Gowanus Is Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander’s Calling Card

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, is sweating through a June heat wave on a Gowanus street corner, gesturing at two huge sewage tanks under construction behind us. The city’s combined sewer system is not exactly sexy — perhaps the very opposite — but diving into the granular details of infrastructure is where Lander, a proud policy wonk, shines. He’s telling me why, in the Gowanus rezoning, he pushed so hard to require all new development in the neighborhood to capture the runoff from storms. With each new building taking care of its own runoff, and these two huge tanks behind us picking up the slack, the Gowanus Canal would be spared the putrid mix of sewage,…