article_snippet.sent: the canal was once a major transportation route, but the canal's now so polluted with industrial and sewer discharges that the canal must, by law, be cleaned up.
article_snippet.sent: The federal Environmental Protection Agency says contaminates include PCBs, which were banned in the US in 1979.
article_snippet.sent: After heavy rainstorms excess water from the sewer system flows in the canal, where  raw sewage and human excrement that mixes into its normal mix of petroleum products and other chemicals.
article_snippet.sent: An estimated 377million gallons of diluted raw sewage pour into the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn each year. '
article_snippet.sent: Dissolved arsenic in the water is thought to be at a level 60 times higher than that harmful to human health.
article_snippet.sent: An estimated 377million gallons of sewage is poured into the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn every year.
article_snippet.sent: Above, trash pollutes the Brooklyn inlet in 2013 .
article_snippet.sent: The pollution in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn combines decades of industrial dumping and general trash.
article_snippet.sent: It is particularly filthy after rainstorms .
highlights_snippet.sent: Brooklyn waterway is famous dumping site for toxic industrial waste .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Roughly 377million gallons of diluted raw sewage poured in each year .
  