BAD WATER BOTTOM (1986-2002)
“Immense bubbles of varied hues flow from the sewer’s mouth and after drifting a distance, first like miniature bombs, emitting puffs of vile gases. These combined vapors are wafted to every quarter with the changes in the wind, carrying sickness and death in turn to all parts. Nuisances are like buzzards; a few comes, others are sure to follow and if they are allowed to increase as they have, the consequences too Newtown and Brooklyn must become serious.”
– Letter to the editor, Newtown register, March 27, 1884
VIEW this slideshowBut first some basics on Newtown Creek’s existence through time, particularly the last two centuries. BWB is a reference to what became the infamous Newtown Creek after Garret Furman left. Prior to that, and before the arrival of the Europeans, it was called Mespat which the best translation would be, the overflowing tidal stream, and, yes, exposed bottoms.
It was always a natural-born wasteland, watershed or swamp that grew into a world-class stench zone, and i could easily walk there. But then again there were much closer toxic waste sites. My block and apartment was a natural go-to spot for the illegal dumping of toxic waste, usually at night, not to mention abandoned cars. So embedded was waste in north Brooklyn that when confronted with the gallons of toxic chemicals that i used to deliver and pick up out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and, i also had to deal with, how to get rid of the waste from all the Manhattan job sites. Immediately my own neighborhood and my block in particular came to mind as the ideal dumping zone. Because it was. Another zone of waste, beyond Newtown Creek. Yes, my neighborhood was a dump that gentrification fixed by displacing those who couldn’t afford the nice place to live, that replaced the old neighborhood that had been around since the mid 1800s.
OVERFLOWING TIDAL STREAM
A terribly toxic place, that provided jobs for the folks surrounding the Creek and its canals, and mostly affected them. It was a given for two centuries. That’s why the city built a sewage plant to treat 25% of the entire city’s waste, as well, as an incinerator along the Creek. Initially in the 1800s the city’s poop and dead animals were barged into Newtown Creek and dumped either into the Creek or, as in the case of the dead animal warf, sold off to the nearby rendering plants. I can’t picture even the original inhabitants living in the swampy wetlands, but they probably use it accordingly, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Garret Furman owned a 57 acre island at the point where Maspeth Creek drained to the marshes and into Newtown Creek, the old Mespat that is now become more a man-made Newtown Creek. It was the last time anyone would live there, Indian or European, and the last time that area would be associated with a nature. He eventually sold his land for industrial development in 1850. But in 1828 Mr. Furman himself declared, “the Canarsie Indians are at this time totally extinct, not a single member of that ill-fated race now in existence.” He also wrote quite a bit and his book, Maspeth Poems, reflected his determination to keep historic links to the Mespatches. While Mr. Furman’s exit was both profitable and voluntary on his part, from there on in, people would now come into the Creek to work in the black arts of industry. In fact Furman’s Island would be filled in, attached to Queens and be at the center of the biggest and most polluting industries.
Mespaechtes is the Indian name for what is now the 3 1/2 mile long water boundary for Brooklyn and Queens. It was shortened by the Dutch to Mespat. The local natives were a subset of the Canarsee, one of 13 tribes of the broader Lenape Nation that inhabited Long Island, and portions of the tri-state. The Mespaechtes lived in western Long Island and were the water, river or creek people living in the western sloping drainage area of what is now Newtown Creek. With the landscape that included ocean, bays, inlets, estuaries, islands and a generally wet climate and i’m sure flowing water was a big part of all the lives of all 13 tribes spread across the Island, as well as floods, nor’easters and hurricanes.
The Mespat might have had a small village where today, the remnants of Maspeth Creek flows into man-made Newtown Creek, but there is no way, technically, i think that would have been a great place for living, and it makes more sense to use it as base village and camp for low tide pursuits like hunting and gathering, and crossing at low tide. While, as rumored, the village was probably located on high ground where Zion Cemetery is today, but there were, in fact, many other places, like Laurel Hill, which would’ve been ideal homes. “An overflowing tidal stream” is probably the best and most accurate interpretation of the Dutch word, Mespat, which was the short version of Mespaechtes which is the original Indian name for the low-lying area where tidal creeks met a couple of miles from today’s East River. That made it a wide open swamp and marsh area that was definitely subject to two flooding tides per day, and always flooded while raining. People of the marshes sounds better than swamp people which might be a more accurate description for the people that came after the Mespaechtes.
Hunting and gathering in the tidal pools and flows makes sense, but one thing for certain, mud flats at low tide stink – the muddy exposed bottoms of the creeks at low tide, stinks from the natural rot of organic matter at the bottom of the water. Today, go in the Meadowlands or the Arthur Kill area, amongst many, when, at low tide, the mud, often over 200 feet deep, would give you a good idea of what a tri-state swamp would smell like when it’s bottoms are exposed, and you would swear that the mud is toxic and chemical, but it is only in the way of natural decay which could even include rotting flesh of fish, etc.
