Passion and Beauty, Even at a Sewage Plant

Home Brooklyn Life Passion and Beauty, Even at a Sewage Plant

By Miranda Neubauer

View of the Manhattan Skyline from the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (Miranda Neubauer/ The Brooklyn Ink)
Skyline above, Newtown Creek Plant below (Miranda Neubauer/ The Brooklyn Ink)

The leaves that make autumn such a pleasant sight for many New Yorkers have the exact opposite effect for Jim Pynn.

“It’s a horror,” he says. The reason:  He’s the plant superintendent for the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and it’s his job to clean out the tons of leaves that come in through the sewage system each fall and threaten to clog the pipes and machinery that perform a crucial water purification process for the city.

Both run-off water from the street, which can carry leaves and other debris, and sewage from the city’s sanitation system converge in the plant.

Over one million people in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan depend on the plant, but most of them are probably unaware of its existence– or the degree to which Pynn can monitor their behavior just by observing water usage levels. He says he can observe the daily influx of commuters into Manhattan every morning, who, he jokes, drink their Starbucks coffee before heading to the bathroom and flushing the toilet. He can see water usage declining later at night, or note sharp spikes during Super Bowl half-time breaks, suggesting that many football fans are not watching the expensive commercials.

At least 700 New Yorkers got to know the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint up close over Columbus Day weekend, during the annual Open House New York tours.

For visitors to the site, the Sunday afternoon outing began by stepping into an elevator to go 140 feet high into the plant’s so called Digester Eggs overlooking the 53 acre facility on the banks of the Newtown Creek. Up that high there is only a slight unpleasant odor.  The perch gives the visitors a gorgeous view of the New York City skyline, with the United Nations and the Empire State Building in the distance, and looking down a not-so-gorgeous view of the settling tanks bubbling with thick brown liquid.

Director of Plant Operations Art Spangel told the visitors that the plant was one of fourteen serving the New York City area. It handles 240 to 250 million gallons of sewage on an average day, a number that can rise to 540 million gallons during rainy weather, he said.

After spending a short time up in the digester eggs, a curious visitor could go on to see and hear Pynn’s animated, passionate presentation on the system he helps to oversee.

He explained that he sees the treatment of the sewage, 99 percent of which is water, as a progression of the digestive process that begins in the stomach. The microorganisms that begin breaking down organic material during digestion are still hungry for more when they reach the Newtown plant, he explains, so the sewage treatment process involves keeping the process going. He compared it to the old computer game Pacman, with the microorganisms continuing to feed on the sewage inflow.

“We replicate nature,” he said. The treated water eventually flows into the East River.  While that water would not be suitable for drinking, based on other indicators it is nearly in “pastoral conditions,” Pynn said.

Conditions around the plant, once famous for its stink, have also improved for its neighbors, Pynn said. When he arrived at the plant before 2000, the odor was prompting 100 complaints per month, he said. Today, with improved technology deployed, the reduced impact on residents is evident in the “amount of calls I do not get anymore”, he said.

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said, it is no longer possible for him to take visitors down inside the plant to show them the inner workings of the sewage system. Today, he seeks to connect with visitors through his enthusiasm for his work. He encouraged tour participants to spread the message of increasing the amount of green, permeable, surfaces for rain water that would reduce the amount of waste in the sewage system

He spoke proudly about how his high school science background from Brooklyn Tech served as the entry way for his work with the Department of Environmental Protection. Pynn noted that a large portion of the other employees were blue-collar workers without a college background, highlighting his line of work as a potential career path for students with a math and science background and an interest in civil service.

For Anne Lewison, an architect working on the new World Trade Center, going to the top of the Digester Eggs was one of the highlights of the tour. But she also felt that Pynn’s message was important.

“I just think that everyone should come, just because the little tiny things they’ve told us, don’t waste water.  When you see what it does to his work and he presents it very personably, then you start to see how important it is that everyone is much more conscientious,” she said. “I think that every public school should have tours here, ever single kid, because they are the ones that will then not put tampons in the toilet.”

The visitor’s center at Newtown Creek on Greenpoint Ave. is open Fridays and Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

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