Posts Tagged ‘NYC DEP’
singularly immobile
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A friend of mine, I recently learned, is going to be digging a seven hundred and fifty nine foot deep hole in Sunnyside. This is what my friend does.
Lurking, in fear as always, a humble narrator decided to witness and record the future hole’s site in its current manner. Deep below, something awaits. It yearns for connection, and conduit, and to flow into your homes while your children sleep.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cryogenic technology and explosive devices will be used, to open and widen the hole. Then, and only upon the say so of my friend, will the esoterica of his titanic machines be employed. Like scarabs, these devices will claw, and scratch, and tear open a path to the deep. Thrusting into secrets which were long buried even when the ice sheets allowed a pathway for men and women to walk from Asia to the American continent, the cleaving teeth of his works will bore through the ancient flesh of the earth.
At the bottom, 759 feet below the southern edges of the Sunnyside of Queens, it waits. Swirling and spraying, coiling against its restraints. This is what a man whom I call friend wishes to unleash upon Western Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fortress like Church just up the block, which has long vouchsafed this area against all sorts of supernatural threats (but especially Vampires) has been informed of my friend’s plans – and on his intentions. Supposedly they are ok with what’s about to happen, and the release of the voluminous entity trapped below.
759 feet down… what doth lurk? Go ahead – guess.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 8th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
eccentric monomaniac
Woh, bro, it’s Wednesday, bro.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Due to the oppressive July heat, one has been keeping close to HQ for the last few days and I wasn’t sure what I was going to be showing you today as late as midnight last night. Luckily, the NYC DEP arrived on my corner to perform some sort of repairs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One infers, from the sort of tools the laborers were using and the location of their attentions, that they were shoring up or repairing one of the street drains on Broadway. That’s what the NYC Department of Environmental Protection – DEP – calls the sewer grates. The bosses over there don’t like using plain english anymore. It’s not a sewer plant in Greenpoint, for instance, it’s a Waste Water treatment and Resource Recovery facility. At least that’s what it was a few months ago the last time I checked.
These aren’t photos you’re looking at, instead they’re photonic digitalizations of chronal disambiguations. I can make things up too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Tell you this – these cats showed up with a lot of gear, and a supervisor who had his own fancy truck. It was quite a tumult here in the ancient village of Astoria.
It’s really nice of the City people to bring the show right to my front door during these trying times, bro.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, July 27th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
another report
Dinner and a show!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Friday nights, my neighborhood friends and I regularly gather for a “pub night,” at a bar which is found at the Times Square of Astoria – 42nd and Broadway. Now, since I’m all knowing, I can tell you a few things about this particular corner but for the purposes of this post – the NYC DEP has a storm sewer under the street here which leads directly to Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary. That’s important in terms of the totality of things, but what’s also important is that several of the local sanitary water sewer pipes conjoin into a junction at this corner as well.
Apparently, there was a “priority one” repair order sent out to DEP’s maintenance crews, regarding something involving the storm sewer having developed a leak.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our little pub night gatherings involve sitting outside at the sidewalk cafe tables, and as always I have the camera ready and in my hands even when socializing. As the DEP crew got to work, so did I. Here they are noticing me.
Everyone at my table started waving and I started a chant of “DEP, DEP.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unsung, these municipal heroes seemed to enjoy the respect they were being paid as they got busy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The notoriously impatient drivers of Astoria, who seem to believe that their cars do not have a gear which allows them to reverse, turned the sidewalk into a vehicle lane for a short while. This stopped after a few minutes and presumptively the DEP crew set out cones at the northern corner of the block of 42nd street that they were working on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Being the gregarious fellow I’m known for being, I walked across the street and introduced myself. This fellow was busy digging a hole. The head of the operation told me the circumstance of their tasks, which would involve exposing a broken pipe and replacing a section of it.
I congratulated him on the Friday night overtime, wished him luck, and headed back to my gathering across the street as it started raining.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYPD was called in, and towed a car which was perilously close to the job. The tow truck reparked this car around the corner on Broadway, and my friends and I were anxious to see the confused driver find their car somewhere else than where they had parked it, but alas…
At this point, everyone at my table started chanting “NYPD, NYPD.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Heavier equipment began to show up and set up shop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the fellow who was digging the hole, and who was now guiding the operator of the excavator.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
More and more DEP crews kept appearing, carrying supplies and esoteric equipment. From what I could discern, one of them was a mobile welding unit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It turned into quite a party, happening across the street from my regularly scheduled Friday night party. Deciding that I couldn’t miss a minute of this, I ordered food and another drink.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rain really set up in earnest at one point, but I was sitting in a carefully chosen spot under one of the pub’s awnings.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You really have to hand it to these folks. As much shade as I throw at DEP’s management during Newtown Creek oriented posts and in person at meetings, I have nothing but respect for the folks that do this essential, difficult, and dirty job on behalf of the rest of us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A section of pipe was removed, another one welded in, and then the street was closed back up. Sated with food, drink, and a free bit of municipal dinner theater – a humble narrator then headed home to my little dog Zuzu.
You just have to love it. I do.
Upcoming Tours and Events
Friday, August 3rd, 6:30 p.m. – Infrastructure Creek – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
If you want infrastructure, then meet NCA historian Mitch Waxman at the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn, and in just one a half miles he’ll show you the largest and newest of NYC’s 14 sewer plants, six bridges, a Superfund site, three rail yards with trains moving at street grade, a highway that carries 32 million vehicle trips a year 106 feet over water. The highway feeds into the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and we’ll end it all at the LIC ferry landing where folks are welcome to grab a drink and enjoy watching the sunset at the East River, as it lowers behind the midtown Manhattan skyline.
