Fwd: [plots-nyc] question about testing Gowanus water - some Gowanus water data resources..

[Scott Eustis]

Forwarding this from the Water Quality List, primarily for the benefit of Jen Roberts and Miriam--but all other water watchers are welcome!  sign up for the water quality list. 

Scott

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeffrey Warren <je...@publiclab.org>
Date: Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [plots-nyc] question about testing Gowanus water - some Gowanus water data resources..
To: "plot...@googlegroups.com" <plot...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: plots-wat...@googlegroups.com

Wow, Eymund, I was so impressed by your list of resources; i dropped them into the the GLAM wiki page, here: http://publiclab.org/wiki/gowanus-low-altitude-mapping#Gowanus+Water+Quality+Data

Thanks!!

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Eymund Diegel <eym...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Bronwen,

The EPA took a lot of water quality sampling data for the Gowanus, which is available at:

http://www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/gowanus/

see this appendix for water data

http://www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/gowanus/pdf/2011-12-19_Gowanus_Canal_Draft_FS_Appendix_B.pdf

The NYC Dept of Environmental Protection has a Harbor Water Quality Survey which includes three sampling points in the Gowanus

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/harborwater/harborwater_quality_survey.shtml

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/harborwater/harbor_water_sampling_results.shtml

I am attaching the Gowanus Canal Water Sampling report done in 2011 by National Grid, one of the parties responsible for cleaning up the Canal pollutants, which also includes methadone and estrogen readings, contaminants not covered in the EPA or NYCDEP datasets.

The New York City Water Trail Association posts the Citizen water sampling for enterococcus (sewer contamination) is here:

http://www.nycwatertrail.org/water_quality.html  (2013 map)

http://www.nycwatertrail.org/CWQT_2012.html (2012 map)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhvspccU_-qrdHk0Y3R1M1dITUEtMDVkczgtWWlkQ2c&usp=sharing#gid=0 (2013 table)

For things living in Gowanus water you can have a look at this invertebrate sampling report:

http://issuu.com/proteusgowanus/docs/2004-gowanus-canal-invertebrate-sampling-report

Generally I wouldn't bother trying to make the Gowanus Canal water drinkable: it's brackish (or salty) and even though a water desalination plant is being planned for the Hudson River, the main opportunities for drinking water studies are the old fresh water streams that used to feed the salt marsh. You would need to test these at the outflow points before they mix with the salt water.

These outflows are located at the end of Degraw Street, the First Street landfill basin and the Fourth Street Basin (2 sites, one underneath the 3rd Ave Bridge, and one at Dykes Lumber parking lot). Historically these spring and watershed fed streams provided the potable water supply for early settlers farm houses.

If you are looking for a water profiling exercise, you can look at contaminants coming out of those piped streams, and what would need to be done to get them drinkable, if possible. 

NYCDEP did some similar work trying to see if there was any possibility of developing a backup drinking water supply in South Brooklyn (the Ridgewood system) but found groundwater to be too contaminated.

Let me know if you need more information on potential water sampling locations and I would be happy to help with mapping of the best testing sites.

Best

Eymund

PS. am attaching a picture of Staat's Brook in the Fourth Street Basin that was photographed this weekend during the installation of Harvest Dome, an art project meant to help spark further dialogue about city water quality.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Jeffrey Warren <je...@publiclab.org> wrote:

Hi, Bronwen -- I'm also CC'ing in the water quality list!

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Bronwen Densmore <bron...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All-

I'm appealing to the collective wisdom to see if I can get some clarity on all of the things that are living in Gowanus water... A friend of mine has been working on developing easy to build water purification systems and is interested in seeing how difficult it would be to make Gowanus water potable. We suspect that simply running samples through a still might not be enough.

We're hoping to be able to test before & after samples to get a profile of what is (or isn't) being removed, and are not sure where to get testing that is both (reasonably) thorough and affordable for someone working outside of a lab. I'm assuming that the labs recommended for residential water testing probably won't test for as much as we'd like.

I've been looking at some of the EPA literature, but was wondering if anyone on this list is already working on this kind of thing, or can point me towards some resources that might help us to figure out where we should be focusing our investigations?

Thanks!

Bronwen

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Scott Eustis
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