Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Architects: Ennead Architects Environmental Engineers: Greeley and Hansen, Hazen and Sawyer and Malcolm Pirnie Lighting Designer: Herv Descottes of LObservatoire International Nature Walk Designer: George Trakas Park Designer: George Trakas Sculpture Feature: Vito Acconci

Owner: New York City Department of Environmental Protection Site size: 53 acres Total construction cost: $4.5 billion Processing Capacity: 700 million gallons per day Residents Served: 1 million

Dried solid waste generated by a person in a year: 66 pounds Methane Captured: enough to provide 20% of the plants energy demands + heat 2500 homes

Overview The Newton Creek Wastewater treatment facility located in the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York sits on the on the edge of the Newtown Creek, a polluted waterway and an Environment Protection Agency designated Superfund site. It is the largest of New York Citys 14 wastewater treatment plants, nearing completion after a 15-year $5 million renovation and expansion. The plant covers 53 acres, its signature feature being the digester eggs, eight massive shimmering egg/onion shaped domes that capture methane gas from human waste for electricity and heat generation. The waste treatment process, as detailed by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection:

First, the raw sludge is digested in oxygen-free tanks where it is heated and mixed for several days. This digestion process stabilizes the sludge by converting much of the organic material into water, carbon dioxide and methane gas. The digested sludge is what is then transported by sludge vessels. After arriving at a dewatering facility, the sludge is then sent to centrifuges, which remove much of the water. This material is then either composted, limed, or heat dried before it is land applied, consistent with Federal and receiving-site requirements. D.E.P. and its contractors process the citys sewage sludge into a beneficial product that is land applied as a fertilizer. The wastewater treatment plants use physical, chemical and biological processes to remove on average more than 90 percent of the organic material in the sewage.
The Newton Creek Wastewater treatment is unique in that it locates a massive piece of infrastructure in a residential community with little conflict. In initiating the expansion, the city, architects and engineers worked closely with the community to generate a plan that not only served the future needs of the populace, but also responded to the communities

aesthetic and environmental concerns. The plant includes a visitor center, open to the public, that illuminates the journey of the New York City water from the Catskills, through 7,000 miles of tunnels and pipes, and then back out through 7,400 miles of sewer. They offer regular tours with the plants director the second Tuesday of every month. As part of New York Citys Percent for Art law passed in 1983 by the late Mayor Koch, the project incorporated a novel nature walk designed by George Trakas. The nature walk offers unique views of the plant, as well as close encounters with the Newtown Creek industrial legacy among a carefully curated selection of indigenous flora. The visitor center features a serpentine fountain designed by artist and landscape architect Vito Acconci that mirrors the journey of water to New York City. In addition, the plants signature feature, the digester eggs, are aglow in dramatic blue lighting, from lighting designer Herv Descottes, offset by brilliant white lighting that highlights the plants industrial features. The plant marks a new high point in civic infrastructure, and serves as a model for sustainability and environmental awareness for the future metropolis.

History: The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment occupies a vital yet often overlooked role in the very existence of the city; without sanitation the urban environment would be prohibitively contaminated. In The City in History, Lewis Mumford notes, the disposal of ordurehas always been the bte noire of close urban settlements; and it still is. Most of the big cities today, throughout the world, have not yet showed sufficient technical resourcefulness in dealing with this problem; for in their reliance upon the flush toilet, they pollute the streams and waste the precious nitrogenous materials that might have enriched the soil. Mumford argues that responsible waste management in medieval Europe actually enabled the development of the city, noting that increased agricultural yield from fields enriched by recycled human waste supported growing town populations. He writes wooded areas in Germany, a wilderness in the ninth century, gave way to plowland; the boggy low countries, which had supported only a handful of hardy fisherman, were transformed into one of the most productive soils in Europe by means of night soil. In Emergence, Stephen Johnson amusingly observes in the case of the Middle Ages we can safely say the early village

