WATCH: Dredging Starts On Gowanus Canal Amid Federal Cleanup

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — Anyone order 32,000 cubic-yards of black mayonnaise?

The Environmental Protection Agency officially started a long-awaited dredging of toxic muck from the Gowanus Canal on Monday as part of its federal cleanup of the polluted waterway.

"With dredging we are finally in full implementation of what we have planned for many years," U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez said at a press conference, a crane dipping into the canal behind her.

The dredging comes two years after the EPA began its work cleaning out the 1.8-mile canal, which it has designated as a hazardous Superfund site, with a pilot project that scooped 17,000 cubic yards of toxic muck from the Fourth Street Basin.

The dredging of the main channel's sludge known as "black mayonnaise" will include "capping" the toxic sediment it can't take out with layers of concrete and uncontaminated soil.

New 8 million-gallon and 4 million-gallon tanks will then be added to either end of the canal to do a better job catching and extracting sewage that has long seeped into the water during rainy days. The EPA recently denied a request from the city to delay building the tanks due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

The dredging began this week just south of the Carroll Street bridge and will continue between the Carroll and Union Street bridges before moving north of the Union Street bridge and between the Carroll and 3rd Street bridges, according to the EPA.

The dredged material will be loaded onto small barges and transported down the canal to the primary staging area at Smith and Huntington Streets. At the staging area, water pumped from the barges will be treated on-site and discharged back into the canal, the agency said.

The process is scheduled to be completed in 2023.

Find out more about the process and related street closures here.

Watch the press conference here, live-streamed by the Gowanus Canal Conservancy: