Posts Tagged ‘ny harbor’
strange and brooding apprehensions
CREEK WEEK continues… for the first installment, from the mouth at the East River to the Pulaski Bridge, click here. For more on just the Pulaski Bridge, click here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
Moving a quarter mile eastward along the Queens bulkheads of the Newtown Creek from the Pulaski Bridge, the first tributary encountered by the intrepid urban explorer and photographer is a canalized horror called the Dutch Kills.
This branch of the Newtown Creek watershed is about an hour’s walk from Newtown Pentacle HQ, and its locale is visited or transited rather regularly by your humble narrator, as I perform the penitential exertions ordered by my physicians as the curative for certain extant health issues. All ‘effed up, my version of such wholesome activity requires the presence of the macabre, and some element of existential danger. Luckily- the Newtown Creek offers, to those who seek it, succor and salvation for a variety of desires.
Detailed postings, in and around the immediate neighborhood of the Dutch Kills waterway, include:
- Dutch Kills, or let the Photos do the Walking
- Long Island City Zen 2 -The Empty Corridor
- Weird Synchronicity
- After the Fire
- affordable housing development on Borden Avenue
- cry fowl, and let slip…
from wikipedia
Dutch Kills is a sub-division of the larger neighborhood of Long Island City in the New York City borough of Queens. It was a hamlet, named for its navigable tributary of Newtown Creek, that occupied what today is centrally Queensboro Plaza. Dutch Kills was an important road hub during the American Revolutionary War, and the site of a British Army garrison from 1776 to 1783. The area supported farms during the 19th Century, and finally consolidated in 1870 with the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point, Middletown, Sunnyside and Bowery Bay to form Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Leaving the main course of the Newtown Creek, just .8 of a mile beyond its mouth, the first thing one encounters is a somewhat worse for wear railroad swing bridge- called the Long Island Railroad Bridge. Reports from “railfans” and “foamers” (and confirmed by the Coast Guard) state that the bridge hasn’t opened since 2002, which has orphaned the Dutch Kills from its parent waterway and cut the canal off from its intended usage. If my readings of old maps are correct (they often aren’t), these two tracks carry (or at least carried) rail traffic from either the Montauk Cutoff and Montauk Branch tracks, connecting the LIRR to the Sunnyside Yard and Wheelspur Yard with the tracks leading west to Hellsgate and east to Long Island. Notable former sights along this bank of the Newtown Creek would have been the City of New York’s Poultry Yard and the still extant Texas Oil Co.
For an extensive series of historical photos, discussion of the function and design of these tracks, and the industrial centers they once served- trainsarefun.com is the place to go. Special attention is called to this 1860 map of the area– which details the natural flow of the wetlands and shows the Dutch Kills as being a far larger body of water than it is today.
from Queens Borough, New York City, 1910-1920
During 1914 bulkhead lines were established by the United States Government for Dutch Kills Creek, a tributary of Newtown Creek, thus putting this stream under the jurisdiction of the War Department. The bulkhead lines as approved on October 29, 1914, give a width varying from 200 feet at its junction with Newtown Creek to 150 feet at the head of the stream, and include a large basin in the Degnon Terminal where car floats can be docked. The widths of the channel to be dredged under the appropriation of $510,000 mentioned previously, range from 160 feet at Newtown Creek to 75 feet at the turning basin. The Long Island Railroad plans to establish at this point a large wholesale public market, estimated to cost nearly $5,000,000.
Among the larger industrial plants in the Degnon Terminal served by this stream are : Loose Wiles Biscuit Company, American Ever Ready Works, White Motor Company, Sawyer Biscuit Company, Defender Manufacturing Company, Pittsburg Plate Glass Company, Marcus Ward, Brett Lithograph Company, Waldes, Inc., Norma Company of America, Manhattan-Rome Company, American Chicle Co. and The Palmolive Co.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From Borden avenue, the second rail bridge is observed, which I believe to be the Montauk Cutoff track and a bascule type drawbridge. The canalized Dutch Kills, with its high bulkheads and rail connections, served as a water connection to NY Harbor for several heavy manufacturers in the area including F.A. Hunt, Holdtronics, New York Envelope, and American Chicle. The rail/dock complex, collectively, was known as the Degnon terminal. A short but sweet history of the Degnon Terminal can be accessed at members.trainweb.com. Michael Degnon was a master builder, one of the great men of the early 20th century in Queens, and is buried in Calvary Cemetery. Check out this nytimes.com article which discusses an expansion of his operations at the Dutch Kills in 1922 that brought floor space at his Degnon Terminal up to an astounding three million square feet.