residents shat themselves into fully fledged towns. In a process he calls bootstrapping, a feedback loop, defined by cyclical amplification, emerges by the aggregation of humans, wherein waste recycling increases food production, which supports more people, who produce more waste, which further increases food production and so on and so on. While this loop of the nutrient cycle appears elegant in its simplicity and delightful in its results, this system can also have negative consequences, particularly considering the ability of human waste to carry potentially deadly contagions. As density increases, so does the volume of excrement generated, and this high concentration of hazardous waste becomes increasingly difficult to manage. Thus, the modern city is not only a product of energy delivery systems, in the form of resources, but also the safe processing and removal of waste. Of all necessities for life water is the most vital, and the Newtown Creek Wastewater plant is the most recent and arguably penultimate incarnation in managing the urban water cycle of New York. Water resources have dictated the fate of New York from its inception as a Dutch colony. Manhattan is an island, and though surrounded by tidal straits, none of this brackish water is potable. So while situated in a vast and theoretically defensible harbor on the west coast of the New World, and thus strategic outpost for trade, poor water sources crippled the colony internally. When the British arrived to take the outpost in 1664, they met with little resistance. Among the reasons given by the capitulating governor to his superiors in the Dutch East India company for his uncontested surrender, the fort was and is without well or cistern. Previous to this time it was hastily provided with 20 or 24 water barrels or pitched casks removed from ships and filled with water. This response was deemed very strange to the Company. The English took over without so much as a pistol shot, and dug the fledgling colonys first well, the new governor noting I am very proud of a well in the fort which I caused to be made beyond the imagination of the Dutch, who would bleeve it till they saw it finisht, which produces very good water. Thus the fort grew to a vast city and the economic capital of a new nation independent of the British over the next hundred years, all while relying on a spotty network of wells and cisterns and the inadequate fresh water resources of the Collect Pond, which were rapidly polluted by industry. The demand for water great, with the wealthy relying on tea-water vendors, who carted in water from privately-owned clean wells uptown, then the country

and the poor having to content themselves with contaminated groundwater. Additionally fire was a threat to a densifying city, with much of the West Side burning in a 1776 conflagration. In 1799, Aaron Burr, an enterprising Democratic Republican businessman and shrewd politician, secured a charter for the Bank of Manhattan Company under the guise of raising capital to construct a network for delivering fresh water from the Bronx River to the city. However the priority of the Company was not public service, but to contend with Alexander Hamiltons control of the government sanctioned Bank of New York, whose policies favored and funded the then dominant Federalist party. While the Company constructed a small network of pipes servicing the wealthy and a cistern on Chambers Street that relied on wells, thus delivering water of no better quality than the polluted Collect Pond water to a privileged population. The bank and the sway of the Republicans continued to grow much to the consternation of Hamilton, who in response continually thwarted Burrs personal political ambitions. The feud boiled over and in 1804, Burr shot Hamilton in a duel. In 1808 the bank sold its exclusive right to water operations to the city, but continued to pump water for decades in fear of losing its charter. Throughout this charade the mission of bringing ample fresh water to the city languished. Without clean water and sewers, the populace continued to rely on a contaminated aquifer and cesspools and unsanitary conditions festered in the rapidly growing city. In 1832 the cholera pandemic reached the city, claiming 3500 lives primarily in the overcrowded poor district surrounding the now filled-in Collect Pond known as Five Points. In 1835, a second great fire swept the city, burning a vast swath of the densely packed timber frame buildings downtown, including the stock exchange. City officials recognized that fresh water supplies were crucial to the city for safety and sanitation, though they did not fully understand the mechanisms of disease transmission. In 1834, legislation was passed, An Act to Provide for Supplying the City of New York with Pure and Wholesome Water, giving an appointed Aqueduct Commission the authority to construct a vast waterworks, pulling water from the Croton watershed. Begun in 1837, the work took a mere 5 years, consisting of some some 41 miles of infrastructure, running from a reservoir, through a series of dams, pipes and tunnels, over the Harlem river via the Romanesque High Bridge, and down Fifth Avenue to a massive reservoir on 42nd Street.

