FRICTION NYC

For those of you not lucky enough to live in Queens, you’ve missed out on something over the past few weeks. A pungent smell of wastewater has hovered over the area. Only over the past few days have we had a reprieve. It’s kind of nasty that the collective “movements” of my neighborhood have produced this gas – straight from their colons to my nose. A good portion of the crackers as well as my roomie are involved in the business of environmental engineering. And while these poo-lovers may not mind taking their work home with them, I am less than thrilled.

I live in Astoria with the Bowery Bay wastewater plant mere blocks away. NYC DEP operates 14 wastewater plants citywide that treat an average of 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater every day. From the official website, Bowery Bay services 150 million gallons of wastewater daily and covers 850,000 people in northwest Queens. It’s also one of the 8 that has it’s own facilities for the dewatering of the sludge into biosolids that can be used for agriculture. Part of the sludge treatment involves using large boilers to heat the sludge for odor control. On Nov 29, sparks from welders involved in restoration/renovation of the 1930’s buildings set off a fire that damaged the precious poo-cookers. Now they’re waiting for the new boilers and parts to arrive so we can return to the happy times of hot feces. You can only enter the area with a full haz-mat suit and respirator, that’s some potent crap.

The Bowery Bay operators may have won the Sewage Olympics (I’m not kidding, I wish I were) but they haven’t been able to tame this stink. With incomplete heating, the stink only gets worse rather than better. Then a month ago, they decided to move the sludge away from the general public. Great idea, but better to have left it alone because the move stirred up an unholy odor and released the current bouquet we’re now facing.

Both the Post and the Daily News ran recent articles with quotes from the DEP about the months involved to order parts, do repairs, and fight with the contractor who defaulted on those repairs. They should make the contractors try to exercise in the neighborhood which I made the mistake of doing recently. City councilman Peter Vallone is on the case and got them to promise that the smell will be gone within 2 weeks. They seem to be right. I went over to the plant recently to check it out and there was no stench. In fact the whole area smelled sort of like grape bubbleyum. One of my engineer insiders says that is likely the masking agent used to cover the smell. Grape turds = yummy. The best line from the NY Post article has to be the quote, “It smells like 20 dogs took a dump in my yard.”

As I was looking around on the internet for information about the stink, I found that I was not the only one wondering why my backyard smelled like the inside of a Port-a-potty. Both Joey in Astoria and Astorians.com ran pieces about the stink. It is a true unifier and equalizer. Too bad it’s gone, though. I was hoping it would keep all you damn Manhattanites out of the Beer Garden.