from forgotten-ny.com
Michael Degnon was the contractor for the Steinway Tunnel, the first rail link to connect Manhattan and Queens, and also the contractor for the Sunnyside Yards. He decided to build his own railway, called Degnon Terminal, adjacent to the Sunnyside Yards and constructed large factories and warehouses complete with sidings facing the railroad tracks. This was attractive to his clients, since shipping goods via rail was now more accessible and less expensive for them. Some of the Terminal’s early clients were Sunshine Biscuit Company, Packard Automobile Company, American Ever Ready Company, and American Chicle Company. Of course, the rising cost of doing business in New York forced all of these companies to find other cities in which to manufacture. The sidings haven’t seen rail traffic since 1989, and the tracks are now either paved over or overgrown with weeds (some of which can be seen on FNY’s Disappearing Railroad Blues page). In its heyday, Degnon Terminal employed 16,000 workers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The currently “under construction” Borden Avenue Bridge allows vehicle and pedestrian traffic to cross the Dutch Kills. This is the point at which the water quality declines seriously, as the only fresh water entering its stagnant depths are combined sewer outputs (CSO’s) and runoff from the concretized industrial landscape surrounding it (which carry a stream of road salt, engine and exhaust residue, and whatever else might be on the road or sidewalk into the water every time it rains). The bridge recently celebrated its centennial, incidentally.
from the army corps of engineers, discussing precautions for the collecting, handling, and testing of Dutch Kills underwater sediments:
All individuals involved in handling contaminated sediment are required to use protective equipment and to submit to blood and urine tests. The protective equipment consists of:
from nyc.gov
As part of the construction of Borden Avenue in 1868, a wooden bridge was built over Dutch Kills. This bridge was later replaced by an iron swing bridge, which was removed in 1906. The current bridge was opened on March 25, 1908 at a cost of $157,606. The deck’s original design consisted of creosote-treated wood blocks, with two trolley tracks in the roadway. Character-defining features of this bridge include the stucco-clad operator’s house, four pairs of rails, and a rock-faced stone retaining wall. The gable-on-hip roof of the operator’s house retains the original clay tile at the upper part. Although alterations have been made, the bridge is a rare survivor of its type and retains sufficient period integrity to convey its historic design significance.
The Department of Transportation has identified a pocket of contaminated soil which has been classified as “contaminated non-hazardous”. As such, it poses no significant health risk to workers or the surrounding community. However, precautionary measures will be taken and every effort is being made to remove and dispose of the contamination quickly, yet safely, within all New York City and State guidelines. A Corrective Action Plan (CAP) for the removal and disposal of the contamination has been submitted to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) for review and approval.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sewer construction projects along Hunters Point Avenue revealed that the swampy nature of western Queens is unchanged. These ground waters, as you might observe by the chalk markings on the pilings, would be some 13 feet beneath the streets. The vertical clearance of the nearby Hunters Point Avenue Bridge (and street grade) is approximately 15 feet over the water, so this would make sense.
Never forget, lords and ladies, that this Long Island City of ours is a swamp which was “reclaimed” by industrial means just within the last 150 years. The “ground” in most of the area is actually a sort of pier or dock, with timber pilings supporting cement clad fill. Just two stories down are the waters of the Newtown Creek and it’s tributaries, and this sort of subterrene terraforming is typical for most of the spongy land directly surrounding the Newtown Creek.
Who can guess, what poisons there are, laying in the mud waiting to hatch out?
from hydroqaul.com
Like a number of other local tributaries to New York Harbor, Newtown Creek is now simply a peripheral canal system fed by tides, CSO and stormwater discharges. None of its original freshwater creeks and extensive wetlands exist anymore, the whole area having been transformed into a series of canals by channelization, land reclamation (filling) and bulkheading. Biological abundance and diversity is impaired by reductions in the amount and variety of physical habitat, and by a vulnerability of the remaining habitat to retention and accumulation of pollutants. Although no scientific studies have been identified prior to 2001, it can be expected that biota of Newtown Creek reflect similar conditions in other highly impacted waterbodies around the harbor. Thus, a fouling community composed of epibenthic invertebrates such as barnacles and sea squirts should be present on pilings and bulkheads; a fairly homogenous community of benthic invertebrates dominated by tolerant forms of polychaete worms should be found in the sediments, and a typical assemblage of regionally indigenous fish such as striped bass, winter flounder, bay anchovy, Atlantic menhaden, snapper bluefish, sea robin and tautog may come and go as water levels and quality permit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Hunter’s Point Avenue Bridge offers spectacular views of the Long Island Expressway with Brooklyn beyond, and from its walkway; the bulkheads marking the end of the Dutch Kills are visible. This is a dead zone, check out riverkeeper.org’s analysis of the waters here over a multiple year period. The foulness of these waters are part of the historical record, which an a New York Times article from March of 1871 proves, and the evidences of one’s own senses suggest.