The waterworks were activated on June 22, 1842, and 22 hours later, working primarily by gravity, fresh mountain water arrived in Midtown. For the first time since the arrival of Europeans, through bold engineering and messy political maneuvering, Manhattan finally had ample water for its burgeoning population. So momentous was the event, that it was memorialized with civic architecture, a public symbol at the culmination of a largely invisible system. On October 14th, 1942 a ceremony was held in City Hall Park, and the Croton water was celebrated with a massive fountain that ecstatically sprayed the new water 50 feet into the Manhattan sky. The impact on the city was profound, most notably with the installation of indoor plumbing for the private home, and the construction of its corollary, the sewer. However, the business model of the aqueduct was fee-for-service, and many of the citys lower class citizens could not afford access this amenity. Furthermore, the building of public sewers lagged, those built relying instead on private investment from those serviced. The influx of abundant water combined with the diminished use of local wells and insufficient drainage caused the ground water to rise. While the wealthy enjoyed the luxury of flush toilets, they inadvertently replenished an already fetid aquifer with their evacuations, an aquifer that vast a vast underprivileged swath of the city still relied upon for sustenance. Flush toilets increased the volume of waste, overburdening an already underdeveloped sanitation and drainage system. Coupled with the return of cholera in 1849, the insidious arrangement turned vicious. Provided with more flow, the cholera bacterium were able to quickly cycle from the human intestine to the water supply and back again. The 1849 epidemic claimed 5,071 lives, returning in 1854 for 2,509 more, and in 1866 taking 1,137, and disproportionately affecting those with the least means. However, the London epidemic of 1854 yielded critical new science, with John Snows discovery that, contrary to the prevailing theory of miasma and vice as cause, cholera was certainly a transmitted by tainted water. Armed with this new science, the New York City Metropolitan Board of Health, newly formed in 1866 in response to persistent unsanitary conditions and in anticipation of the inevitable re-arrival of cholera via Ellis Island (Europe suffered a well publicized cholera epidemic in 1865) was able to mitigate the impact of the 1866 epidemic. As science developed, thus the emerged the mandate for bold government action to institute modern water management systems in order promote health and safety,

and in turn sustain and grow the industrial city. The Aqueduct Commission was once again charged the duty of engineering gravity waterworks, this time to remove the water they had brought via public sewers. Water use expanded rapidly in New York, and by the turn to the twentieth century residents used more water per capita per day than any other city in the world. However, as the population continued to grow at incredible pace, the threat of water pollution emerged. The impressive network of water systems that dumped their effluent directly into adjacent water bodies, the Hudson River, East River, and Jamaica Bay, operated at such a scale as to overwhelm natural filtering processes. Though not used for drinking, the city relied on these water bodies for food production and increasingly, leisure. As the Brooklyn Bridge allowed the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company to link the metropolis to the shore via electrified railroads, Coney Island became a day trip and a destination for urbanites. Yet the water was compromised. In 1886 the first sewage treatment plant was built in Coney Island, followed shortly by 26th Ward and Jamaica water pollution control plants, relying on rudimentary methods to remove only large solid particles. In 1904, as research firmly established the existence of and link between waterborne bacteria and human illness, the Metropolitan Sewerage commission was created. The commission studied the rhythms and flows and quality of New Yorks waterways and generated a master plan for the construction and location of wastewater treatment plants. Eight more wastewater treatment plants were constructed through 1965 bringing the citys total to 11. The Newtown Creek Wastewater treatment plant was commissioned in 1965 and completed in 1967. Sited on only 30 acres, a relatively small site as a result of the residential density in the area, it was nonetheless the largest of the citys plants. The 12 operating plants performed only primary water treatment, wherein solids are allowed to settle and separated, removing only 65% of pollutants are removed, before releasing wastewater into adjacent waterway. The separated solids, called sludge, were pumped onto barges and dumped at sea, approximately 8 miles out from the gateway to the harbor, framed by Coney Island and Sandy Hook, where it was shown to accumulate on the ocean floor. In 1972 the Federal Government passed the Clean Water Act, mandating that all wastewater undergo secondary treatment, whereby sludge is aerated to facilitate digestion by oxygen

consuming bacteria, releasing methane gas and removing 85% of contaminants. Newtown was upgraded accordingly, along with all city plants. In 1988, Congress passed the Ocean Dumping Act, forbidding the disposal of sewage sludge in the open ocean. Thus, New York City established a program to dewater sewage sludge, producing biosolid cake, which is safe for land disposal as fertilizer for farmland. While Newtown was not upgraded to include a dewatering facility, it pumped its sludge onto Department of Environmental Protection Sludge boats for transport to nearby dewatering facilities. In 1998 another 15-year upgrade was approved for Newtown Wastewater treatment plant, modernizing the plant and bringing into code with federal guidelines. The plant goes a step further; beyond treating water and recycling biosolids, the massive digester eggs capture methane gas, which it in turn uses to generate energy to power the plant, selling excess back to the power company. In addition, the plant features numerous community engagement features, including attractive architecture, dazzling lighting, an education center, and a nature walk. In addition it houses laboratories and research facilities for testing the quality of New York City effluent and the efficiency of its water pollution control plants. Thus, through thoughtful design, this critical yet typically shunned component city infrastructure is treated not as a necessary evil, but showcased as a vital and cherished piece of civic architecture. Newtown is marks a significant advance in technical resourcefulness and conservation, providing an almost comprehensive solution for treating wastewater adequately for safe release into the East River. There are still challenges, primarily the raw sewage that spews into our waterways from Combined Sewer Overflow during heavy rain. However there is hope, the city now captures 73% of all stormwater and the figure is increasing. In addition New York is pioneering nitrogen sedimentation technology, that removes the excess nitrogen in wastewater which, though harmless to humans, wreaks havoc on natural systems. Most of all, the Newtown Wastewater Treatment Plant celebrates the long journey through space and time of our most vital resource.

