One For The Stink

Bay Ridge residents wonder what the fuck that noise is:

Ear-itated Bay Ridge residents are struggling to name that tone — a round-the-clock humming noise they say is depriving them of sleep.

The noise — compared to the roar of an engine and the honk of a fog horn — has been blowing in from near the Bay Ridge Channel for nearly a year, but nobody has been able to pinpoint its source.

“The problem is it’s constant, 24 hours a day,” said Dr. Concetta Butera, a chiropractor who lives on Colonial Road. “It’s messed up my life really badly.”

For Butera, who has lived in her sixth-floor apartment for 18 years, the sound is more than just a nuisance. Besides spending the night at her office, she has sunk more than $2,000 into muffling the noise.

Late last year, Butera installed soundproof windows, invested in a sound machine and even hired an acoustical consultant, who failed to determine where the sound was coming from but suggested a fan outside her building.

Rita Majurinen, a music teacher who lives several blocks away on Wakeman Place, said the sound reaches her home, too.

“It’s such a low tone that I can feel it in my body,” said Majurinen, adding the noise has kept her awake at night.

Residents suspect it has something to do with a city sewage treatment plant, going as far to say that the noise is more annoying than the plant’s odor:

The prime suspect so far is the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant, a sewage plant known more for the putrid smells it emits than for any noise.

But city Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Ian Michaels said a noise inspection unit investigated several times and found the plant innocent.

“We have found no evidence that the noise is coming from the treatment plant,” said Michaels, who said inspectors scoured the neighborhood, the treatment plant and the Brooklyn Army Terminal, but found no clues.

“One theory is it may be coming from these large cargo ships just off the shore,” said Michaels.

But Butera, who has written letters to local elected officials and Community Board 10, said she isn’t convinced. In fact, she pines for the days when the only thing the plant emitted was a foul odor.

“At least with the smell, you can shut your window,” said Butera. “But this noise? It’s penetrating — the whole apartment, the whole house, everything. I’ll take the smell.”