The lowlands of Brooklyn, like the Meadowlands in Jersey, as muddy low-lying open marshes, historically have been used for all types of commerce including dumping, by any humans in the vicinity and still are today because of their challenging geographies, including a deep mud base, made toxic since 1850. These are at best quasi-wastelands as far as building towns are concerned, but ideal for, first farming and hunting with the Indians, then Europeans, who then proceeded to turn it into New York’s home for heavy industry and its blackest arts as well as a transportation corridor for planes, vehicles, trains and ships. And before doing this, the Europeans had already grown world-class crops, one of which, the Newtown pippin was a global favorite, shipped right off the farm in Queens, straight from the New World, and shipped directly to the Old, even brought to Europe, personally, by Benjamin Franklin.
And to tell you the truth, as far as dumping is concerned – let’s say it’s 1492 and the Mespats, living on the Island for centuries – wouldn’t they have their own waste zones where they would dump whatever detritus they didn’t want? If they had 1500 fighters, to muster at the time of the attack on Newtown, then the entire local tribe alone would generate a lot of waste, and much of what made up that waste was the end result of the resources grown and gathered in the area. On this scale to some degree the environment could absorb it or carry it.
Furthermore, not in retrospect, but in the reality of past events, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the bottom lands, the Mespaechtes’ swamp, would naturally become the logical choice to dump crap and, down the road, locate the most polluting industries. To understand why crowded polyglot neighborhoods surrounded Newtown Creek, when the pollutants were worse and really unpleasant and repulsive, understand that the nearby jobs were more attractive, and to judge that era by today’s standards and technology is just plain poisonous to objective thought, like criticizing the placement of cities like New Orleans prior to computers and technology being able to easily predict things. Not to mention that so many of these kinds of critics now live in a city, America’s largest, that is going to be hit with rising water and more intense hurricanes, itself, just like Sandy.
After the Europeans wrangled control of the marshes and surrounding area from the natives, for a long time, the area of East Williamsburg was called Cripplebush for its challenging flora, like scrub oak. Later the name Bushwick appears, describing the woodlands that begin in Brooklyn and Queens as the elevation increases above sea level, just outside the marshes. As far as conjecture is concerned, it’s important to identify it as that first, then test that conjecture by applying common sense – we are human, the Europeans were human, as were the Indians. If, around the time that Christ was crucified, you’re living in the vicinity of what is now a Brooklyn and Queens border, where would you live? Where would you hunt, fish and grow crops? Where would you dump your debris, dead animal waste, human waste, waste from materials, like construction projects and food waste? Granted the prototypical consumers would show up after 1600 and put them to shame, as far as waste is concerned, but we are all human and all of our bottoms are sooty. And how the hell will we get anything done, without first recognizing, at least, a few common universal threads so then we might be able to proceed and solve a problem or two.
The British show up a bit after the Dutch, and someone like Rev. Francis Doughty who arrived in America on the Mayflower, appears on western Long Island, because he was granted 13,000 acres of prime Mespat land including drier lands perfect for farming. But it was a bit of bad timing, as the Native dwellers had already gotten a taste of European politics and the curious fact that the distance between the words of the Europeans and their actions was further than the length of Long Island itself, longer than the Atlantic Ocean is West of Europe. Nevertheless, he founded Newtown which lasted one year until it was destroyed by the local Mespaechtes. Finally, to make it all kosher, on March 26, 1642, at one shilling per acre, a deed from the Sachems, (the leaders) Rowerowesteo and Pomnankon, assigned their right to the land reaching “from Rinnegackonck (the pleasant place) to the Mespaechtes, and in width to the swamps of the same Mespaechtes.” In other words the Dutch took control of the Western Long Island drainage into what is today’s East River, including good land for farming north and south of the tidal estuary that’s stretched East and west from the East River to what it is now Johnson Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
The actual payment and deed to the land went like this, “We, director and council of New Netherland etc., testify and declare, that today, date underwritten, personally appeared before us Kakapoteyno, Menqueuw and Suwirau, chiefs of Keskaechquerem, in presence of the undersigned witnesses and declared that voluntarily and advisedly with consent of the community, for and in consideration of eight fathoms of duffels, eight strings of sewant, twelve kettles, eight adzes and eight axes and some knives, beads and awls, which they acknowledge to have received into their hands and power to their full satisfaction and contentment before the passing hereof, they have transferred, ceded, surrendered and conveyed as lawful, true and free possession, as they herewith transfer, cede, surrender and convey to and for the behoof of the noble lords directors of the General Chartered West India Company, Chamber of Amsterdam, a certain piece of land lying on Long Island, south of Manhattan Island, reaching in length from the plantation of George Rapaeljee (called Rinnegackonck) a good mile and a half to the Mespaechtes and in width from the East River about one mile to the thickets of the same Mespachtes, with all the action, rights, privileges, thereunto belonging, constituting and substituting the said lords directors etc. – Done on the island of Manhattan in Fort Amsterdam this 1 August 1638.”
