Christos Tsiamis, 59, grew up in the Greek port city of Patras and spent his summers swimming in the Ionian Sea. These days, Mr. Tsiamis's attention is consumed by a less alluring body of water: the Gowanus Canal, which this month was designated a Superfund site. Mr. Tsiamis, a 22-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the project manager charged with determining just how contaminated the Gowanus is, and how best to clean it up. A chemical engineer with a master's degree from Columbia University, Mr. Tsiamis, who splits his time between Manhattan and Eastchester, N.Y., is also a poet who has published four books of poetry in his native tongue. Becoming an engineer: As a teen I used to vacation with an uncle of mine. He owned a dye production factory. In the mornings, I would go down to the factory and look at how they produced the dyes. I was greatly intrigued. It was the transformation of materials: You see materials that look one way, and then they are transformed. It is a miracle. By the time I was a senior in high school, I knew I wanted to do chemical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]