Architects History

The Newtown Creek Wastewater treatment plant was designed by Ennead Architects, a firm of approximately 175 staff based in New York. Ennead is the legacy firm of founder James Polshek, and was rebranded upon his retirement in 2005. The name Ennead is taken from an ancient Greek word meaning a collection of nine things, used to describe a group of ancient Egyptian deities, and was selected to reflect the number of partners at the time. Following the tradition of Polshek Partners, the work of the firm focuses on high profile public work, with a client list of almost exclusively non-profit institutions. Their design work under Polsheks auspices has been criticized for being conventional or clich, with the former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp labeling it base-line modern. However, not every building in the city can or even should be a flamboyant artistic gesture. Thoughtful, visually appealing, and function oriented design is a respectable approach that certainly has a role to play. Enneads recent work on a parking garage for the New York Botanical Gardens or the Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing unit in the Bronx, are, to quote Michael Sorkin on Polshek, crisp, refined, and elegant, qualities we all like to think of as quintessentially New York. Site and Context The Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant is located in Greenpoint, New York on the banks of the Newtown Creek, critical to its function involves discharging treated water to the water system. The Newtown Creek is an estuary that forms the boundary between Brooklyn and Queens. Formerly a major watershed for the area, the creek was channelized with retaining walls and dredged as a shipping canal in the second half of the 19th century. Decades of harmful industrial practices and urban water management have left the creek stagnant and heavily polluted. Its primary inflow is now combined sewer overflow, industrial wastewater, and stormwater runoff. Due to its extensive contamination, including a significant oil spill, the creek was declared a Superfund site in 2010, clearing the way for evaluation and cleanup. The plant is bound on three sides by Provost Street, Greenpoint Avenue, and Henry Street. While its immediate surroundings are largely industrial, there is a significant residential population within a half-mile radius. Built in 1965, the plant was controversial given its scale and proximity to the community, though it is worth noting that no infrastructure project dealing with waste, however necessary, is ever looked upon favorably by those closest too it.

Critically, the Newtown Creek Wastewater plant attempts to mitigate its impact, no just by technological means that limit pollution and noxious odors, but through formal appeal, outreach, and creating public space.

Form & Use / Materials & Methods / Imagery The Newtown Creek Wastewater plant is a vital piece of modern infrastructure whose primary function is to filter New York City wastewater. It is located at the critical nexus, at the convergence of effluent from our vast municipal water system and the delicate riverine network that defines our ecosystem. The form of the plant is primarily governed by the function of the complex and interrelated processes that wastewater must undergo for safe discharge. Thus complex consists of sprawling aeration fields, linked by a dazzling array of pipes borne on enormous trusses, which connect to massive tanks, the sum of the parts effectively refining the byproducts of life. These industrial forms are inherently alien yet stunning, foreboding but curious, and ultimately sublime. Such infrastructure is massive relative to the urban scale, and thus often consigned to the outskirts of town. Yet rather than pursuing a strictly functional design driven by engineering, the design of this plant was guided architects. Thus, through their hand, the plant works in dialogue with the city, highlighting the expansive water and network it mediates, and mitigating the shocking disparity between the plant and its milieu. They utilize the typical language of institution and industry: poured and cast concrete, concrete masonry units, glazed ceramic tile, and brushed steel, but also employs some high design finishes, including curtain walls and iconic lighting. Furthermore they incorporate two unique pieces of program that engage the community, a visitor center and a nature walk. The compounds principle defining forms are the iconic digester eggs, egg shaped tanks that tower 100 feet over the vast field of ground level aeration tanks. The digester eggs capture methane that is a byproduct of the anerobic bacteria used to process solid waste. The eggs capture this methane, which is then used to generate power. The eggs voluptuous geometric forms are sheathed in a mat stainless steel panels, arrayed in tidy vertical rows, creating the impression of ribbing or striping, which accent the delicate curves and elongate

