Posts Tagged ‘Ohio River’
Damn, that’s one heck of a Dam
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Montgomery Locks and Dam is one of the giant honking pieces of infrastructure an inquisitive wanderer might encounter in Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, while scuttling along the Ohio River. This isn’t too far from the currently undefended border of the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the now infamous East Palestine locomotive derailment occurred. Up the Ohio towards Pittsburgh, you’ve got the Shell Cracker Plant mentioned on Monday and just down the river, there’s a nuclear power plant.
USACE has a page at their site which describes their operations on the Ohio in this region, which can be accessed here. To summarize – this monster dam and gate system was built between 1932 and 1936, and it replaced three earlier (late 19th century) wooden locks and dams.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mechanics of what this facility does involves mechanical lift gates and spillways which regulate the amount of river flowing through them. This outfit works in concert with other lock and dam installations to allow the Corps to maintain the “Pittsburgh Pool” and other navigational areas, but it isn’t intended to control the flooding issues which had previously bedeviled the region. A lot of Federal cash went into not having anything like the disastrous St. Patrick’s Day flood of 1936 happen again, but there’s a completely different set of infrastructure prophylactics in place for that sort of work. This is one of the many things that I’m reading up on at the moment.
See? I’ve learned, and am learning, new things since moving here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the opposite shore, USACE has two lock systems, one for large ships and commercial vessels and another for smaller private or pleasure craft ones. The commercial lock is 600 feet long by 110 wide, and the secondary is 360 feet long by 56 feet wide. It’s costs about $6 million a year to keep this machine running, or so I’m informed.
The Ohio River is just under 1,000 miles long. It starts in Pittsburgh and eventually intersects with the Mississippi River at the southern tip of the State of Illinois. A river of cities, industry, and commerce – and a de facto extension of the Mason Dixon line between north and south – the westward flowing Ohio is also considered to be the most polluted waterway in the United States over the course of its length. It actually edges out Newtown Creek on pollution, but unlike my beloved creek, the Ohio is a source of drinking water for many of the communities found on its banks – parts of Pittsburgh, or West Virginia’s Wheeling for instance. The Ohio is thought to be the sixth oldest river in North America, and several civilizations have depended upon the ancestral waterway for its riches, including our own.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having followed the aforementioned group of fishermen whom I had noticed leaving a pickup for a trail towards the water, one soon found himself staring into the lift gates and spillways at the heart of the operation. I had prepared for my afternoon with a “full pack” camera bag and I had all of my toys and tools with me. These are all tripod shots with the lens wearing a 10 stop ND filter to slow down the scene and mellow out the visual distraction of water ripples and that sort of thing. Generally speaking, it was pretty bright out and these are 8-10 second captures.
When I’ve got a few extra bucks in my pocket, somewhere down the line, I’m planning on replacing my current set of old school screw on filters with the more modern magnetic snap on kind. So much easier to deal with, the magnet ones. You screw the receiver onto the lens and then just “click” the filter onto it. The screw on kind are dust collectors extraordinaire, are quite “fiddly,” and it is very, very easy to scratch your expensive lens with the exposed metal edge of the screw fitting on the thing. Yeah, I know, camera nerd stuff… sorry.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather was definitely on my side for once, with temperatures in the low 50’s and a bright sky. It’s been a pretty warm winter here, but that’s also seen a lot of super cloudy days with dismal lighting. Back in NYC, this sort of atmospheric season would see me riding a lot of Subways out to distant stations and “shooting trains.” The subway system presents a series of horrific challenges, photography wise. Mastering that environment, which you’ll soon learn the rules of, is a fantastic exercise for learning how to work a camera.
One of the other things I’ve learned here in Pittsburgh is that when the skies are good, you take advantage of that. Pittsburgh is one of the cloudiest regions in the entire country, with something like 200 days of the year (on average) being cloudy or overcast. This is apparently caused by the shape of the terrain, which causes most storms to fly around or over Pittsburgh. Other surrounding communities less than an hour’s drive away will get walloped by snow or thunderstorms whereas in Pittsburgh itself you just get clouds and drizzle. Not a meteorologist, can’t tell you why, but it has something to do with being located in what’s considered “the foothills of the Appalachian Range.”
