The New York Grapevine, Sh@t Tits Visitor Center/ Sewage Plant Visitor Center Newtown Creek Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt, DEP ,New Croton Reservoir, upstate.

Sh@t Tits Visitor Center/ Sewage Plant Visitor Center
by Joel Chaffee
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
New York, NY
Views: 10,604

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For reasons I cannot fully articulate, I thought that, upon my visit

last weekend, the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant would be

crowded with the curious who, like myself, came to see what they will

let you see at the sewage plant.

Notice it is not a Sewage but Wastewater Plant. This sheen, applied to

the routine of processing 1.3 billion gallons of sewage daily, is the

aesthetic the DEP is pushing. Their helpful pamphlet - the Newtown

Creek Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt - has glossy, wonderful explanations,

like this about the large silver "digesters": "Each...holds three

million gallons of sludge, the substance that remains after the water

is removed from the wastewater. It looks like black mayonnaise." Yum!

But the pamphlet does heroically continue, "Like your stomach the

digesters get fed three times a day." And somewhat like my stomach

after reading this pamphlet, the digesters eventually "produce clean

water, or 'effluent', which is then released into the City's waterways."

Elsewhere the pamphlet instructs that "it is very important to dispose

of your trash properly. If you litter, your trash sadly can end up in

places like Newtown Creek." (The poetic phrase "your trash sadly"

should be the name of the Plant's house band.) "Sometimes," the

pamphlet continues, "you can see DEP skimmer boats collecting this

floating materials from our waterways." Or you can see what there was

to be seen that fine afternoon on the Creek: huge barges of trash

floating on the filthiest waterway this side of everywhere. (See

accompanying photo.) Whatever DEP employee gets stuck skimming trash

off of Newtown Creek must agonize in daily existential crisis.

The digesters are also known as "eggs" and even "shit tits." This is

well known by the staff at the Visitor Center, which was so very new

and clean it was like an enormous photo op that no one showed up for.

The Visitor Center sits on Greenpoint Avenue, facing the public but,

given the digesters and the enormous funnels that hover over a large

part of the 53-acre site, not really the face of the Plant. The first

floor of the Center is full of large colorful murals explaining what

the Plant does, and how. Much attention is given to the New Croton

Reservoir, upstate.

Ascending the stairs to the upper floor, we found a guide (whose name

escapes) who was happy to show us her workplace. The upper floor,

aside from more murals and the restrooms (which seemed out of place at

a sewage plant) features a conference room for lectures, replete with

a large model of the plant.

The Visitor Center, and its literature, are so clean as to be

suspicious. Greenpoint has one of the richest and most polluted

histories in the U.S. - from the Greenpoint Oil Spill to the Meeker

Avenue Plumes; from Standard Oil to National Grid; from waste transfer

stations to shit tits. This history is ignored by the Center, and

seemed unknown to the staff. But this industrial havoc is the history

of The Garden Spot of America, as Rep. John Rooney termed Greenpoint

so many years ago.

While it does make one shudder to imagine, all I really wanted to see

at the Plant that I did not see - somehow - was sewage. But I suppose

that is what the Creek is for.

reasons I cannot fully articulate, I thought that, upon my visit