Archive for January 2014
a New Sludge Boat, baby, a new sludge boat
It’s called a Boat because it can’t launch a boat, that’s what Ships can do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First – here’s what a Sludge Boat is.
This Sludge Boat’s contract was completed on June 12 of 2013, and she splashed into the world a scant 290 feet long. That boat you’re looking at in the shot above is the NYC DEP’s M/V Hunts Point, and she cost $28 million to build down in Louisiana’s Bollinger Shipyards.
Word went out that it had arrived at the Navy Yard, so a humble narrator set off for Brooklyn.
from nyc.gov
The M/V Hunts Point, the newest addition to the DEP marine fleet, recently completed its sea trials and left its dock in Louisiana for the trip around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast. It is expected to arrive in New York City next week. You can follow its progress here. The Hunts Point is the first of three new sludge vessels that DEP has commissioned and it will replace the 1967-vintage M/V Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYC DEP is a good choice if you need to confess a secret to someone who will never reveal it, by the way, and other than a few nuggets on nyc.gov there has been very little official discussion of this new boat. In some ways, it’s a bit mysterious, but there’s a whole contingent over at DEP who don’t understand the enthusiasm some show for their toys. The MTA on the other hand, actually encourages railfans.
With all the mystery vessels that have been presented at this, your Newtown Pentacle, over the years – I’ve developed some small aptitude for discovery. M/V Hunts Point uses call sign WDH2432, has a gross tonnage of 2,772 and is – as mentioned- 290 feet long. Her draught is 4.3m, and the reason that her stature is so reduced as compared to the less modern vessels of DEP’s fleet – it’s so that she can pass under the Pulaski Bridge on Newtown Creek rather than requiring it to open.
from nywea.org
Municipal sludge vessels have been a part of New York City’s sludge disposal system since the late 1930s. The Federal Work Projects Administration (WPA) funded and built the first three Motorized Vessels(M/V): M/V Wards Island, M/V Tallman Island, and the M/V Coney Island. Before these vessels were available, sludge was routinely discarded into the surrounding waters from the few sludge facilities operating at that time. As a result, the harbor waters became so polluted that incoming traffic would find their hulls cleaned of any marine life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This change in behavior, the current sludge boats dock at the East River in Greenpoint to siphon off the product of the sewer plants’ operation, is predicated upon the scheme of these boats sailing up Newtown Creek from the East River and into the Whale Creek tributary which adjoins it. The boat will attach to a specially designed dock at Whale Creek. M/V Hunts Point is the first of three such vessels.
Need for the hated sludge tank and dock at the corner of Commercial Street will be eliminated, satisfying a key complaint of the community, by this operation.
Bollinger Shipyards provides new construction, repair and conversion products and services to the commercial offshore energy and marine transportation markets around the world, and to the U.S. Government and naval shipbuilding marketplace from our U.S. Gulf of Mexico facilities. Family owned and operated since 1946, Bollinger maintains ten ISO 9001:2008 certified shipyards and a fleet of twenty-eight dry-docks for shallow draft and deepwater vessels. Bollinger has earned a premier reputation for superior quality, value, timely service and delivery to its customers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A friend who is associated with the Brooklyn Navy Yard brought me in to the place with him yesterday, graciously allowing me to capture these and other shots at the location. Please welcome, Lords and Ladies, to your service – the M/V Hunts Point, NYC’s latest and greatest Sludge Boat.
from wikipedia
The United States Navy Yard, New York, also known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the New York Naval Shipyard (NYNSY), is a shipyard located in Brooklyn, New York, 1.7 miles (2.7 km) northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlear’s Hook in Manhattan. It was bounded by Navy Street, Flushing and Kent Avenues, and at the height of its production of warships for the United States Navy, it covered over 200 acres (0.81 km2).