After the Newtown debacle, eventually Doughty lost everything, more precisely, it was taken from him and he disappeared, but eventually Newtown came back and became Dutch Maspeth and English Bushwick where the majority of these shots were taken, in what are now the neighborhoods of East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Maspeth, Greenpoint, and Blissville, in modern-day Brooklyn and Queens.
WATER HISTORY
Over time Newtown Creek became the only and logical place for New York City to do most of its dirtiest work and be in the city. In the horse era Queens was largely rural and also the geography that could also be wild and wet. It was a large, swampy, marshy, buggy, open area, not really suitable for permanent homes, but it was the ideal geography to zone for industry that needed both scale and to be hidden from most New York residents – except for the swath of humanity in north Brooklyn – yet be in the heart of the city, in the center point of what would become the five boroughs.
It was the only place for dumping, rendering, glue factories, tanneries, but one problem was the flow of water draining from Western Long Island was culverted and diverted and blocked, making Newtown Creek a dead end whose only exit was an already polluted East River, and only because of the tides does the first mile of the Creek gets any sort of refreshening, but English Kills is three miles away at dead-ends. The only fresh water that would get there is rain directly falling down from the sky.
Gasoline and naphtha being released from refineries that were in operation for over 100 years, notably John D. Rockefeller’s giant old Standard refinery that became Exxon Mobil when his company was broken up, greatly added to the existing chemical mix. Before and during that oily history there were even worse polluting and never remediated, industries of the black industrial arts – animal rendering, tanneries, glue factories, with the most blatant being the literal dumping of raw human waste, brought into Newtown Creek on barges to the offal docks that set up after Furman was no longer an island paradise. And still today 25% of New York’s human waste is dealt with along Newtown Creek in Greenpoint. The notorious historic unbelievably bad smell of that facility has finally been remediated by a $1.5 billion upgrade that coincided with the gentrification of the neighborhood, but won’t benefit the working people who were, speaking of world-class toxins, displaced in the Hipster Plague.
The underground gas spill, in North Greenpoint, larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster, went on for many years and since it was underground, it was only when gas began seeping into homes, that people began to realize that millions of gallons of spilled oil and mostly gas had always been under their neighborhood.
I have made a point to be in a lot of the dirtiest places in America and photograph them, and, of course, it’s not that it’s my once beloved neighborhood, but that Newtown Creek and it’s Kills, particularly English Kills, had an amazing dark industrial history whose legacy comes to light twice a day in its exposed mud during the sucking action of the receding water on the mud and the bulkheads. When you see and smell this stuff oozing from the earth, it’s much easier to envision the rendering plants, from Peter Cooper to Van Iderstine the last leaving in the seventies, the numerous refineries, the old Greenpoint incinerator and sewage plant, copper smelting, chemical manufacturing and those offal docks that Wessel ran. Peter Cooper a tremendous inventor and innovator was a Tammany progressive. It proves folks had a different understanding of pollution in 1880. Today, in light of his views, he would have to sell his company, for extreme C02 emissions and profound land and water contamination.
Judging and acting on past history with the values of any give future era, isn’t history if anyone cares anymore about the social science of it.
In BWB there are only three shots of the infamous Greenpoint underground gasoline spill. They were taken at the old location of the Penny Bridge over Newtown Creek about a mile and a half from English Kills. Here the water being pumped out of the aquifer is actually made up of degraded gasoline, part fuel oil, part naphtha which is the chemical from which napalm takes its name. Dig down, about 10 feet, and you’ll find benzene vapors,PCEs (perchloroethylenes) and TCEs (trichloroethylene), suspected carcinogens that are able to dissolve in water, have also been found in the underground oil plume.
With regards to the plumes in the terminus areas of Dutch and English Kills, which are not part of the great Greenpoint gasoline spill, who the hell knows what’s in there? Twice a day the water level recedes, dramatically revealing, in many spots, the Creek and Kill bottoms in English Kills and in the Newtown Creek dead-end at the Grand St. Bridge, where English Kills splits off in a zigzag course, only to finally dead-end at Johnston Avenue in Bushwick.