from nyc.gov
The Hunters Point Bridge over Dutch Kills is situated between 27th Street and 30th Street in the Long Island City section of Queens, and is four blocks upstream of the Borden Avenue Bridge. It is a bascule bridge with a span of 21.8m. The general appearance of the bridge has been significantly changed since it was first opened in 1910. The bridge provides a channel with a horizontal clearance of 18.3m and a vertical clearance, in the closed position, of 2.4m at MHW and 4.0m at MLW. The bridge structure carries a two-lane, two-way vehicular roadway with sidewalks on either side. The roadway width is 11.0m, while the sidewalks are 1.8m wide. The width of the approach roadways vary from the width of the bridge roadway. The west approach and east approach roadways are 13.4m and 9.1m, respectively.
The first bridge at this site, a wooden structure, was replaced by an iron bridge in 1874. That bridge was permanently closed in 1907 due to movement of the west abutment, which prevented the draw from closing. It was replaced in 1910 by a double-leaf bascule bridge, designed by the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company. The bridge was rebuilt in the early 1980’s as a single-leaf bascule, incorporating the foundations of the previous bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of the Dutch Kills, one finds a concrete company, and the former Degnon Terminal home of Sunshine Biscuits, which today serves as the “C’ building of the LaGuardia Community College campus (found between 29th and 30th streets and between 47th avenue and the intersection of Skillman and Thompson avenues). Additionally, the greater astoria historical society has posted a photo at smugmug that shows the rest of the scene in the shot above dating from 1966.
speaking of gahs, they have a short history of Sunshine Biscuit’s “thousand window factory” which can be accessed by clicking here
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick glance down at the banks of Dutch Kills reveal the true nature of things here, it is not uncommon to half glance at dead things floating by, suspended by their internal gases. At high tide on the East River, aquatic life often finds its way into the Newtown Creek and become entrapped in the oxygen deprived water. This provides ample food for thriving colonies of carnivorous worms and shore line scavengers- mainly river rats, the cats that prey on them, and various birds.
Few if any dogs have I observed down here, even where you’d expect them to be. Guard dogs are unemployed around these parts, and I’ve never seen a feral dog roaming around in all the time I spend scuttling around the area- but that’s probably because of all the trucks. I do know a fat old dog who’s chained to a fish butcher on 51st avenue, but she’s mainly interested in her sunny sidewalk and sleeping.
from nytimes.com
Hunters Point South, for its part, will have 5,000 homes built on 30 acres on the edge of the East River, near Newtown Creek. Three thousand of the homes will be set aside for families whose annual income totals $126,000 or less, with 800 of them destined specifically to families who earn less than $61,400 a year. There will also be 300 units built for low-income senior citizens and at least 225 units devoted to a middle-class homeownership program.
“We’re creating a model,” said Councilman Eric N. Gioia, whose district includes the area where the project will be built. “We’re creating housing where all New Yorkers can live together, in the same neighborhood.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of Dutch Kills, near 47th avenue, illegal dumping seems to be a community passion. There is even a rusted out and derelict barge which seems to finally be sinking. As always, admonishment and advice for the urban explorer to ignore the temptation to climb out and take a look applies. The wet filth that lines the shore here stinks of sulphur compounds, and the smell of a sick aquarium permeates the breeze. This is also a HAZMAT zone, and nautical charts reveal that the water depth here is 13-15 feet, roughly a third deeper than it is in the channel. Don’t screw around back here, lords and ladies, you can get seriously hurt.
from nyc.gov, on the waterfront revitalization section of the Hunters Point South development plan
Policy 6.2: Direct public funding for flood prevention or erosion control measures to those locations where the investment will yield significant public benefit.
The proposed actions do not include public structural flood and erosion control projects. The central and eastern portion of Site A and much of Site B are within the 100-year floodplain.
The New York City Building Code (Title 27, Subchapter 4, Article 10) requires that residential buildings have a finished floor elevation (FFE) at or above the 100-year floodplain, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires the FFE to be one foot above the 100-year floodplain. In accordance with these regulations and as stated above, clean fill would be used to raise the development area, including the areas for new streets and buildings, as well as portions of the project sites designated for the waterfront park or other open space areas that would not be covered by impervious surface or structures. Raising the elevation of the project sites above the 100-year flood elevation would ensure protection of public health and safety, the new buildings and open space areas, public investment of city infrastructure, and enhancement of natural habitats. The proposed actions are consistent with this policy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the Brooklyn side of the Newtown Creek is another tributary called Whale Creek (don’t worry, we’ll be going there soon enough), alongside which the magnificent Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant hums and belches methane in storied Greenpoint. This spot on 29th street, at the end of the Dutch Kills, is just under a half mile from the main channel.