Where I was standing had signage indicating that this was a park, and in tune with that the thing that’s surprised this transplanted New Yorker just about everywhere I’ve visited – there was a Porta Potty available to the public to take care of business if the need arose. To a former New Yorker, this is acknowledgment of human biology is nepenthe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator enjoyed a short chat with a young fellow working as a contractor for the Feds doing maintenance on the dam and its spillways. He described what sounded like an incredibly dangerous job freeing debris and mud from occluding the gate system, one which pays less an hour than a job working a cash register back in NYC. I headed back up the hill to the Mobile Oppression Platform, whereupon my gear was packed away and the camera settings returned to my ‘catch as catch can’ handheld settings, and away from the landscape and filter setup.
Tomorrow, something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
A place called Industry
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I admit it, it was the Shell Cracker Plant that drew me in, but it was seeing the nuclear plant’s cooling towers which made me happy while visiting Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. I’m semi confident in stating my outright and admitted guess that they’re a part of the Beaver Valley County Power Station. Guessing, as said, but there you are. First time in these parts. I think that I was in a place called Shippingport, after visiting another hamlet dubbed Industry.
I drove about the waterfront of the Ohio River for a little bit after getting a few shots of the Shell facility, doing my ‘lookie loo scoutie’ thing. A humble narrator probably looked pretty ‘sus’ to the locals while tooling along in the Mobile Oppression Platform and sticking the camera lens out the window every now and again, but there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a mill with a lot of people doing some sort of work within. Seemed like a metals business, from the overall shape of the place, but since I’m still trying to just understand where things are hereabouts… I wasn’t going to hang around and ask the hard hats what they were getting up to. There was something else nearby, which I had spotted while scrutinizing a Google map of the area, that I wanted to check out.
I had to drive through a residential town area to get there, but that wasn’t a problem. Really nice and neat little community, kind of lovely water front place with some houses that enjoyed Ohio River frontage property, dogs in yards, that sort of thing, and all framed up with the Nuclear Plant in the background. Seemed like a pretty nice place. I’d show you what it looked like, but I don’t take pictures of people’s houses for this blog because that would just get weird fast.
Factories, bridges, that sort of thing is ok by me. Houses? How’d you feel seeing some weirdo in a black raincoat pull up in a car that looks like a Star Wars Stormtrooper’s helmet right in front of your door, and start waving a camera around? Lock and load, right?
Weird. Fast.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Montgomery Locks and Dam, that’s what’s pictured above, and it’s found on the Ohio River. As I pulled up to this view, a group of fisherman type guys were piling out of a pickup and they filed down a hill to get to some opportune spot below. One followed their pathway, after finding a place to park the car. It’s Federal property, so I’m technically an owner with something like a 1/363,000,000th share of the thing. You too.
Parking in this sort of area isn’t about the difficulty of finding a spot to stick the car, instead it’s trying to find a spot where you know it’s legal or socially ok to do so. In some areas of Pittsburgh, it’s considered an affront to park in front of somebody’s abode if you don’t have any particular business with them or a direct neighbor. Google up “the parking chairs of Pittsburgh” if you want to know more about this sociological wrinkle.
I’ll tell you all about this dam tomorrow.
“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.
Plastic Beaver
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One came upon the fact that there’s a town called “Industry” about a half hour’s drive from where one dwells, and it’s found in Western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. Most of Beaver County, which also offers a fairly invisible but lively border with the State of Ohio, is considered to be a part of what I’ve read several references to as “Greater Metropolitan Pittsburgh,” which is a geographic and cultural “something” that I’m still trying to encapsulate in my thoughts.
Since I like to take a look at things myself and in person, a quick drive to the area was undertaken, after scanning Google maps satellite views of the area and looking for any public waterfront areas or parks. Didn’t see much of that, and instead I found myself standing in the parking lot of a closed restaurant along the Ohio River staring at a plastics factory.