Within English Kills, and its dead end is where many bottom shots were taken. It’s here i saw everything including the ubiquitous oil and gas plumes that were mixed with who the hell knows, buried in the mud and absorbed by the old wooden bulkheads going back to the time of the Civil War. The map above identifies the main industries located along Newtown creek in 1890. The English Kills area is at the bottom and was surrounded by industries including the docks for the manure barges, the night soil barges, Suttle Brothers Tannery, Equity Gas Works, Funk Brothers, while just north west, at the Newtown Creek Terminus at Metropolitan Avenue were Acme Fertilizer, Champion Fertilizer, Wissel’s Dead Animal Wharf, Atlantic Carbon Works and docks and facilities used to store animal fat.
This list of only the bigger companies along the B/Q that existed in the waterways’ dead-ends was much further inland than the main smelters, refineries and gas works to the west on the Creek where the BQE vaults over it. That’s why i wonder how much residual and, simply put, so much human and animal shit lies buried in the mud at the bottom of these Kills along with an array of chemicals other than what’s derived from oil. Evident by the Big Smell and the unusual polychromatic definition that is not photoshop derived but actual. It’s timing. The oil and gas blooms had some crazy mixture both organic and synthetic, making them the most striking plumes i have encountered in these toxic journeys during the Down and Under.
These are the “flowing waters” of the Lenape – after 1850 nothing more than a dead creek because there was no longer any inflow except large toxic sewers, and their culverts that were buried over. The Creek became more like a very narrow tidal lake that, twice a day, sucks the toxins out of the wooden bulkheads and bottoms, and heads out towards the East River, but never makes it, only to return again with the high tide somewhere else along the zigzagged man-made canals. The low and slack tides expose the toxic mud and debris that has saturated the bottoms for 175 years. As the slackened waters retreat twice a day, it’s this exposure, when the tide pulls at its own containment walls and murky bottom, that plumes of toxins are released, some in kaleidoscopic polychromatic blooms of oil enriched by a motley stack of both oil-derived chemicals like naphtha and gasoline, but also, the historic buried chemical array used in manufacturing here since the the 1850s, decades of dumping from the tanneries, rendering plants and glue factories, that, for decades, took in all of the dead animals from the city used as the primary source of both transportation and food, there was tons of it.
Newtown Creek dead ends out at the Kills along Johnson Avenue and this is what makes the section of the creek, by far, the smelliest, dirtiest, most toxic, chemical-soaked area in New York City. For 175 years how much waste and toxins have made it out, on the tides, to the East River? And how much simply returns back on the tides to the dead ends of Newtown Creek. It’s one hell of an urban geography, and, if just one thing would have been considered, a relatively cheap thing, compared to, for instance, cleaning 30,000,000 gallons of oil and gas from underneath Greenpoint, a lot of improvement could have been made, by providing an in-flow of fresh water, for instance, with pumps from the East River, out to the Kills.
English Kills dead-ends at this culvert which delivers fresh sewage to the Kills. Standing on the old bobtail swing bridge that is in use today, the huge Waste Management Plant is just behind me.
While the Creek was filled with synthetic waste, this end spat out organic waste, especially with big rains, and, at times, it was turd city.
Johnson Avenue in Bushwick can be seen here. Curiously, the rehabbed neighborhood is solidly behind parks and clean waterways, although the products they buy, energy used to heat homes, transportation and their personal waste contributes, but it’s usually hidden.
IT’S WHERE I LIVE(D), AND WORKED
Trying to prove things, your money has to be where your voice is, and, periodically poisoned both in work and metaphorically in life, i began to draw the comparison while breathing, not seeing, but inhaling the stench of old Newtown Creek. First-hand knowledge of Williamsburg, and the Creek in work and life as stomping grounds, employment and knowledge base was the starting point. Residential blocks, many tucked into large industrial zones, were a natural target for the illegal disposal of waste, since it was always New York’s toxic section, but one where folks lived. Having been a driver, who transported and picked up toxic materials, fresh or used and contaminated, as a laborer for many years, i have a certain relationship to this stuff.
I forgot, the effluent was remediated in North Brooklyn with the arrival of the affluent, and, near as i can tell, the new and affluent people treated us as effluent that needed to be flushed (gentrified). Being from old Williamsburg, there were much closer toxic waste sites, for instance, right on the block where i lived, which had a small triangular park, and sported a new crop of illegal waste, dumped on a weekly basis. The industrial environment of Williamsburg meant you lived with industry, and, in my the third floor crib in an eight flat tenement, i got a nice breeze every night during the summer from the west and over the East River. One warm night, in early September, not long ago in the so-called bad old days, but in 2000, i woke up, could not breathe, seriously could not breathe, and was choking desperately trying to get fresh air, battled through it, fell asleep and when i woke learned of a large diesel and gasoline spill from barges loading and off-loading on the East River. A little taste of Bhopal, but in Williamsburg, 20 years ago, where, and i’m not complaining, to the west of my home was the East River where the oil and gas industry still existed, and into my Northeast was the expanse of industrial Newtown Creek, and, with a northeast wind, could bring the smell of the open sedimentation tanks of the sewage of one quarter of all New Yorkers organic wastes, into our homes.
