Newtown Creek

Manhattan skyline behind Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Manhattan skyline behind Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Newtown Creek is a natural creek that now resembles more of an industrial waterway and serves as a divider between Brooklyn and Queens in New York. I recently got a boat tour of it through Open House NY with superb guides from Newtown Creek Alliance and was able to see all the industrial facilities that are on it as well as a few places where its natural state is peaking through. Newtown Creek is heavily polluted because of New York City’s combined sanitary wastewater and stormwater system, which has led to untreated wastewater flowing into the creek during heavy rain events, and also industrial pollution, which has led to it being a Superfund site. A trip down Newtown Creek is almost history lesson down NYC’s past with some historic sites still visible like an old Standard Oil building. More modern parts of NYC also lie on the creek, most famously the newly redesigned and rebuilt Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and its eight stainless steel digester eggs.

Brooklyn Queens Expressway

Brooklyn Queens Expressway

cement plant

cement plant

DEP boat

DEP boat

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and DEP offices

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and DEP offices

Fuel tanks and barge

Fuel tanks and barge

LPG (or possibly methane) tanks

LPG (or possibly methane) tanks

mud flats

mud flats

Recycling facility

Recycling facility

Sailboats at entrance to Newtown Creek

Sailboats at entrance to Newtown Creek

old Standard Oil facility

old Standard Oil facility

swing bridge

swing bridge

Tanks

Tanks

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Sewage outfall with birds on boom line

Sewage outfall with birds on boom line