A Newtown Pentacle posting from October of 2009 explored this Temple of Cloacina, which is a 24 hours a day municipal workhorse. The plant processes a significant percentage of the 1.1 billion gallons of sewage New York produces every day, delivering it in a milled and concentrated form to a pumping tank and dock in Greenpoint directly across the Creek from the forthcoming Hunters Point South development which is just starting on the Queens shoreline. In still another posting, we followed some sludge boats- the M/V Newtown Creek, North River, and the Red Hook, as they traveled past Hallet’s Cove and Astoria up the East River.
from nyc.gov
Dewatering reduces the liquid volume of sludge by about 90%. New York City operates dewatering facilities at eight of its 14 treatment plants. At these facilities, digested sludge is sent through large centrifuges that operate like the spin cycle of a washing machine. The force from the very fast spinning of the centrifuges separates most of the water from the solids in the sludge, creating a substance knows as biosolids. The water drawn from the spinning process is then returned to the head of the plant for reprocessing. Adding a substance called organic polymer improves the consistency of the “cake”, resulting in a firmer, more manageable product. The biosolids cake is approximately 25 to 27 percent solid material.
Hunters Point to Dutch Kills with Whale Creek on the left – photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
Creek Week continues… at this, your Newtown Pentacle. Prepare to penetrate into the darkness of the tomb legions, lords and ladies… as we move eastward.
horrible and unearthly ululations…
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
Loathsomeness awaits, in the deep.
At the end of the Pleistocene, when the ice of the Wisconsinan glaciation was at last defeated by ocean and sun, the rubble which spilled from its ruptured facings piled up to form the terminal moraine of a cyclopean coastal sandbar, as well as many smaller islands. The torrents of flowing mud and water – acting in the manner of icy Lahars– interacted with this loose fill of titan boulders and frosty soil, amalgamating around stoney knobs of bedrock. These rough bits of rock, exposed by the motive traction exacted by ten thousand years of mile high ice, formed and agglutinated into an archipelago and estuary familiar to modernity as New York Harbor.
At the western tip of the sandbar, which european cartography called Long Island, an arabesque web of waterways was carved out of this turbulent tidal and river environment.
Welcome to the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode was the last major advance of continental glaciers in the North American Laurentide ice sheet. This glaciation is made of three glacial maxima (sometimes mistakenly called ice ages) separated by interglacial warm periods (such as the one we are living in). These glacial maxima are called, from oldest to youngest, Tahoe, Tenaya and Tioga. The Tahoe reached its maximum extent perhaps about 70,000 years ago, perhaps as a byproduct of the Toba super eruption. Little is known about the Tenaya. The Tioga was the least severe and last of the Wisconsin Episode. It began about 30,000 years ago, reached its greatest advance 21,000 years ago, and ended about 10,000 years ago. At the height of glaciation the Bering land bridge permitted migration of mammals such as humans to North America from Siberia.
It radically altered the geography of North America north of the Ohio River. At the height of the Wisconsin Episode glaciation, ice covered most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New England, as well as parts of Montana and Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie or in New York’s Central Park, the grooves left by these glaciers can be easily observed. In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta a suture zone between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress Hills, which is the northernmost point in North America that remained south of the continental ice sheets.
The Great Lakes are the result of glacial scour and pooling of meltwater at the rim of the receding ice. When the enormous mass of the continental ice sheet retreated, the Great Lakes began gradually moving south due to isostatic rebound of the north shore. Niagara Falls is also a product of the glaciation, as is the course of the Ohio River, which largely supplanted the prior Teays River.
With the assistance of several very large glacial lakes, it carved the gorge now known as the Upper Mississippi River, filling into the Driftless Area and probably creating an annual ice-dam-burst.
In its retreat, the Wisconsin Episode glaciation left terminal moraines that form Long Island, Block Island, Cape Cod, Nomans Land, Marthas Vineyard, and Nantucket, and the Oak Ridges Moraine in south central Ontario, Canada. In Wisconsin itself, it left the Kettle Moraine. The drumlins and eskers formed at its melting edge are landmarks of the Lower Connecticut River Valley.
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
3.8 miles long, its mouth is directly opposite the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in Manhattan, and defines the currently undefended border between North Brooklyn and Western Queens. Estimates state that some 14 million gallons of combined sewage, storm runoff, and industrial waste provide the only flow of water into the Creek. It’s waters are opaque, and in the height of summer turn an unnatural shade of green.