The Ohio River snakes through this part of Pennsylvania, flowing from its “Mile Zero” point at the conjuncture of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers in Downtown Pittsburgh, which is about thirty to forty miles away. I spotted a location to get some shots of the ‘Shell Polymers Monaca’ facility using Google maps, as is my habit. The plant is colloquially referred to as the “Shell ethylene cracker plant,” or at least that’s how the local news TV reporters refer to it whenever there’s a report about flaring or odors or discharges. Hey, if it’s good enough for CBS… As it happens, such an event had occurred the night before my visit and workers were still spraying water on a couple of pieces of equipment which were observed as glowing orange hot in videos captured by area residents. There’s lots of controversy surrounding this joint.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After all those years on Newtown Creek, you can probably imagine what I was thinking while shooting these.
Pennsylvania’s terrain offers prodigious amounts of shale oil and actual “Natural Gas.” This plant’s design allows it to convert and refine gas into other commercial chemicals, notably ethylene. Ethylene is apparently the polymer feed stock used for plastic bottles and other disposable containers. The Shell plant’s construction costs put food on a whole lot of tables for a long time, and it continues to be a regional economic engine that is just getting started. According to reports, which should be read with a grain of salt due to corporate and regulatory propaganda, an economic nimbus is starting to emerge in the surrounding communities due to monetary osmosis. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
The chemical this Shell plant is designed to manufacture, using a feedstock of Natural Gas that’s pumped in via pipeline, is a kind of plastic that’s used primarily for soda bottles. This factory is expected to manufacture some 1.6 million metric tons of the stuff a year – when it’s fully online. Regulatory authorities in Pennsylvania have licensed Shell to release 2.2 million tons of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere annually as a byproduct of their operations on the Ohio River in Beaver. The plant has been having growing pains, with frequent flares and reports of other disturbances. Shell says they’re still working on the system.
Saying that, and mentioning the Newtown Creek perspective once again, this is… y’know what? I’m new here in Pennsylvania, and my opinion on this newest of petrochemical mills is meaningless.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the life lessons I’ve learned on Newtown Creek is summed up by one of my frequently offered adages – It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The post apocalyptic conditions left behind when the steel industry picked up stakes back in the 70’s and 80’s in this region means that a lot of things make sense to the people here which conflict with other views of the world. Fracking, plastics factories, etc. Jobs.
Saying that, please use reusable bottles and cans as much as possible. It’s already too late, but you might as well try to not be an asshole about it. Also, pick up after the dog.
Back tomorrow.
“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.
back to West End Overlook Park
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On December 29th, a humble narrator negotiated his way back to the West End Elliot Overlook Park in the Elliot section of Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. I offered a couple of shots I’d captured up here at dawn last week, but even while I was shooting those I was thinking “I have to come back here at sunset, this “view” is a sunset thing.” Also mentioned last week, sunset in Pittsburgh isn’t a couple of hours long like it is in NYC, with its oceanic skies. Due to the geography here, the setting sun casts the hard shadow of Mount Washington across the confluence of the three rivers and the city’s center midway through its descent.
One got to the spot in West End with plenty of time to spare and set up my gear. I had a nice conversation with some kid from the surrounding neighborhood, who was imbibing the devil’s cabbage and chilling out. He was the first of several folks I interacted with while shooting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, lit up all sexy like in the shot above. I had erroneously called it the McKees Rocks Bridge in a prior post but received a correction in the comments from one of you brilliant people.
Alexander McKee, for whom McKees Rocks and both the eponymous bridge and the nearby community of McKeesport are named for, was an early trader based in this region, whom initial research reveals as having displayed a surprisingly modern point of view towards the “First Nation” Native Americans that populated this part of the continent.
At any rate, while I was waiting for the sky and sun to align to my liking, and the local kid whom I was chatting with had departed, I began twisting my tripod head around. “Up, down, all around,” that’s one of my mottoes. A passing couple struck up conversation with me next. They were wearing Steelers gear, and told me that they were “Yinzers” or Pittsburgh “born and bred’s” who had moved out to “the country” a couple of decades ago and were “in town” for a few days to see a theatrical show and attend a sports ball game.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, I spotted the Allegheny Observatory which I had described to you – lords and ladies – a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in that post, I’m attempting to visit the prominences surrounding the three rivers’ valleys to try and develop a sense of spatial relationship. When you’re driving along on the many, many high speed roads that transect Pittsburgh, it is fairly impossible to do so.