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rattling carts
“Last stop for gas” spake the feckless quisling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For some reason, NYC’s Gasoline Filling Stations keep on catching my eye, but I think they’re supposed to do that. Probably, this interest has a lot to do with all the history posts about the Petrochemical industry along Newtown Creek, but it just might be something as simple as the usage of bright primary colors used in their trade dressings as I am simple and foolish. The one above is in Maspeth, at a location which is neither tick or tock but is instead found between them.
from wikipedia
A filling station, fuelling station, garage, gasbar (Canada), gas station (United States and Canada), petrol bunk or petrol pump (India), petrol garage, petrol station (Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and United Kingdom), service station (Australia, United Kingdom and United States), or servo (Australia), is a facility which sells fuel and usually lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold today are gasoline (gasoline or gas in the U.S. and Canada, typically petrol elsewhere), diesel fuel, and electric energy. Filling stations that sell only electric energy are also known as charging stations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Worry about imaginary Police reports, ones which describe a suspicious middle aged man that has been taking photos of fuel stations in Queens, have crossed my mind. So much so that the last time I had the ear of my local City Councilman – my paranoid imaginings were mentioned. He promised me that he wouldn’t let them take me to Guantanamo Bay, but couldn’t offer any specific guarantees about Rikers. Either way, the elected fellow promised to ensure that I got extra cookies with my dinner, should I end up in either institution.
from wikipedia
Gasoline /ˈɡæsəliːn/, or petrol /ˈpɛtrəl/, is a transparent, petroleum-derived liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain ethanol as an alternative fuel. In North America, the term gasoline is often shortened in colloquial usage to gas. Elsewhere petrol is the common name in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Australia and in most of the other Commonwealth countries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the pumps I see are the modern kind, dressed with digital payment terminals and all sorts of fancy kit. One suspects that there’s probably more computing power in a modern gas pump than would have been found in a high end desktop pc from just ten years ago. I’ve actually seen the old timey style pumps still at work in certain quaint hamlets in the backwoods of Vermont and Massachusetts as well as standing extant in the vast archaea of Crete.
from wikipedia
The first gasoline pump was invented and sold by Sylvanus F. Bowser in Fort Wayne, Indiana on September 5, 1885. This pump was not used for automobiles, as they had not been invented yet. It was instead used for some kerosene lamps and stoves. He later improved upon the pump by adding safety measures, and also by adding a hose to directly dispense fuel into automobiles.
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noxiously abroad
Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, one found himself in the company of Craig Nunn and his Shorewalkers tour group running around LIC in a deep fog. The so called Polar Vortex had dissipated, and the abnormally cold water and frozen ground suddenly found themselves interacting with air that had suddenly grown 30-40 degrees warmer than that which had been circulating formerly.
The result: a whole pile of fog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered down at the East River shoreline, although you’d hardly recognize it. Manhattan was virtually obscured, and much of it seemed to have disappeared entirely, which is in many ways a dream come true for one such as myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queensboro, which is hard to miss normally, was relegated down to a mere shadow in the mist. Passerby, here in Tower Town, were heard to mention that they perceived something was moving about in the fog – something huge. Some thought it might be the Circle Line or some other large vessel.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Roosevelt Island’s southern extent was positively gothic in appearance. The fog was behaving in the manner of clouds, as observed from a high altitude plane, rising and falling with the tepid breeze and threading between tree and building.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, newly constructed, was nicely framed by the clouds of moisture. My camera was getting soaked while shooting, incidentally, and I had to retire it to the saftey of my camera bag shortly after capturing these shots.
Oy, it was so humid.
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brief space
An interesting effect observed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By this stage of the game, lords and ladies, the shot above must depict a scene quite familiar to your eyes. The waterway is the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabled Newtown Creek, and the industrial buildings framing it part of the Degnon Terminal here in Long Island City, Queens. The water is frozen, as would be expected in this frigid month.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hanging around with the Newtown Creek Alliance folks, one of the terms I’ve learned which cannot be expunged from active memory is “sediment mound.” That’s when an open sewer deposits layer after layer of its cargo, over the course of decades, and piles up a mound. These mounds are normally indistinct to the eye, sitting hidden in the turbid water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What’s interesting in these shots, to me at least, is that the sediment mounds and other features of the bed which Dutch Kills flows through, are visible in the melting edges of the ice. It appeared that the ice didn’t form as solidly at the shorelines as it did in the center of the water. The center was, in fact, a solid plate of ice which had garbage rolling around on it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These were captured on January the 11th, a very foggy day. The shot above is a stitched panorama, which depicts the entire water way while facing roughly southwards.
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Project Firebox 103
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Naked City of Queens is home to many a firebox, and although there are not eight million of them here, each one has a story. Unfortunately, the stories are all tragic- house fires, auto accidents, heartaches of all descriptions. Fireboxes can’t talk, of course, except to summon a team of superheroes in a big red truck when crises emerge.
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The Newtown Pentacle 