The signing of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972 was the beginning of a long journey for the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn’s Green Point neighborhood.
Thirty-seven years later, the plant has transformed from an overburdened, under-productive eyesore into a visually magnificent, contemporary wonder hugging the waterway between Brooklyn and Queens.
The plant’s most striking feature is its new digester eggs, 145 feet tall and 80 feet in diameter. Their low-reflectivity stainless steel cladding prevents dangerous glare for the area’s heavy aviation traffic.
To complete the visual effect, a lighting arrangement, designed by artist Hervé Descottes of American-French company L’Observatoire International, shines five 5,000-watt metal halide fixtures on each digester. A blue filter affixed to the energy-saving bulbs conveys the idea of water. Blue uplighting and downlighting on other buildings visually tie the whole plant together while providing task lighting at night.
Making it new
The digesters are only the most obvious of many improvements at the treatment plant — cosmetic and functional. Around 1980, the city began looking at a Newtown Creek upgrade, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the process actually began. In that year, the property was expanded to 53 acres to accommodate a more modern plant.
Newtown Creek is the city’s largest wastewater treatment plant, serving about one million residents within 25 square miles and treating 18 percent of the city’s wastewater with a dry-weather flow of 310 mgd. Upgrades will eventually raise wet-weather capacity to 700 mgd to serve a projected 1.33 million residents by 2045.
The upgrades include a visitor center and a quarter-mile Waterfront Nature Walk that provides views of the city and surrounding landscape. Designed by environmental sculptor George Trakas, the walk is designed “to evoke the rich, continually evolving environmental, industrial and cultural histories of the local area,” according to The New York Times. It was funded through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ “One Percent for Art” program.
Phased construction
The plant has remained on line throughout design and construction, phased over a decade. Visual ordering of the site is achieved through carefully planned and placed building forms, materials and color, along with perimeter fencing, aerial walkways and bridges. Large glass areas provide natural light in machinery rooms.
The exterior also includes a “One Percent for Art” component. Green-space buffers between the facility and the street helped the plant win two awards for Excellence in Design from the New York City Art Commission for responding sensitively to the challenge of locating a large industrial project in a residential neighborhood.
In September 2007, New York Department of Environ-mental Protection opened the completed Waterfront Nature Walk, giving the public its first waterfront view of Newtown Creek in decades. It also fit in with Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC goals to ensure broader public waterfront access and increase water quality throughout the city.
The eight digesters, which process up to 1.5 million gallons of biosolids daily, were welded on site. Structural pieces were brought from Texas and fabricated by Chicago Bridge & Iron Co. It took three months to assemble each one. The first four came into service in April 2008 and the rest were on line by year’s end.
Response to the digesters has been tremendous, according to plant superintendent Jim Pynn. “The project has huge public appeal, and we’ve had lots of interest from trade and consumer publications,” he says. “The New York Times has covered us several times, and there are lots of people blogging about it. We’ve even had inquiries from film scouts about using the plant as a movie set.”
Indeed, the plant was used as a backdrop in a recent anti-litter TV spot. As NYDEP commissioner Emily Lloyd told the Times, “This stunning plant demonstrates that with care, even the most utilitarian infrastructure can be an exciting and inviting neighbor.”
