The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Continuing with a fun walk, recently undertaken, on the McKees Rock Bridge. This series of shots are from the section of the bridge that overflies the Ohio River, which returns to solid ground on the very steep ‘north side’ of the Ohio, here in Pittsburgh.

That’s where you’ll notice a gaggle of gear, and a huge industrial plant.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, aka ‘Alcosan,’ operates this massive sewer plant. According to some very topical research on the facility, it opened in 1959 and processes wastewater from some 83 separate communities. The plant’s campus is some 59 acres in size, and the agency states that it processes some 250 million gallons of ‘honey’ a day. Sewer professionals (at least the ones back in NYC) call it ‘honey,’ as a note. They also hate the term ‘sewer plant’ and prefer ‘wastewater treatment.’ Saying that, the people back in NYC’s DEP were kind of divas and also overtly political animals.

Neat.

As long time readers will tell you – your humble narrator is fascinated by these sorts of systems.

This post provides a bit of an overview of the sewer plant in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, and this one visits the Manhattan Pump House on E. 13th street and Avenue D. CSO’s, storm sewers… grab a beer and let’s chat. There’s dozens of posts discussing the subject here. Click around.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The McKees Rocks Bridge just continued on and on. The pedestrian walkway circles around the masonry anchor pier, which allowed a small notch for me to stand in and get the shot above of the two arches supporting the roadway in this section.

Me? I was drawn – inexorably – towards getting a better view of the ‘Alcosan North Side Plant.’ I’ve been looking around for the ‘official name’ of the facility, but have seen at least three variants so I’m running with ‘Alcosan North Side’ until someone tells me differently. In accordance with my complaint about the presumption of knowing ‘Pittsburgh Vernacular,’ I’m figuring that ‘everybody from here knows what it’s called, so why put that on the website or mention it anywhere else.’

Vernacular also figures into my growing frustrations when there’s some social event, described as going on ‘after lunch’ at ‘Joe’s Garage’ in ‘Lawrenceville or something.’ Street addresses, yo. Not all of us are from here. In fact, I’d say at least 20% of the city are out of town college students, but there you are.

As a point of fact, the sewer plant’s street address is ‘3300 Preble Avenue.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Settling tanks! They’ve got aerated settling tanks! Last time I was up close to a set of these, it was with Ned The Nose in 2012.

This is one of the first steps which sewage takes after entering a plant.

Aeration equipment at the bottom of the tanks, which can be 20-30 feet deep, pump air bubbles up through the liquid. The liquid becomes so highly aerated that buoyancy cancels out and solids drop to the bottom of the tank for collection. The water is drained off, and the left behind solids are gathered for disposal in a sanitary landfill.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The large round dealies in the shot above are skimmer tanks, which harvest surface level grease and cooking oils as well as ‘floatables’ from the flow.

Ahhh. It’s nice, this, like returning home for Christmas.

While researching this post, I discovered that Alcosan does an annual Open House day in September. Count on the fact that I’ll be there next year, presuming they allow photographers to photograph.

Man… there’s this Hindu temple in Monroeville that needs to be seen to be believed, but they specifically forbid photography there… so there’s no point to the endeavor of a visit.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Cannot begin to describe how happy this sewer plant made me. All of the trouble and pain from the last year, and here I am – standing on top of a bridge and taking pics of a sewer plant. This is the sort of stuff I dream about.

There is a Santa Claus, here in the murder capital of Pennsylvania.

Back next week with just a bit more from the McKees Rocks Bridge.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.