I ain’t on the trendy environmnetal racism or, worse, the geography of racism, thing. In fact, i never really think abouy the fact that i might be doing this because of years of actully doing toxic work, living in toxic places and suffering the permanent neurological damage from this sort ofr working/living environment.
I was briefly reminded of it while writing this, but it’s usually something i bury, perhaps burning it to fuel for this sort of work. Besides, all this is not a PC or IP thing, but a class one, where people of all stripes, with the same economic background, must find available, cheap housing. That’s supposed to exist on Fifhth Avenue? Why chop us up into self-interest groups based on race, when we live in a country where change only takes place through democracy, where folks must unite across their own divisions. otherwise no politician will listen. This is proven by history, even recent history, with George Floyd.
In additioin i’ve done toxic work from New York to Butte Montana, and have documented every steel mill neighborhood and town in America, have the pictures, proof and experience to easily prove, most steel hoods are white or a mix. There are fully black toxic steel mill towns – Gary and Braddock – but their part of the dirty mosaic, and its untrue and unfair to insuate another, not my term, i hate it, “narrative.”
BEEF
My long sordid history as a laborer where i constantly used and transported chemicals, particularly volatile organic compounds, forced tremendous knowledge concerning toxic landscapes, and, the fact i often supported my camera thing partly by earning wages as a laborer dealing with the same v.o.c. toxins, is somehow, a bit like trying to even a score, by paying the same price over again. V.O.C.’s were one reason I used to look forward to making a living outside this hideous labor that could harm you. Ever since I was 16, and working as a laborer, pretty much straight, until I was 29 years old, and beyond that for years more whenever freelance film and photo work would dry up, chemicals were always part of the job. Even in photography, before digital, I always had a big aversion to printing, the main one being i just don’t like it, and reinforced by the use of chemicals in its process that sickened me. The point is – knowing what it is and specifically what it’s like, is an obvious, if you know me, starting point. Filmmakers never processed their film, and that’s my starting point with regards to photography. There is a health price for exposure to toxic chemicals, the same way there’s a health price for losing your home to the poison of displacement.
Like displacement, the experience of brute chemical exposure is one that haunts. The effects linger for life. That, being a terrible experience, displacement, work that sickens and, basically, the arts and entertainment business that was supposed to the way out from this, led me back. Thinking of Wessel’s Offal Docks and Peter Cooper’s Glue Factories, it’s interesting on the historic level, and the present-day look at the Creek, it’s interesting on a metaphoric level of the poisons I had the misfortune of coming in contact with, as a result of simply trying to make a living at something i’m good at.
The Junkyards, Willets Point, Queens, another low-lying creek area – Flushing – and a mixture of industry and sea-level lands, has kept the earth here fairly saturated in chemicals.
The sight of ironically colorful toxic blooms, vehicles, metal parts, poop, NAPLs and hydrophobic contaminants migrating from the subsurface sediments, sucked out by the receding tide, then becoming exposed at the slack, was the ideal metaphor for my experience in the world of a & e, but it was only the smell that delivered the literal or experiential end of any kind of poisoning. It was usually a fight to keep shooting being so close to those smells i could always sense throughout my neighborhood and places i worked in Long Island City. Even simply crossing the Creek around Metropolitan Avenue, particularly at slack tide, was a challenge and repulsive, let alone being in the damn thing.
And why? Some things shouldn’t cross the blood/brain barrier, otherwise your health suffers, and the health of those around you if you act like an asshole.
My toxicus vitale, is a resume in work that will kill you. Experiencing first-hand laboring with the likes of benzene, toluene, ethyl chlorides and volatile organic compounds that are part of the landscape of paint and paint stripper, fertilizer, shellac, carbon tetrachloride degreasing and metal cleaning, diesel, smoke from burning wood, coal, coke, trash fumes, refining, melting steel, copper, lead, contaminated and toxic wood and plastic that has burned, both as a blue-collar worker and as a blue-collar photographer that utilizes simple physical abilities and stamina, to get a dirty job done in a chemical zone, like I had done repeatedly before this, during this and after this.
Like Newtown Creek, Willet’s Point is soaked in toxins. Reading the book, Art & Gentrification in the Iron Trianagle section of Queens.
Landscapes, particularly books of landscapes, allows some peace or respite, from shooting people in all sorts of circumstances, and sometimes, that respite, its subject, reminds me of trying to escape this shit in the first place.
Respite? What more do i want? After all, where can you live in the city and have access to waterfalls and extensive canals within walking distance of your home?
English Kills at low tide.
THE SMELL I CANNOT DELIVER
More than any visual information, olfactory data was more powerful and delivered the message of toxic astonishment better. Ultimately, it was the smell that would force you to leave, never the visual elements. If something stinks, this was it. Similar to my experience in the arts and entertainment industries.