I’ve mentioned that there’s a different “etiquette” as far as driving here, as in with the “Pittsburgh Left,” but there’s also a very different polity at work on the roads. They don’t honk quite as much here, but it’s fairly common for somebody to crawl right up your butt if they think you’re driving too slowly. “Too slowly” in this area means you’re only exceeding the speed limit by 20-30%. Following distance is one of the most important thing to be aware of when driving on a highway. For every ten miles of speed, maintain at least one car length of space between you and the car in front of you. If you needed to jam down on and lock your brakes to screech to a complete stop, the minimum amount of space you’d need to come to a complete stop is one car length per ten miles of speed. Yup – that’s close to a hundred feet at 55 mph, which sounds crazy and unrealistic but isn’t. When I can see the brand of sunglasses you’re wearing in my rear view mirror, that’s way too close. Also…
I’m seriously having to learn a new style of performance driving around here, with the crazy hills and the serpentine curves that bend around prominences or along cliffs. Lots of hidden driveways as well, with blind turns happening at high speed, there’s highway exits that appear out of seemingly nowhere, stop signs on highway entrance ramps… a dynamic driving environment, Pittsburgh is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See what I mean about that hard sunset shadow cast by Mount Washington? One hung about at the park overlook, and some woman with a very enthusiastic dog arrived and set herself up nearby to play some sort of steel drum like instrument as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself disappeared. I was enjoying the jam she was playing and decided that I’d like to stick around until the lights in Pittsburgh came on.
Since I’m a suburban asshole now, I feel like I should refer to this downtown section as “The City” but there’s only one place which I’ll ever use that term for and it’s 400 miles diagonally east and north of here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post is being written at the end of the first week of January, and it was literally this morning that – for the first time in 5 weeks – I actually had a fond “miss that” thought about NYC. It was bagel related. The bagels here are strange and anemic little things.
Thankfully, Pittsburgh actually has decent Pizza. Finding a pizzeria that does slices is a bit of a deal (they do 8” personal pizzas instead), but the local Pizza is actually pretty good. They tend to overdo it with toppings, giving into the tendency in this part of the country to throw every kind of meat you can imagine on top of the thing, but the thick crust is nice. Thankfully, it’s not the abrogation of all that’s right which… Philadelphia… calls Pizza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot was the one I was waiting around for, and soon after shooting it I decided to get out of dodge and back to HQ in neighboring Dormont. This decision was influenced by the dynamic driving environment mentioned above, as I don’t feel at all confident driving around at night around here and won’t until I get to know these roads and their peculiarities a bit better.
I had a rare moment of spare time, in between “have-to’s” and rainy days, so I decided to try and make the most of an unusually warm week in Pittsburgh over the first few days of 2023. My reward for the efforts of December and November was the few days I had to explore, I’d posit.
More tomorrow at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
luckily obtainable
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Day two of my 72 hours long visit to Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh involved lots and lots of walking up and down hills during the morning. After riding both the Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines to indulge my obsession with funicular railways, one took advantage of the overlook platform at the latter and set the camera up on the tripod with a filter to allow me to do a few longish exposures. Now, I realize that the shot above has been captured hundreds of thousands of times – it’s a point of view that is somewhat cliche in fact. Saying that, I hadn’t taken it, so I did. Don’t be ashamed of being a tourist when you’re doing tourist things, I always say, so get that selfie with the Statue of Liberty behind you on the Staten Island Ferry when you’re visiting my home town.
