The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has a very nice item on the aftermath of the great deluge of August 8 in one of our favorite flood zones, Gowanus. To wit:

Anecdotal reports from shopkeepers on Court Street described friends’ basements in Gowanus in which feces and dead rats were found floating in the water in their cellars…

Significant upgrades were done in the 1990s to catch basins, but the problems have only gotten worse. Of course, with enough rain raw sewage flows directly into the Gowanus. CB6 District Manager Craig Hammerman says the “upgrades” to the system were a botched job:

He called it a “glaring and outrageous example” of infrastructure overhaul gone bad, and said he believes that the city should hold responsible the engineers and independent contractors hired to do the job.

What is particularly interesting is how builders of planned luxe condos in the neighborhood plan to deal with the flooding and sewage issues.

(The photo here is not of the August 8 flooding, but a photo of some water issues earlier this summer shot by photographer Gary Mirabelle of Mirabelle Studios. If you’ve got shots of the August 8 water issues in Gowanus, we’d love to see them. You can always get our attention at gowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com.)