If you’re older you can remember that tanneries, coke plants, stockyards and slaughterhouses were local industries in the cities. These stunk.
If you were on location and not viewing these images, the smell would grab your attention and hold it much more than the sight of it. Curiously, even on location, the sight of all this toxicity, like medical films, looks repulsive, but is interesting and can completely hold your attention, but the smell immediately repulses, sending the nervous system into its most primitive responses – run or die. The visuals elate, and the smell kills, and is a really bad high, unless being sick, listless, unbalanced and incoherent is your thing. I was doing it for neither, i wanted pictures.
Williamsburg, 2003, view out my back window. Built as a shoe factory, now a bed and mattress factory, it would close to make more money renting its loft space out to gentrifiers during the inerim before hyper-gentrification would arrive in a few more years.
Today the view is entirely obscured by high-rise condos, seventeen stories tall, in a neighborhood zoned for five floors.
A miracle that is celebrated every year on the Tax & Zoning Passover holidays. Like us, pollution problems were ended by development.
The Greenpoint incinerator and sewage treatment plant always made sure that the aroma of human waste would constantly float through the neighborhood, and, depending on wind direction would determine which section of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City, East Williamsburg, Bushwick or Blissville would be hit. Generally being in the vicinity of Newtown Creek equaled stink, even crossing over the industrial area on the Kosciousko, Pulaski, Greenpoint or Metropolitan Avenue Bridges, the stench from the rendering plants and tanneries was evident until, after 150 years, the most polluting industries were kicked out in 1978 when Van Iderstine went to Newark. But it isn’t until after 2000, that the overreaching general smell was abated and today, compared to just 20 years ago, is fresher.
Smell? The absolute key to understanding the degree of toxicity and repulsion is the smell. My polychromatic bottoms are beautiful to look at, and because they are pictures, without smells, get pleasure from the image, but with the smell, you get challenged. It’s precisely the smell that keeps it a secret, since no one will go near it. It’s not a special kind of person to go in there over a period of 15 years before remediation, and shoot this crap, it’s an angry person. That’s what I learned. As the remediation of Newtown Creek began in earnest around 2000, so, too, began the remediation from our neighborhood. The pretty arty party people, want so much, crossing the East River, flying and driving in from all over and outside of New York. They got it. More precisely, they took it.
Stink and smell, makes you sick, creates anger when you have to deal with it continually. A searing cut off anger. The cut-off flow of fresh water into the Kills, with only a twice-a-day tide in, tide out that, at English Kills, three and half miles from the not too fresh East River, and, fresher waters never got there. There are no refreshing waters.
CONTACT, MOTION & SOUND
Contact produce rash, sores, bacterial infections, irritation and sickness, primarily in the nervous system. Inhalation and not contact was probably worse. Obviously headaches and respiratory disruption was immediate.
Motion? Another thing, not delivered to the viewer is motion – with regards to the plumes, they were always in movement, pulled out of the bulkheads, or rising up, blossoming and disappearing to be replaced again. These are stills, but moving footage would have been, i think more interesting, along with time-lapse. Unfortunately my acute skills of filmmaking were poisoned by toxic contamination of an extremely soulful stream of my own making.
Sound? Aside from the constant assorted ambient industrial effects, there was only silence, allowing for a strange sort of concentration. The chemical stains, blooms and effects themselves made no noise and silently bloomed, or set in place.
POLLUTION?
Context? I didn’t want to hide, enhance or turn completely abstract, the context of the pollution by using software. Shot entirely on film, scanned and, with the usual image software, a go for normal approach, or what was there on its own. What’s there is enough. Abstraction, on occasion, can’t be avoided, and I don’t deny the pleasure of the image, always remember not to forget it, and what plants it there is pleasure, entertainment, if you will, and, thus, becomes a matter of control or direction. But it was not what was really on my mind, and neither was the idea for the social concern of pollution. I needed to also think, and what other reason is there to work in these forgotten places, or anywhere, alone, than clarity of thought? On site I needed a will to stay there and shoot, sometimes regularly according to the tides. Any one would become acutely aware of, not the effort and stamina to capture the shot, but why the hell, would you be here and for a long time? Plainly speaking, why are you attracted to this shit? These are clearly real things, some locked into an abstraction, but also, i could be elsewhere, and without these smells. Obviously I had an engagement and undertaking with this mess beyond colorful blooms of social concern. The experiences kept piling up, that amounted to clouding and poisoning the clarity of veritable things. I found something, an image, that expressed that, and no one could possibly see that attraction and poison might have a different story than “That’s weird.” and there might be something else – history and a metaphor.
