of Silent Spring and most of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I just never made it too far after the kids were in bed. Now I’m back to doing a lot of reading for class. I’m reading The Riverkeepers now. GE, PCB, DEC. Woe is me.

Ant Cow

Last night I went to see Edward O. Wilson in conversation with Michael Novacek at the American Museum of Natural History. Leading entomologist, father of sociobiology, pioneer in the field of conservation biology... Wilson makes the case from every angle for acting now to save biodiversity. So... The first question was: "What is an ant cow?"

Here is one tiny green answer. You can find lots of other not at all tiny (or green) answers if you pick up Wilson's new book Nature Revealed, Selected Writings 1949-2006. Be warned, it's heavy. Really. I was going to take my copy to get it autographed but it was too heavy.

The 'here' above will take you to the Life on the Purple Loosestrife Flickr pool. Many great shots of all kinds of insects and spiders on loosestrife. This is a project by Jennifer Forman Orth (of the Invasive Species Weblog.)

Meow

Last Saturday the Prospect Park Weekend Woodland Crew pulled cattail (Typha latifolia) from the Binnen Pool. This was great fun because we got to wear giant chest high waders. (Why did that thrill me? I don’t really know…) happily that day I did not feel beaten because I managed not to tumble backwards completely into the water. Not so happily, I felt very beaten for the next three days. Beaten to an aching pulp. Cattails grow from thick rhizomes and they take quite a bit of coaxing to get them out of the water. We pulled the entire stand which was rapidly growing in the pond and could have easily wiped out the nice balance of other native plants.

Read more about narrow-leaved, native and hybrid cattail

Consult the Wildman for ecology and recipes. Hey – What ails ya is good!

The Snake, the Mayapple and the Wildman.

I think the snakes I saw were Nerodia sipedon, Northern water snakes. There are 17 species of snakes in New York. Three are venomous but uncommon. Two of these are rattlers. The Northern water snake is not venomous but can be aggressive and may bite if grabbed or cornered. Read more about the Northern water snake at the Center for Reptile and Amphibian Conservation and Management. More about snakes in NY: SUNY ESF Environmental Information Series. Snake photo: John Triana, Regional Water Authority. forestryimages.org

Another species I noticed plenty of last weekend was Podophyllum peltatum (mayapple). Here, growing in thick patches on a road near the marsh. All parts of the mayapple are poisonous except for the white flower that hides under the foliage. The flower (below) turns to a berry resembling a lime in the summer - edible but not advised. Plant height: up to 18 inches. Extracts are used for treating snake bites, intestinal worms, some warts and some skin cancers. More about the mayapple at Biotech.
The garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is everywhere, growing like wildfire. More about garlic mustard at The Global Invasive Species Initiative. I found a recipe for garlic mustard pesto at Wildman Steve Brill's site. The Wildman is a naturalist and gatherer of wild, edible plants. Yum. (or yuck - cattail soup...We'll see.)

Release on 5/30/06

I received my permit to liberate the beetles last week. Friday afternoon I picked up 1000 Galerucella beetles from Bernd Blossey at Cornell on the way up from Brooklyn. When I got to the site Friday evening, I noticed that there were already beetles on the loosestrife plants there. Those beetles seem to have been a bit darker with more defined stripes then what I had brought with me; unfortunately, my digital camera broke so I didn't get any shots before I released. Bernd had mentioned that he had done some other releases along the coast in the area recently so I'm assuming that's where they came from. The new beetles were released and seem to be doing fine. Over the weekend I observed them eating, mating and could see eggs on the plants. I also found plenty of beetles on the loosestrife about a quarter mile further up the shore.

I've set up five 1-meter monitoring quadrats, about 10 meters apart. They are marked by two flagged PVC stakes each. I aimed for a straight transect but in order to include at least 7 loosestrife stems in each quadrat - and to avoid setting two of the quadrats in what I found out was snake city, they are not quite linear or equally spaced. I'll get a better stem count next month. And I now have high rubber boots. I'm sure the snakes don't really want to climb up my pant legs but I'm not messing around. I've never seen snakes like this there - about 3 1/2 feet long, not quite an inch around and gray. And fast. And one of them stuck his tongue out at me and said "outta my way woman" as he ran over my foot.

I’m going to do a spring monitor at the end of June. The protocol suggests conducting the first monitor after released beetles have overwintered at the site but since there is a population there I will do one this season. The stems are still fairly short (average about 25 cm) and I’d like to wait a bit longer so I can get a better idea of what else is growing there as well. The fallen cattail cover from last year is thick and the new growth has a ways to go to push through it still.

Invasion?

Speaking of not cleaning out the bad stuff, it's interesting to note the difference in the little I've learned about forest management in Prospect Park and the New York Botanical Garden. A few weeks ago I did a field study exercise in the NYBG forest for a CERC class (Diversity and Conservation). My instructor pointed out a few different invasives: Japanese knotweed (pictured right), devil's walkingstick (below), garlic mustard, and a cork tree. The hemlock woolly adelgid has attacked and killed nearly all the 1,200 hemlocks in the forest.


The NYBG's Forest Management Plan involves accepting natural forest processes, such as disease and invasive species. This naturalistic approach allows the forest ecology to progress, for the most part, undisturbed. The fallen hemlocks and snags are left alone. For safety, some sections of forest are not open to the public. Research continues in the forest; study of the changes prompted by loss of a major species and subsequent invasion by new opportunistic exotic species is ongoing.

Thirty thousand years ago, the end of the Pleistocene Epoch saw the retreat of the glaciers and the creation of the current geological terrain. The shape of the land left behind provided the structure - the hills, valleys and depressions - for Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s design for Prospect Park to be built on in the 1860’s. As the middle of the 20th century passed, use increased as funding and maintenance declined. The forest areas suffered from soil compaction caused by visitors. Buildings and landscape fell into disrepair and the park was no longer a destination. Prospect Park began a long-term restoration in 1980.

This is a dynamic mix of nature and nurture. Though the majority of the park was heavily designed, it still contains the last portion of indigenous forest in Brooklyn. The park has over 6 million visitors a year and the existing systems in the park need protection and maintenance in order to continue as a resource for everyone that visits. So, appropriately, the park is protected from us, by us. Visitors have their own paths, rules and responsibilities. The park is also “protected” from itself – the urban location of the park, plentitude of edge areas and high usage make it particularly vulnerable to a ‘natural’ succession dominated by disease, erosion and non-native species.


-Urban Treasure, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Audubon Center
-Changes in the Hemlock Grove, NYBG Public Programs Dept. 1995.
-Look Around NYC, NY City Audubon.