Hoping Gowanus canal cleanup turns up old treasures

Mireya Navarro -

Neighbors around the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn already know their waterway is a toxic soup of heavy metals, sewage and probable carcinogens.

But some dream of treasures that might also be uncovered as a federal Superfund cleanup of the canal gets under way.

Perhaps remnants of a tidewater mill dam? A few Indian arrowheads and fishing hooks? Bullets, brass buttons and, who knows, a few human bones from the Battle of Brooklyn?

“Very few people realize that the largest battle of the Revolutionary War was fought in Brooklyn,” said Kimberly Maier, executive director of the Old Stone House, a museum on the site where some 400 soldiers from Maryland were nearly wiped out while holding back a much larger British force in August 1776.

“There’s always been this great mystery of where the Marylanders were buried,” she said. “Were they in one specific grave about 100 feet from the curb along Third Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets, or dumped into the Gowanus wetlands? What turns up would be amazing.”

The Superfund program, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, is known for unearthing pollutants that pose a threat to public health. But as the agency designs its projects across the country, it also plays a less well-known role — that of preservationist, documenting and often salvaging items of historical value found in contaminated soil, buildings and sediment at the bottom of rivers and canals.

That role can sometimes become as controversial as forcing polluters to pay for a cleanup or, as in the case of the Gowanus, interfering with a city’s ambitious economic development plans.

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