A couple of years after completing this essay, i began to ruminate more about what i generally keep silent and accept, not just in regards to the clamor of PC and IP cultural situation, but i’m busy, trying to move on. I might identify with a class, but nothing beyond that, much, and we’re talking ethnicity, religion and gender. Taking a trending phrase or buzzword, “environmental racism” that is too basic for its own good and kneejerk – “black and brown” people, i presume, are forced to live close to the worst of America’s pollution, but, as one who has, it’s done because it’s what can be afforded. I used to have a joke in the pre-gentrified Brooklyn – a little blight, that’s good, because it would help to keep the rents down, and the people who aren’t from here, away.
BEEF 2
The history of urban America is filled with groups of people that came to the worst sections of the city because they had nothing and made their way out, or, if they preferred could stay where they spent so much time. Because it was ceap. The Irish in Mott Haven stayed put from 1850 until the 1960s and when it began to burn in the 1970s, that’s why they left, but up until then Mott Haven was crowded, dirty, smelly and dangerous. Iron works, lumber yards and factories surrounded the neighborhood. An indusrial canal wbent from the East River up to 138th Street, lined with industry, where dead animals, like horses, were dumped to mix with the chemicals and pollution that the dead-end waters accumulated.
If you don’t have a lot of money, a lot of things will become apparent, otherwise, some truth, in a bubble of ideas, doesn’t constitute nececcarily, what is. That’s my job.
During Labor Day weekend, around 2000, there was a large diesel and gas spill on the East River at a terminal about ten blocks from my apartment. At around 3:00 am i woke up and literally couldn’t breathe. It was a railroad flat on the third floor and we got a nightly breeze off the East River that was our air conditioning. The drawbacks were, winds from the south would bring in the Greenpoint Sewer and Incinerator complex smells, mostly poop, and winds from the west might bring in anything from the remaining industry along our waterfront. That night, I still refer to it as Bhopal, Brooklyn, was very bad.
Curiously, at the age of 69, and, after shooting and writing this, it occurred to me, that when it comes to this stuff, there are groups that accept it, to a larger degree, and, they, too are unheard. In my case, i flipped it into work, both working in Newtown Creek neighborhoods to pay the bills, when i needed to, and shooting it for 20 years, only stopping due to the displacement caused by artist-induced gentrification. Curiously with that all the things we griped about, got fixed – McCarren Pool, the Greenpoint incinerator closed, and, later, a 1.5 billion dollar cleanup of the notorious shit smell that hung over the neighborhood from receiving a quarter of the city’s sewage, mostly Manhattan’s waste, and treating it in open sedimentation tanks. By the time the neighborhood cleaned up, we had gotten fixed/tricked out of our homes.
I would say that poor people are forced to look for the cheapest homes, which are always in the least desirable locations. Every place that i have lived has been guided by this situation. In my case, it always led me to live in either or both high crime and/or industrial neighborhoods. I was illegally kicked out of the industrial neighborhood, that sold out to real estate prices and gentrification, and found another high crime, immigrant and poor neighborhood with less industry but more crime in the Bronx, which was the place i ended up, coincidentally, the cheapest of all the boroughs.
I’ve shot so much documenting pollution in neighborhoods, from NYC to Butte Montana, i have the proof. I’ve shot all the steel mill neighborhoods in America. For the sake of this piece, i’ll speak in a manner i avoid, while there are certainly black neighborhoods and towns that abut the steel mills, there are also white towns and neighborhoods that surround the mills. Braddock, Gary and East Chicago fit the IP and PC bill of blacks and browns stuck by the polluting plants, while the majority of steel mill neighborhoods are white – Industrial Valley in Cleveland, Weirton WV, Steubenville OH, Granite City IL, Ashland KY, Sharon PA and Mingo Junction Oh are some examples along with the recently closed mills that were in Johnstown, Bethlehem Lackawanna and most of the old south side steel mill neighborhoods in Chicago. Now, to be real, there are always, like all places, some whites in predominately black neighborhoods and also the other way around.
So, in reality and history, and not the minds of the woke folk, it’s the poor and working-class that staff steel hoods, and, I don’t care to go beyond that description, not only because its accurate and true, but, if we do want to get anywhere on a social level, it always takes the unity of the disparate groups who share a similar challenge, to get anywhere, because it’s a democracy that requires that. But having accurate information and having a culture that considers there are many groups and blended individuals is a truthful culture.
Amazing, hearing people who never went to any of these places, or even got to know them through their objective histories, spout opinions, and, unfortunately, some opinions have disunity built in. It’s just part of the deal and how humans react.
For months after 9/11 with west, norrthwest and southwes winds the lung-burning fumes, smoke and dust would flow into the waterfront neighborhoods on the East River. You would really understand why so many have continued to die from cancers due to exposure to this chemical mix.
