shattered nerves
English Kills, at night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So this is where a humble narrator found himself last evening, but as I had good company with me, one was only mildly terrified by the solemnified majesty of Newtown Creek. This is near the end of all things, where Newtown Creek’s tributary English Kills flows into a sewer which also flows into English Kills. Dichotomies notwithstanding, that’s the Montrose Avenue Railroad Bridge in the left of the shot, which carries the tracks of the Long Island Railroad’s Bushwick Branch over the waterway, and into the luminance of Waste Management’s Varick Street location. It was windy.
This is Brooklyn, roughly 3.7 miles from the East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were rats.
As my pal Bernie Ente used to advise “the rats at Newtown Creek are well fed and won’t bother you, they don’t care that you’re there, but they might run over your feet.” That didn’t happen, foot wise, but my companion and I did spot a few plump specimens skittering between the shadows. The biggest issue encountered, actually, was when we followed a trod upon path around the borders of the canalized waterway. The brush is still thick, and there were a few fallen trees to contend with, but we were determined to gain access to the spot where the story of Newtown Creek suddenly stops.
That spot has a designation: NC-015.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mounds of litter and garbage that mix with and provide firmament to a tangle of self seeded vegetation and fallen trees can simply be described as “a trip hazard,” but there were more than a few spots encountered on the way to this location that could have easily ended with a broken ankle. It was quite dark, being night time, it should be mentioned. A portable light was used to illuminate the foreground in the shot above, but prior to that it was a silhouette against the water.
3.8 miles from the East River, the western facing point of view above is from above Combined Sewer Outfall #NC-015. It’s the 20th largest of the 400 such outfalls in NY Harbor, in terms of volume, releasing 344 million gallons of untreated wastewater into English Kills a year (last time I checked).
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The Newtown Pentacle 
[…] from Astoria. Saying that, check English Kills and the Montrose Avenue Bridge out at night in this 2019 post, during the day in this 2017 one, and for more on the LIRR’s Bushwick Branch tracks click […]
uncanny noise | The Newtown Pentacle
October 4, 2019 at 11:01 am
Does anyone know why this place isn’t being cleaned up after all these years and maybe even restoring it back to some of its former splendor? Billions of dollars to fix or renew other things, why not here, I just don’t get it. 😟😔
preta4
June 22, 2021 at 6:55 pm
We are working on it with EPA, DEP, DEC and other alphabet soup environmental agencies. Want to help? Join the community advisory group – https://newtowncreekcag.org/ or get involved with Newtown Creek Alliance – http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/
Mitch Waxman
June 22, 2021 at 8:16 pm
[…] shot above is entirely different from the hellscape found a half mile away in the zone around the apocalyptic Montrose Avenue Railroad Bridge nearby Newtown Creek’s terminus, at Bushwick’s Johnson […]
grassy cobbles | The Newtown Pentacle
October 31, 2022 at 11:00 am