Tix and more deatils here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
certain captives
It’s National Raspberry Tart Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Call me Ezekial for my visions of a dire future are informed solely by the lessons of the past. When the NYC DEP people told the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee of their plans for a “waste to energy” project at the sewer plant in Greenpoint a while back (I think at the end of the last Bloomberg administration?), they also mentioned that they intended for the equipment which would convert the waste methane produced by their industry into a usable fuel – “natural gas” – on the Greenpoint Avenue side of the sewer plant, a humble narrator grew agitated.
The DEP people said “c’mon, it’s behind the fence, what could happen?” I turned around to Councilmember Steve Levin, who was observing the meeting, and said “Greenpoint has a long history of huge industrial fires, and it’s only a matter of time before a car or truck accidentally blasts through the fence, or a fire starts nearby that could threaten the perimeter here.” “Do we really want a high pressure gas manifold on heavily trafficked Greenpoint Avenue with only a chain link fence to protect it? What if?”
Mr. Levin took note, but the DEP was dismissive. The DEP is always dismissive, and the agency does not like its pronouncements or plans being questioned by unwashed rabble like myself, the State of New York, or the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not six months afterwards, a paper recycling yard across the street from the sewer plant caught fire and burned for several days. DEP had people on the plant’s grounds sweep their property facing the smokey fire with hoses, for fear that wind scattered embers from the blaze across the street might cause damage or start a fire at the plant. The next Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee meeting came around and I got to say “I told you so” to the DEP. The councilman gave me a knowing look and acknowledged that I “called it,” and that was the end of that. The DEP people went along with their plans to install the gas equipment on a busy truck route called Greenpoint Avenue.
Of course, the Citistorage Building fire on the East River side happened a few months later, so allow me to reiterate…
Greenpoint has a history of fires that occur in large industrial buildings that tend to burn for days and days. In 1882 and again in 1919, the entire refinery complex on the Newtown Creek coastline between Greenpoint Avenue and Meeker Avenue were immolated and utterly lost, and in the 1882 fire – the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge burned down. Don’t believe me? Ask my colleague, Greenpoint Historian Geoff Cobb, or do your own research on the subject.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Imagine my recent joy, therefore, when another of my little prophecies came true.
I was at the plant to attend a presentation offered by the DEP regarding their “Long Term Control Plan” for combined sewer overflows into Newtown Creek. The plan is a lot of hoo-hah if you ask me, a Potemkin Village’s worth of politically convenient bioswales, rain gardens, and unfunded mandates for large scale construction projects which is designed to compel future generations into finding a way to pay for it all, rather than asking it of the current one. The LTCP process, citywide, is turning out to be a wonderful example of non urgently passing the buck while billions of gallons of sewage flow into New York Harbor every single time it rains. They want to build pump houses and dig retention tunnels, but all of it begins in twenty to thirty years and…
Thirty years ago, New York City was financially crippled and crime was at an all time high, and you couldn’t give away the waterfront land in Williamsburg or Long Island City. Twenty years ago, America had “won the Cold War” and it was the “end of history.” Rudy Giuliani was already a bit crazy, but not like now… Bill Clinton was President… you would have been hard pressed to get anyone to believe the sort of dystopic world we now live in, or the property valuations of Williamsburg, were just on the horizon. Donald Trump? What?
A lot can happen in 20-30 years, and there’s no time like the present for “getting it done.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funnily enough, I had attended a tour of the plant on Sunday April 22nd, and these shots were captured on Wednesday the 26th. Anonymous informants who work at the plant informed me that some driver had not recognized the presence of the fence when traveling west from North Henry Street, and crossed Greenpoint Avenue at accelerating speed, and plowed into the fenceline without braking.
As a point of trivia, North Henry Street actually does continue through the plant, it’s just closed to non official traffic. I seem to recall seeing a street sign for it inside the fence quite a while ago, but I also might be imagining it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news, which came to me in another Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee meeting on the 30th of March, is that DEP’s partners in the “waste to energy” project – National Grid – now prefer a spot deeper within the plant’s grounds to install their equipment to harvest the waste methane which is not on Greenpoint Avenue.
Ezekial, call me Ezekial, for I am a prophet.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
Newtown Creek Alliance Boat tour, May 21st.
Visit the new Newtown Creek on a two hour boat tour with NCA historian Mitch Waxman and NCA Project Manager Will Elkins, made possible with a grant from the Hudson River Foundation – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
monstrous implications
It’s National Almond Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Owing to other obligations and piss poor weather conditions for the last couple of weeks, one hasn’t got anything new to show you for this week. Accordingly, it has been decided to instead present a few archive shots of the various branches of NYC government which make life liveable for us here in “Home Sweet Hell.”
Today, the focus is on the NYC DEP – the astounding New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m a frequent critic of this agency, due to my knowing WAY too much about their operations because of the whole Newtown Creek thing. Saying that, they are a pretty amazing group. They deliver clean water to our faucets and remove dirty water from our toilets. They’re in charge of policing noise, and chemical spills, and cleaner air. DEP owns a navy, which they humorously refer to as “honey boats.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Deep below the Lower East Side, within a sequestered building that plunges deeply into the ground, there’s a giant pipe into which all the sewage of Manhattan (below 79th street) pours. The other end of this “surge tower” is at the sewer plant in Greenpoint where all of this “yuck” is headed for treatment. The shot above is staring directly down and into the DEP’s maelstrom.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 