The sonic pollution fromthe years of gentrification – noise, unmitigated noise – partying and bad pop music until 5:00 am, pile drivers 50 hours per week beginning at 8:00 an, massive construction for 360 degrees around my tenenement, and inside, as each unit was rehabbed to fetch high rents and catch the parental money flow, for ten years. Rats, many rats, climbing up and through the walls the landlord never fixed in my apartment from his construction. Rats climbing over me at night, beating them with a baseball bat, on my way to work, while Zak and Emily figure it all out, destroy our lives in the procress, grow up, marry and go back to the suburbs. In the meantime, we suffer while they “grow up” by numbing themselves to the facts, or, weirdly, speaking of such social ills as environmnetal racism that are supposed to lie elsewhere, when their noise pollution alone, its sleep depravation is, factually speaking, violent, abusive and deadly with long-term effects. And, i end up, after a ten year fight, illegally losing my established home for life, as my own family is dying from all the effects of old age, I mean, really – environmental racism? What do we, the forgotten in all this, call it, what happened to us? For starters every male in my neighborhood got and died from cancer, usually aroundmthe age of seventy. I succumbed in 2022 to it, coincidentally, at 75.
And there’s the lingering social beef. It’s the same one that always just woke me up in the middle of the night, years later, being forced, to somehow redeem it all, through, amongst other things, documenting it by written word and meataphorical pictures that function as document as well. Woke? Woke, indeed, PTSD-woke, try that. And try broke, not having enough to even get medical care.
Certainly more than abstracting beauty from the ugly, one of the oldest methods in art. It went beyond abstractions in reality. The smell, irritation and sight, it reminded me continually about the the worst pollution i have ever encountered. It, too, originated not with people, but in people, beginning with their unending shit.
END
Returning to the meat of this project, and not the beef, I’ll leave you with this, small insight, if you’re enamored by environmental things, political correctness or replacing industry with nature. Beyond making some symbolic points about the relationship of ethics and colorful poison, one of my big interests, throughout my life, has been geology. Bad Water Bottom brings together my two avocations, that of geology/geography (environment) and its effects on ethics (principles). Pretty poison, if you will
Non-aqueous phase liquids or NAPLs are liquid solution contaminants that do not dissolve in or easily mix with water (hydrophobic), like oil, gasoline, petroleum products, animal fats and waste. … If the NAPL is denser then water, like trichloroethylene, it is called DNAPL and will tend to sink once it reaches the water table.
“NAPL Migration due to Ebullition has been documented extensively in the Creek. Gas bubbles are generated in the sediments due to degradation of organic matter (natural phenomenon), then NAPLs and Hydrophobic Contaminants migrate from the subsurface sediments with gas bubbles. This occurs at low-tide throughout the Creek, and NAPL migration occurs throughout the year as sediment temperature is much less variable.”
No remediation possible once plumes sink into any aquifer. Natural processes of bioremediation, volatilization, sorption and dilution would take many lifetimes.
I learned almost forty years later that my hunch was probably correct, and it was the action of low tide and slack tides that would suck out contaminate from the wooden bullheads themselves, and from the soil and sand that they held back, and that once the bottoms were exposed to oxygen, chemical migration would occur aided by the bubbly nature of the gases in liquids beginning with simple water.
I could have pretty good control with the landscape because of the regularity of tides, sun. Clouds or sun prediction was easy, and since I lived there i could easily go in over a long period of time when conditions were ripe. I could also regulate better my exposure in response to the ceaseless movements of water, chemicals and sewage. But as the tides rose and sank after slacking, and began to stir the chemical deposits, it could easily be up to three hours of shooting. I was surprised how high my shutter speeds needed to be in order to freeze the oozing toxins.
In a number of impossible situations that only repeated and deepened over time, the only way to protect work and also keep working was isolation – the only practical strategy that would become a going under to the most forgotten places in cities, and every American bad land that i could find, night and day, but mostly by night and twilight, unlike BWB, that was shot almost entirely by the light of day, with a few dusk/dawn long exposures, but nothing at night.
Thinking about my own exposure over time, then putting it in the novel form of a movie character, it would begin with a guy, dirty, in a blue polyester work uniform out on his lunch break where he is sitting near the bulkhead of a man-made canal, at it’s low tide. In boredom, he is checking the chemical blooms in the Kills. That’s pretty much how i think, not so much as an artist, but a witnessing participant who knows to remember as much as participate. For the record, industrial chemical exposure, liquids, fumes and vapors was something I had to deal with on a work basis for too many years, and to be back in it, pictures or not, was actually no picnic. Industrial landscape work sometimes is as physical as working in the same places i was shooting. This is blue-collar photography no doubt, but the psychological dimension of olfactory stamina was intense, while the smells are mostly invisible on film, except for the smoke and fumes. When there were some moments of fresh air, there was only the visual curiosity, and you could think clearly and make connections.
