The Little Train That Couldn’t Get Any Respect

Another sad chapter in the sorrowful story of the sorely neglected G train:

Straphangers and Transit Authority workers at the Broadway and Flushing Ave. stations said the stench has been unbearable for a month, and that rivers of putrid black water have flown over the tracks.

“It stinks,” said Nilsa Feliciano, 44, at the Flushing Ave. stop, adding that riders run from the trains “to get fresh air.”

“It smells like a thousand bums are living down there,” said straphanger Brian Colas, 18.

“We put air fresheners in [the booth] to keep the smell out,” said Flushing Ave. token booth clerk Darlene McDuffie, who avoids venturing out into the station.

City Department of Environmental Protection officials blamed the stench on a breach in a 54-inch-wide sewer pipe that runs parallel to the train tracks between the stations.

But in two weeks of looking, including with a remote camera, DEP has been unable to pinpoint the source of the leak.

“We’ve not been able to determine exactly where the leak is,” said agency spokeswoman Natalie Millner.

Workers were sent into the pipe yesterday in an effort to locate the damage, she said.

Despite the leak, the pipeline, which carries household wastes and rain water to the Newtown Creek-Greenpoint Sewage Treatment Plant, is operating properly, Millner said.

“We’re aware of it. We’re doing our best to find the source and fix it,” Millner said.

Even so, Transit Authority officials, who said track workers reported the problem several weeks ago, said the DEP hasn’t acted quickly enough.

“The problem still exists,” said TA spokesman James Anyansi. “Maybe [DEP] didn’t realize the urgency of it. It has leaked onto the tracks.”

See also: G Love (And That Special Sprint).

Keep Your Hands Off My Water Supply

New York City’s vaunted water may be too dirty for the feds:

New Yorkers are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them bragging about the city’s water — so pure it doesn’t need to be filtered, so delicious it is better than bottled.

So it may surprise, perhaps even insult, proud residents to hear that federal officials are worried that the fabled water — coming from the largest unfiltered system in the country — is getting muddier and may have to be completely filtered, at a cost of billions of dollars, if it cannot be kept clean.

For much of the last year, the century-old water system that delivers 1.3 billion gallons a day to the city has been clouded by particles of clay, washed into upstate reservoirs by violent storms in quantities that make the water look like chocolate Yoo-hoo.

To keep the tap water running clear, the city has been dumping 16 tons of chemicals a day, on average, into the water supply as an emergency measure to meet federal water quality standards. The treatment does not change the taste of the water, but the city cannot rely on this stopgap approach forever.

Turbidity — the condition that makes water cloudy and interferes with chlorination to eliminate contaminants — appears to be getting worse because of changing weather patterns and increasing runoff from land development upstate.

If the city cannot find a permanent solution to the silt, it may not be able to avoid building a huge filtration plant that could cost about $8 billion.

Because its water has historically been so pure, New York has largely been exempt from federal rules created in the late 1980’s that require all water systems to be filtered. (A small part of the system, in Westchester, will be filtered in a few years.)

But as federal officials review the city’s five-year exemption, which expires at the end of this year, they have openly expressed concern about the water quality.

“The single most important item we’re looking at, and the one that could be a problem for the city, is turbidity,” Walter Mugdan, a local director of the Environmental Protection Agency, testified at a City Council hearing this spring. His office, the Division of Environmental Protection and Planning, will decide early next year whether the city’s water is clean and clear enough to avoid filtration for another five years. (Only four other major cities — Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore. — are also exempt.)

The city is confident that it will win renewal. Emily Lloyd, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the water system, said that the department was working on plans to reduce turbidity without chemicals, particularly in two big reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains.

How Urban Planning Is Like Valtrex

I’m pretty sure he meant to refer to the Hudson Rail Yards as something other than an “open sore”:

Mayor Bloomberg defended the city’s offer to purchase the Hudson Rail Yards for $500 million, saying the site has been an “open sore” and that the city has a vested interest in what is developed there.

While some have criticized the city’s offer as too low and say the undeveloped land on Manhattan’s West Side is valued at $900 million at the very least, Mr. Bloomberg called the city’s offer a “fair price” and argued that the city has no interest in shortchanging the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the state agency that owns the site.

Happy Birthday, Bridge!

The Triborough Bridge turns 70 today and the Times takes the opportunity to reappraise Robert Moses:

It was not just another bridge. And the man who built it was not just another power broker. The Triborough opened 70 years ago today, and the anniversary is prompting a reappraisal of Robert Moses, who, although he never learned to drive, rolled out a concrete carpet to the suburbs that changed the face of New York.

The Catskills: Manhattan’s Storage Shed

The Chelsea diner slated to become a “classy restaurant in a retro location” is now a dilapidated eyesore in a retro location:

An old-school Hell’s Kitchen diner saved from the wrecking ball last year by a promise of relocation, now sits deserted in the Catskills.
It has no operator, customers or clear future.

The Munson Diner, opened in the early 1950s and shuttered in the summer of 2004, moved to upstate Liberty in May 2005. This delighted its owner, a neighbor who wanted to expand, and preservationists.

Its grand reopening was scheduled for this summer.

The relocation was supposed to kick-start Liberty, which has been in a slump since Borscht Belt spots such as Singer’s Deli and Grossinger’s resort closed in the 1980s.

The diner, a famed Andy Warhol haunt and backdrop for episodes of “Law & Order” and “Seinfeld,” sits empty off the main street in Liberty.

The new owner has yet to find an operator, though he said he’s fielded offers from over 20 interested restaurateurs — and two jailhouse inmates.

Construction crews and drilling teams, in the midst of a massive street reconstruction project, surround the forlorn diner.

“Half of the road is ripped up [and] that makes it hard to see the vision,” said Heinrich Strauch, executive director of the Liberty Community Development Corp.

Owner Jeremy Gorelick says, “I can’t tell you how frustrating it’s been that it hasn’t opened on schedule.”

Backstory: A Classy Restaurant in a Retro Location.