As you may have guessed by now, the Amtrak based traveling in the month of September which you’ve been reading about for a while now has been absolute nepenthe for me. Psychologically speaking, I’ve been keeping it together throughout the lockdowns and isolation of the Covid pandemic, but it’s been the same struggle for me as it’s been for everyone. I kept myself busy with night shooting and long walks around Newtown Creek, but the desire for novelty and “something else” has been nagging at me for a while now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The inability to travel in particular, is something which started a few years before Covid occurred. My beloved and dearly departed dog Zuzu’s declining years were tremulous. Kenneling her wasn’t an option if I left town, as her health wasn’t great and she was laser focused on me as her alpha, so I hung in there and barely left Queens. For all the joy and happiness she brought us from the time she was a tiny puppy, I owed her the debt of providing her with a stable and very predictable life during her dotage. Dogs are creatures of habit, and having Daddy disappear for two weeks would have derailed her. She passed away in the summer of 2020, which was a brutal experience for me, since her regular Veterinary care was impacted by Covid. We actually had to pay a traveling Vet to come to the house and euthanize her due to the amount of pain she was in, and during that last week she just laid on her side whimpering from a spinal problem’s pain. From that ugly day in the summer of 2020 till the day Our Lady of the Pentacle and I boarded the train to Vermont’s Burlington, the first thing I’d see in the morning each and every day was the spot where she died. Talk about picking at a scab, huh? It probably sounds dumb, talking about a dog like this, but Zuzu wasn’t an ordinary dog for me. She was very, very good at her dog job, and a good friend.
The good news is that for a few weeks in September of 2021, I was able to see and experience novel and fascinating things which allowed me to wake up and not see that spot first thing in the morning. As finances allow, I’m in the early stages of planning several other Amtrak based excursions for the winter and early spring. Providence beckons, as does Holyoke, and another visit to Pittsburgh seems to be on my list.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m planning on closing out my trip to Pittsburgh’s postings either next week or shortly thereafter, after showing you what I saw on that boat trip which I’ve mentioned a few times that occurred shortly after these shots were collected. That’s when I’ll tell you why that blue bridge in the foreground – pictured above – is so special, and it’s direct connections to LIC.
I’ve been shooting a LOT since I’ve been back, riding the ferries and going places outside of the normal round. I’m now triple vaccinated, as a note. Tours of Newtown Creek have occurred for private groups – students and so on – and I recently led two public facing walking tours of Greenpoint for Open House NY Weekend.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I have to admit it was glorious to feel freedom again. I don’t mean the horseshit “freedom” that the rednecks proffer which is actually a form of indentured servitude to other people’s ideas and personal fortunes, rather I mean the ability to just do whatever the hell you want to and on your own schedule. A humble narrator is 54 years old, but I’m still in surprisingly good condition despite the life I’ve lived. The heart condition, as I was recently told by my staff of doctors, is well managed and not at all life threatening at the moment but I do need to drop some of the pandemic era weight that I’ve packed on. A bit of arthritis has been plaguing me for a couple of years now, but I’m 54, so…
Saying that, I can still easily do dawn to dusk photowalk days. That’s what I proved to myself, in Pittsburgh, in particular. I didn’t have to worry about somebody else’s leaky bladder, bad knees, spinal issues, psychological problems, or general inability to move their bodies around the world on this 72 hour mission. I also didn’t feel compelled to explain anything to anyone, which was simply awesome. When you know a little something about everything, as I do, you end up having to answer questions others offer all day long.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having finished up the shots from the Duquesne Incline, one rode the funicular down to the south side flatlands of the Monongahela River, at the foot of Mt. Washington. A pedestrian bridge carried me down and across a high volume roadway, and I made my way to the Three Rivers Heritage Trail on this side of the City of Pittsburgh.
Observationally speaking, this side of the City isn’t quite as “post industrial” as the Allegheny/North Side is. Active freight rail tracks were humming with activity, and that’s the sort of thing which just draws me right in…
After a quick phone call to home, letting Our Lady of the Pentacle know that I hadn’t been carried off by a Mongol horde or something and that I was safe and sound, I scuttled off in the direction of my eventual boat tour. The dock was about a mile and a half from where I was standing, and I wondered how I’d fill the three or so hours until my scheduled ticket would be redeemed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As if I’d have to worry, huh? This CSX locomotive was hauling a coal train along the shores of Pittsburgh, and that’s the Fort Pitt bridge in the background. Seriously, this is one of the most visually interesting cities in the Northeastern United States.
More next week at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 