The soft bottom of the waterway is 15-20 feet below the surface of the water, and the hard bottom is occluded by a gelatinous sediment known as “Black Mayonnaise”. Composed of petroleum residues, coal tar, PCB’s, and human excrement- it lies 15 feet thick on the bed. The oxygen content of the water drops precipitously as soon as one leaves the East River. The first of the drawbridges which cross it- known as the Pulaski Bridge, is the borderline beyond which immersion in this water is worthy of full HAZMAT gear and first responders institute biological decontamination procedures for anyone who finds themselves in it.
As I’ve mentioned in the past… the chemicals Putrescine (an organic chemical compound NH2(CH2)4NH2 (1,4-diaminobutane or butanediamine) and Cadaverine (a toxic diamine with the formula NH2(CH2)5NH2) which are produced by the rotting and putrefaction of animal flesh are abundantly found in the Newtown Creek under industrial aliases like Acrylonitrile and are prominent members on the EPA’s list of Volatile Organic Compounds– or VOC’s..
Who can guess, what it is, that may be buried down there?
from brookhaven national laboratories
Sediments from the New York/New Jersey Harborareas are dredged routinely to maintain navigable water depths for shipping channels and berthing areas to facilitate commerce and safe navigation. Historically, the dredged materials was disposed in the ocean. However, ocean disposal has been restricted due to greater regulatory restrictions on contaminant concentrations in the dredged sediments. The dredged sediments typically contain elevated levels of metals, polynuclear aromatichydrocarbons (PAHs) (tars, oils, fuels) polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorinated pesticides and herbicides, dioxins (PCDDs), andfurans (PCDFs) as shown in Table 1-1[l] for Newtown Creek. Table 1-1, included at the end of this section, lists both the range previously available from the Request for Proposal and the average of six samples available to date for the treatability studies.The actual sediment used for the test was a black mayonnaise-like paste that contained few particles (or 0.2% on dry basis) greater than 2 mm, and exhibited an oily, foul odor.
BNL and other governmental federal and state agencies are in the process of developing risk-based and/or specific clean-up standards for the various locations where the treated sediment products are to be used. These standards are likely to be related to the soil clean-up criteria used based on direct soil contact (residential and non-residential) and/or impact to groundwater. For example, Appendix A contains the current soil clean-up criteria used by the State of New Jersey and the Maximum Concentration of Contaminants for the Toxicity Characteristic. Based on the sediment from Newtown Creek and the soil clean-up criteria for direct soil contact, some contaminants already meet the clean-up criteria while some need up to one or two orders-of-magnitude removal. The TCLP values for the Newtown Creek sediment are below the maximum toxicity characteristic value.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are 5 major vehicular traffic bridges which hurtle over the Newtown Creek, 3 of which are drawbridges and one is a non functioning swing bridge. It’s tributary branches are also crossed by a variety of other spans, from the high flying Queens Midtown Expressway section of the Long Island Expressway and the grade level Hunter’s Point Avenue drawbridge to the Borden Avenue retractile bridge over the Dutch Kills. Additionally, atavist rail bridges and trackbeds stretch from no longer existing car docks at Hunters Point to the massive rail terminals and switchings in Maspeth and lead to points further East. Municipal neglect has rendered many of these bridges dangerously decayed, non functional, or dangerous to operate. Once, this was the busiest industrial waterway in North America.
A spate of emergency repairs and reconstructions was conducted in the 1980’s and 90’s to shore up these crossings. For instance, the 1910 Hunter’s Point Avenue Bridge, originally a double leaf bascule design like the Pulaski, was replaced by a single leaf design and in 1987- the 1929 Greenpoint Avenue Bridge was rebuilt- and the 1959 Pulaski was rebuilt in the early 1990’s.
from nyc.gov
The Pulaski Bridge, which carries six lanes of traffic and a pedestrian sidewalk over Newton Creek and the Long Island Expressway, is orientated north-south and connects Greenpoint in Brooklyn to Long Island City in Queens. McGuinness Boulevard approaches the bridge from the south and Eleventh Street from the north. The Pulaski Bridge is a 54m double leaf, trunnion type bascule bridge. It has two 10.5m roadways divided by a concrete median barrier. It also carries a 2.7m pedestrian sidewalk. The bridge provides a channel with a horizontal clearance of 45.7m and a vertical clearance of 11.9m in the closed position at MHW and 13m MLW.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is a “colour” observed around the Newtown Creek. An iridescent sheen which seems to have been drawn from a palette not of this earth, rather it is best described as looking like some “Colour out of space“. Observable on every oil soaked cobblestone which pushes up through the asphalt, and pulsing through thorny vines which line the rotting bulkheads and sway against the putrid breeze, this colour is only the visible manifestation of a detestable lament which has infected the land and percolates in the swampy underworld hidden by piling and cement some 10-20 feet beneath the so called land. Wild catalogs of chemical compounds congeal in unknowable combinations, pooling in vast subterrene chambers and mixing with an underground water table that feed the sickly trees lining area streets.
