Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has long been known as a stinky body of liquid contaminants, but a landscape architecture design firm and community advocates are aiming to transform its shores into a “sponge” park between the Third Street and Carroll Street bridges.

The eco-friendly public park would reduce contaminants flowing into the canal by putting the water through a sponge system. Rainwater would be absorbed by the plants, reducing the amount of storm water entering the sewer system.

The use of different plants, some of which can filter heavy metals out of contaminated water, and other aquatic organisms that absorb or break down heavy metals and toxins would create a natural filtering system for the canal and make it an aesthetically pleasing public park.

“The Gowanus Canal is a nearly forgotten piece of New York that is gradually becoming part of people’s mental maps and is famous for having been an environmentally awful place,” the vice chairman of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, John Muir, said. “Now it is being slowly but progressively renewed and cleaned up, and there’s great interest in redevelopment of the neighborhood as a place for people to live.”

The design is only preliminary, and Mr. Muir’s group, working with the landscape architecture firm dlandstudio llc, has been making presentations to community organizations, local government agencies, and local stakeholders to garner support for the project.

The 1.8-mile Gowanus Canal has been plagued with industrial pollution since its construction in the 1860s. The industrial boom of the early 1900s created a residential presence in the area that has continued to expand, and one result was “the smell,” a consequence of inadequate sewer facilities discharging raw sewage into the canal. A wastewater treatment facility and flushing pump remedied the raw sewage issue, but a sewage problem remained. On days of heavy rain, street water runoff combines with untreated sewage to overflow drains and pour into the canal. This combined sewer overflow, known among residents as CSOs, is exactly what the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and dlandstudio aim to stop.

“Everybody in Gowanus knows about this problem,” Mr. Muir said. “CSOs have to be controlled and this is why our landscape architect chose not to just make a pretty park, to not just make something environmentally pleasing, but to make an environmental amenity out of an environmental mess.”

The principal of dlandstudio, Susannah Churchill Drake, said: “Basically we designed this system of open spaces to be unique in that they manage storm surface runoff in a way that is ecologically productive.”

Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6, which oversees Gowanus, also wants developers seeking to build in the area to include some environmentally friendly amenities. “If someone is putting up a building, they could support the concept by making sure that there are some storm water practices in place, things like planting trees and having tree pits on the sidewalks, capturing storm water from rooftops and parking lots,” he said.