their shape. The overall effect is a clearly delineated geometry, made seductive by the luminous burnished surface reflecting the opulent lighting and ambience of the urban sky. The digester eggs sit in two pods of four, arranged in a square, and are crowned with cylindrical service rooms linked by bridges. These rooms echo the round shape of the eggs below and soften edge of the crisp geometry of the bridges. The bridges themselves are flat and compact, comprised of bold white trusses with glazed with by aqua tinted curtain wall and lit with brilliant spot accents that seem to sparkle from below. Equally unique are two massive parallel pipelines, over 10 feet in diameter, which traverse the compound, elevated on trusses to allow for circulation beneath. The pipelines are clad in a similar brushed steel as the digester eggs, their lateral trajectory and smooth surface cooly contrasting with the forest of vibrant yellow-painted vertical supports below. These pipelines run through the center of the sprawling aeration tanks, eventually crossing the main road at the primary gate and connecting to the main building. The main building and the centrifuge building flank the digester eggs and both follow similar form, a cluster of connected but varying volumes differentiated by function. The largest volumes, which form the center of these clusters, house specialized equipment in soaring multistory spaces. Their rectangular forms are softened by gently bowed rooftops clad in brushed metal. The buildings opaque surfaces are clad in long rectangular deep-blue glazed tiles, an enticing crisp pattern that contrasts neatly from the slick roof surfaces. Though not accessible, these buildings showcase their maze of pipes and pumps through high curtain walls which break the corners, disrupting verticality by means of prominent horizontal mullions. Disrupting the massiveness of these core buildings are multiple smaller volumes, rendered distinct through colored tile and crisp rectilinear geometry. The vertical circulation is distinct from the structure, contained in tall slender windowless volumes clad in square gridded green-glazed tile. Alternative programs, most notably the visitor center, are contained in bold orange cubes which rotate away from the cluster at an oblique, also windowless except for the ribbon of glazing at the ground plane. It is at this plane that Vito Aconccis fountain breaks the faade of the building, appearing to flow under the curtain wall and pool on the exterior.

The crown jewel of the plant is the subtle yet delightful nature walk that embraces the perimeter of the complex, offering unique views inside as it curls around to the creek shore. The park houses a menagerie of indigenous plants complete with informational plaques explaining their unique properties, framing a humble gravel path. While Newtown Creek is still a horribly polluted Superfund site, stone steps at the edge of the park recede into the water, tempting visitors to the waters edge, disrupting our long standing separation from this natural resource, and perhaps arguing that not only should we utilize the creek, but that we deserve to. Significance The Newtown Wastewater Treatment Plant is arguably a new typology that straddles multiple historical precedents. Formally it is modern high tech, given its industrial forms and distinct exposed systems. Yet rather than deploying these systems and structures as a mere aesthetic device, as do the Centre Pompidou or Lloyds of London, Newtown simply accents its inherent technological purpose. Form here is not a formal concept deployed so much as an engineering necessity celebrated. But the plant is much more than an attractive building, it is a monument that marks not only an engineering feat that allowed us to exploit nature, as the City Hall fountain did for the Croton aqueduct, but our ability to responsibly manage our waste and exploit its full potential while protecting our environment. It fulfills the criteria of Serts postwar Beaux arts planning revivalism to be a new monument, in that it gives more than functional fulfillment to a building that represents our social and community life. Newtown satisfies the aspiration for joy, pride and excitement and the eternal demand of the people for translation of their collective force into symbols. In an era of neo-liberal privatization and powerful anti-government, anti-tax sentiment, Newtown stands defiantly, the apotheosis of our collective ingenuity and willpower. The plant is the physical manifestation of significant victory in the long battle for public health and environmental justice. Newtown is emblematic of the simple yet hard won fact that 8 million people of all races, colors and creeds can peacefully coexist in close proximity without quite literally shitting themselves to death, but rather enjoying universal access to clean water, sanitary streets, and beautiful beaches.

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