Every single year millions of tons of food scraps and foul-smelling and hazardous sewage waste are properly disposed of and recycled. This sewage, trash and sludge is converted into drinking water for millions of New York City residents, as well as provides an energy source for parts of the city.
The treatment plant has had its fair share of love and hate from both the locals as well as from passengers who drive nearby to and from work or home every day.
“People hate the smell but don’t really know what goes on in here. They think it’s just a giant sewer,” said Kristen of Williamsburg.
“The area smells like a dump 300 days out of the year, and that’s because it literally is,” she added, about the foul smell that penetrates through your closed car windows as you drive by.
“It’s so strong that you sometimes think you smell it even when you’re not around it.”
She stated that some days the smell is not as bad as other days.
Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, located in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn is the largest of New York City’s 14 waste-water treatment plants. It was originally constructed in 1967, and went under a massive renovation which spanned from 1998 to 2014.
The way this system works is that billions or even trillions of microorgamisms and bacteria are introduced into the toxic sludge in order to break down the components via anaerobic digestion, a natural biological process, and “eat up” all of the organic stuff in the digestion chambers. The bacteria then release methane gas, which is collected, stored and used as an energy source to produce electricity, heat, or power vehicles. Other left overs are then made into compost or peat moss which is used for gardening and farming.
The facility was expanded and redesigned and now includes a quarter-mile Newtown Creek Waterfront Nature Walk, which provides a tour around the treatment plant.
According to an article on nyc.gov, “NYC delivers 1.3 billion gallons
of safe drinking water to over 8 million city residents and
another 1 million consumers who live in Westchester,
Putnam, Ulster County and Orange County north of the City, every single day.
(Source:) http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wwsystem.pdf
The tour visitors at the facility were mostly amazed at how all this garbage was being recycled so efficiently.
“This thing turns crap into tap water and power,” said Josep Moralez, a local nearby resident who was taking a tour of the facility as part of the “Nature Walk”, as he cracked a half smile.
The city plans to continue to expand its organic composting services in New York City which was started under former Mayor Micheal Bloomberg. This would help bring more organic material into Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant to be recycled and broken down instead of it ending up in landfills.
How biogas is produced
Gil, good start!
I have a few comments. Perhaps you could work on a more visual aspect within the story and find some sort of conflict. As of now, it’s more informative or historical than it is a story of struggle or whatnot. Also, be weary of commas!
It was starting to roll forward with the introduction of quotes, but it needs to go somewhere with them! It feels somewhat unfinished. Once you get the voices in, they disappear. So they need a bigger presence in the story. Try to capture the employees and their experience, the feelings of the neighborhood, and all of that. You start saying that in your nutgraph but don’t continue it within the story. Make it more about the neighborhood than the plant and facts.
Keep going! 🙂
I know next to nothing about treatment plants so your article taught me a lot. It’s interesting to see how innovative and creative we are when it comes to trying to find new uses for unwanted things, even garbage! You also have some really great quotes in here.
Thanks Yelena. Thank you Stephanie.