Well that stinks.
The city sprayed “Christmas”-scented perfume around the Gowanus Canal — but it’ll take a lot more than holiday cheer to neutralize the stench seeping from the notorious polluted Brooklyn waterway.
During the odorous operation, which began in February and ended last month, the city Department of Environmental Protection unleashed the Yuletide and citrus fragrances using misters around the perimeter of the “Superfund site.”
But local residents told The Post they didn’t get a whiff of the city-sanctioned spraying, first reported by The New Yorker earlier this week, and that even it wasn’t enough to cover up the stink from the “black mayonnaise”-caked canal.
“I have not heard [of the perfuming] … nor can I say I’ve smelt any Christmas-like odors or anything like that,” said one native Brooklynite, who declined to provide their name.
“For sure, during the summer it smells awful. But that would be the first time I’ve heard of them pumping fresh scents or anything like that.”
Nicky Ramirez, another neighbor, agreed that the stench is worse during the hot summer months.
“When it’s hot that’s when the smell is unbearable,” she said. “Fall and winter is not so bad, but the mid-summer heat it’s kind of like a major porta potty.”
She added: “I can’t see how pumping fumes in the air would be safe— especially people with asthma. I haven’t heard or smelt anything like that though.”
DEP documents note the perfume misting ended July 25 after a portion of excavation work at the toxic canal wrapped, though the New Yorker reported the agency backed off spraying initiatives this summer after resident complaints over the Yuletide aroma.
Council Member Shahana Hanif told The Post her office has received “multiple” concerns from Gowanus residents about unpleasant odors related to construction activities, which will bring a new public waterfront open space for the neighborhood, per DEP documents.
The city is building an eight-million-gallon underground retention tank that would hold sewage and rainwater during storms on Nevins Street between Butler and Degraw streets.
Excavation of soil in the tank site area has dredged up 120-year-old gas plant waste, the DEP said, causing the foul odors to be released into the air since last September.
The retention tank site is only “one of several potential sources of odors” in the area, the DEP said.
For about a century, much of the coal tar from the sites have seeped into the canal — which has been dubbed one of the nation’s most polluted waterways and is undergoing a massive federal cleanup.
But, as The Post previously reported, residents near the waterway face much more harmful effects than bad smells: “Shockingly high levels” of the chemical trichloroethylene – which has been linked to cancer – found inside homes and buildings near the canal.
A Post request for comment to the DEP regarding how much the odor mitigation cost, how many misters operated and how often and what the “perfume” sprays consisted of was not returned.
In addition to the perfume mist, the city also tried a non-toxic odor neutralizing foam around the same time and created an enclosure to ventilate funky-smelling air over some equipment used in the excavation, the DEP documents noted.
There are also eight automated stations near the construction site around the Gowanus Canal monitoring air quality for “volatile organic compounds” like petroleum.
Excavation at the site — and the “odor mitigation” project — are paused through at least October, the DEP said.
The next step of the project will pick back up that month, and while it won’t excavate as deep into the contaminated soil, the EPA is still reviewing the DEP’s stench-prevention plans for that phase.
Hanif said she has been working with Gowanus elected officials to ensure that federal, state and local official provide more information about their plans at the sites to locals.
Regardless, residents say neither the DEP’s scented spray or other efforts helped their plight, and the canal reek continues to waft into the neighborhood.
“On very hot and humid days it 100% smells,” the native Brooklynite said. “It’s like a skunk smell, very rotten egg-ish .. this is obviously the most toxic of canals, the fact that their branding says a ‘waterfront community’ is comical to me.”