Fish and invertebrates harvested from the Newtown Creek display open sores, unexplained tumors, and queerly mutated organs. Weird eyeless things can be seen wriggling in the filth, at low tide.
The surface of the water has tested positive for a variety of bacterial specie including Gonorrhea, Typhus, and Cholera.
from epa.gov
“Newtown Creek is one of the most grossly-contaminated waterways in the country,” said Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou. “By listing the creek, EPA can focus on doing the extensive sampling needed to figure out the best way to address the contamination and see the work through.”
EPA responded to requests by members of Congress to evaluate specific sites along the creek by publishing a September 2007 report that contained a review of past work and recommendations regarding future work at Newtown Creek. The state of New York referred the site to EPA due to the complex nature of the contamination along the creek.
Newtown Creek is part of the core area of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary, which has been designated by EPA as an “estuary of national significance.” Despite the ongoing pollution problems, some residents currently use the creek for recreational purposes such as kayaking, while others catch fish for consumption out of it. Various sediment and surface water samples have been taken along the creek and reveal the presence of pesticides, metals, PCBs, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are potentially harmful contaminants that can easily evaporate into the air.
In the mid -1800s, the area adjacent to the 3.8-mile Newtown Creek was one of the busiest hubs of industrial activity in New York City. More than 50 industrial facilities were located along its banks, including oil refineries, petrochemical plants, fertilizer and glue factories, sawmills, and lumber and coal yards. The creek was crowded with commercial vessels, including large boats bringing in raw materials and fuel and taking out oil, chemicals and metals. In addition to the industrial pollution that resulted from all of this activity, the city began dumping raw sewage directly into the water in 1856. During World War II, the creek was one of the busiest ports in the nation. Some factories and facilities still operate along it, and various adjacent contaminated sites have contributed to its contamination. Today, as a result of its industrial history, including countless spills, Newtown Creek is badly polluted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The northern bank of the Newtown Creek forms the border of Long Island City, and swirls through Laurel Hill (or Blissville), Sunnyside, Ridgewood, and Maspeth in Queens. The southern bank in Brooklyn is dominated by the ancient cities of Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Williamsburg.
from wikipedia
Greenpoint was originally inhabited by Keskachauge (Keshaechqueren) Indians, a sub-tribe of the Lenape. Contemporary accounts describe it as remarkably verdant and beautiful, with Jack pine and oak forest, meadows, fresh water creeks and briny marshes. Water fowl and fish were abundant. The name originally referred to a small bluff of land jutting into the East River at what is now the westernmost end of Freeman Street, but eventually came to describe the whole peninsula.
In 1638 the Dutch West India Company negotiated the right to settle Brooklyn from the Lenape. The first recorded European settler of what is now Greenpoint was Dirck Volckertsen (Dutchified from Holgerssøn), a Norwegian immigrant who in 1645 built a one-and-a-half story farmhouse there with the help of two Dutch carpenters. It was in the contemporary Dutch style just west of what is now the intersection of Calyer St. and Franklin Street. There he planted orchards and raised crops, sheep and cattle. He was called Dirck de Noorman by the Dutch colonists of the region, Noorman being the Dutch word for “Norseman” or “Northman.”
Tales of Calvary 11- Keegan and Locust Hill
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The monument to Charles Keegan is a familiar one to those who visit First Calvary Cemetery with any regularity. Close to the gates on Greenpoint Avenue, one does not need to penetrate too deeply into the viridian devastations of the place to find it. Keegan was a firefighter, a Foreman of Hook and Ladder No. 4 who was killed during the pursuit of his duties on the 15th of September in 1882 at the conjunction of Meeker Avenue and the loathsome Newtown Creek.
nytimes.com has an article on the Locust Hill Refinery Fire, which presents the grisly details of that night and describes the tragic death of both Keegan and Captain Stuart Duane (whose death counts as one of the most horrible exits from this mortal coil I’ve ever encountered)
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before the night was over and the vast fire contained, oil barges set aflame by the terrific explosions and spreading flames had been carried all the way to the Penny Bridge, which ended up being consumed itself by fire. The far larger Standard Oil works up the Creek were protected from this spreading conflagration by an ad hoc boom deployed by Firefighters across the Creek, said boom was composed of empty barges and logs. The entire blaze began when lightning struck the petroleum reservoir tanks of Sone & Fleming at the Locust Hill Refinery sparking a fire which spread insidiously across the 18th ward, during a severe thunderstorm.
arrts-arrchives.com has many fascinating images for the antiquarian community to marvel over, but of interest for readers of this posting will be this shot from 1852 (that’s the Newtown Creek, kids, see Calvary in the upper right corner- click image for a larger view at the arrts-archives.com site) showing the Penny Bridge that was burned away.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By 1929, the independent oil companies around the Newtown Creek were absorbed by the Standard Oil Trust, parent of the modern Exxon and Mobil corporations. Standard Oil, of course was the guilty party concerning the Greenpoint Oil Spill.
William DONALD, proprietor of the Locust Hill Oil Works, where the fire originated, testified that when he reached the fire he saw the only way to save anything was to draw off the oil. By five o’clock in the morning one-half had been drawn off. About twenty minutes later the tank boiled over and filled the yard with burning oil. KEEGAN was near the tank at the time, with several men employed in the works and some firemen. They ran and escaped except KEEGAN, whom the witness afterwards heard was missing. There was about six hundred barrels of crude oil in the tank.
The Newtown Creek Community Health Harm Narratives Project
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Andrea Muraskin of the CHHNP asked if I could post this and help get the word out about this project, all text by CHHNP-
Attention Residents of Greenpoint, East Williamsburg, and Maspeth:
Are you worried about health problems caused by the pollution in your neighborhood?
Would you like the opportunity to tell your story?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If yes, then you may want to be interviewed for a community health project that aims to document the public health concerns of individuals residing in communities along Newtown Creek in NYC. If you live, or have ever lived in Greenpoint or East Williamsburg, Brooklyn or Maspeth, Queens, you are invited to participate in the Newtown Creek Community Health and Harm Narrative Project, as study which hopes to capture residents’ experience with illness and environmental pollution in their neighborhoods.
Participation will provide you with an opportunity to have your story documented in your own words. With your permission, the information you disclose will be displayed in written and audio format on the website http://www.habitatmap.org and in a written report that will be disseminated to community members, media outlets, elected officials, and other interested parties.
Community involvement is important. Make your voice heard!
If you have any questions or are interested in participating, please contact Yvonne Kodl at:newtowncreekstudy@gmail.com or
(718) 566-1359.
Please note: The study is in the concluding portion of its interview phase. If you are interested, please contact us as soon as possible.
The Newtown Creek Community Health and Harm Narrative Project is a collaboration between the Urban Public Health Department of Hunter College, HabitatMap, and the Newtown Creek Alliance.
Media Links
Television: Brooklyn Community Access Television ,
Radio: Leonard Lopate on WNYC
Newspaper: NY Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/06/22/2009-06-22_newtown.html
Blog:http://www.nylcv.org/ecopoliticsdaily/20091112_newtown_creeks_neighbors_speak_out_on_health_concerns
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the cold waste 3
This is the 163rd posting of the Newtown Pentacle, last one of 2009, and just about 6 months into this little project. Halfway through writing this, I had to evacuate the building due to a fire in another apartment. NYFD was prompt and performed their work in the normal fashion. Thanks Guys, and Happy New Year… now on with the dirge, apostasy, and dire prophecies…
Gondor, or Manhattan- from recently completed sections of Gantry Plaza State Park – photo by Mitch Waxman
The new East River Parks are magnificent and welcome additions to the waterfront, a tony garland showcasing the shining shield wall of Manhattan, and a value adding loss leader for landlords to dazzle the prospective Tower People with. Queensbridge Park was similarly awe inspiring upon its completion in the 3rd incarnation of Ravenswood, until things went horribly wrong in the Housing Complex it was designed to serve and the vain optimists in City government lost interest in funding it.
Today, its bulkheads are collapsing into the river and the muddy ball fields and patchy lawns are shoddy at best. Perhaps the experiences of the Tower People will be different as the calendar pages roll by, here in the Newtown Pentacle.
From the Wheelspur Yard road crossing beneath the Pulaski Bridge – photo by Mitch Waxman
The story of Long Island City, as one proceeds south, is told in steel and concrete. Leave the modern world, which is possible in Long Island CIty, and see the apotheosis of victorian aspirations. The industrial past of the 19th century, whose cracked pavement and toxic inheritances define the modern era, can be accessed merely by crossing the street. By 2020, the Manhattan Skyline will be hidden behind even more Tower Condos, and Hunters Point will accommodate some 5,000 new housing units. Hotels and Parks are also planned.
All the while, the City is closing Queens Fire Houses and Hospitals.
LIE from the Pulaski Bridge – photo by Mitch Waxman
Surmount the Pulaski Bridge, but do not touch it with your bare skin. From here, the early and mid 20th century is visible. Witness a steel highway- Robert Moses’s LIE soaring over “the empty corridor“. It once carried the terrified middle class away from a troubled mid and late 20th century New York, in the manner of some open artery, creating the vast populations of suburban Long Island. It also blighted and depopulated western Queens, turning the valuable industrial land it shadowed into empty warehouses and abandoned brick lots. For the last half of the 20th century, Long Island City and the surrounding communities became ethnic ghettos and crime infested wards of municipal indifference. In this mid century midden, the rats ruled, and rat kings ruled over all.
Open air warehouse at Newtown Creek – photo by Mitch Waxman
And then there is the Creek. The Newtown Creek. I have a lot of purple prose fun with the Newtown Creek- these quotes are culled from various postings-
“I’d rather drink a glass of that queerly coloured effluviam which flows lugubriously through a crucible of dictatorial capitalism called the Newtown Creek.”
“just a little bit of the chemical recipe that produces an anaerobic broth like that found in the Newtown Creek”
“VOC’s are amongst the primary pollutants fouling the waters of a nearby cautionary tale called the Newtown Creek.”
“and indeed- swirling within a nearby cataract of tears called the Newtown Creek”
“which I attribute to the possibly mutagenic qualities of the chemical pollution of that nearby extinction of hope called the Newtown Creek.”
“languidly across that gelatinous slick of black water- called the Newtown Creek- triggered its horns”
“The secular spectacular merely whets the appetite of your humble narrator for the open skies and sacred vantages found along those unhallowed backwaters of an urban catastrophe called the Newtown Creek.”
“The motive engines of the Pulaski began grinding in those deep pilings sunken on both sides of that vexing mystery called the Newtown Creek”
” is powered, fed, and flushed by that which may be found around a shimmering ribbon of abnormality called the Newtown Creek.”
“flabby jowled, staring eyed, scaly group which had been tormenting me- and whose apparent leader was a young girl carrying a curiously polydactyl cat whose aspect “I did not like”- were running off in the direction of that stygian cataract called the Newtown Creek”
There is actually nothing funny about the Creek, its a sobering subject, but I do my best to keep things light. One of the maddening facts though, is that the open air warehouse observed above, is designated to become a City Park as the Hunters Point South phase of the Queenswest development gets rolling in 2010.
Still Waters Run Deep – photo by Mitch Waxman
The EPA comment period on the issue of “superfunding the creek” has just ended, and as expected, the Oligarchs of Manhattan have rendered their opinion that the Creek should remain under their jurisdiction.
Did you think, honestly, that City Hall is going to cede control over a 4 x1 mile strip of Brooklyn and Queens to Washington without a fight?
That’s what Superfund means, the feds TAKE OVER, for as long as it will take to clean up the mess. They will fine whoever they want to for whatever they want to, issue orders that MUST be followed by commoner and king alike, and will not take “NO” or “That isn’t possible in this climate” as an answer. In the case of the Newtown Creek, the estimates for completion of project (at the medium estimate) are 30-45 years (45 years ago in 1963, John Kennedy had just been assassinated in November and LBJ was president). A river of federal money will flush out the Newtown Creek, but the tide is going to hit the masters across the river in Manhattan.
Our fellow citizens in the Western States have been chaffing under the authority of the EPA for a long time, which has created an electoral preference for smaller and less intrusive government policy amongst the citizenry. A lack of “institutional memory”, a disturbing modern trend easily blamed on a 4th estate owned and operated by real estate interests, is a smoking volcano.
Your Humble Narrator – photo by Mitch Waxman
It is the end of a year of change- but all years are “years of change”. New York, and the United States on the whole, continue their trend toward apathy and quasi-fascism.
- The rich are always right- for by virtue of their fortunes they are proven so
- Our enemies are all around us- and we must consider which rights to trade away in the name of security
- Endless is war, with new fronts opening in Northern Africa and the Far East as we speak (did you notice how fast the story of “the underwear bomber” came together?)
- The burdens of the social contract suddenly seem to be too much to bear as the Baby Boomer population begins to retire.
Ceasar is just a few years away now, and will choose to reveal him or her self shortly- and offer clarity and purpose to the masses- who will love their Ceasar, along with the bread and circuses.
And all the poisons in the mud will leach out.
The Newtown Pentacle 