Mmm . . . Sweet, Smoky, Buttery, Fecal Fried Chicken . . .

The anecdotal evidence well established, DEP officials will perform a formal olfactory survey of Hunts Point:

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection has tapped an engineering consulting firm to conduct an odor survey of Hunts Point over four days starting tomorrow, with the public asked to be the bloodhounds — phoning in when they pick up the scent.

The purpose of the survey is to identify the odors prevalent in the Hunts Point area and establish their sources.

The new pungency patrol is part of a seven-page agreement City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-South Bronx) wrangled from the DEP as the price for dropping her opposition to an expansion and upgrade of the Hunts Point Wastewater Treatment Facility to be built in her district.

The $235 million project was approved by the City Council Monday by a 48-to-0 vote.

The Council approval of several land-use actions will allow the DEP to begin work, expected to take eight years, on four egg-shaped, 130-foot-high “digester” tanks, where bacteria will break down sludge into a bio-solid for use as compost and fertilizer.

Tomorrow, inspectors from the Malcolm Pirnie Inc. consulting firm will be in Hunts Point from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., ready to track down odors called in by residents to a special hotline.

They’ll be back in the evenings from 5p.m. to 10 p.m. on the following Monday and Thursday, then again on Tuesday, Sept. 25.

. . .

The DEP has even offered a list of descriptors useful for characterizing odors under three broad categories:

“Almond-like” odors might be sweet, smoky, earthy, metallic, acidic, oily or like mothballs.

“Sulfidic” odors could be yeasty, fruity, putrid, fecal, buttery or honeylike.

“Alcohol-like” smells may be rubbery, sooty, coffee-like, chemical or like fried chicken.

Compost A Shark? Who Knew?

Three sightings makes a trend:

Sunbathers found a shark on Staten Island’s South Beach yesterday — a dead, blue-eyed beastie no more than 2 feet long.

The silver-skinned, dorsal-finned sand shark was no man-eater, but it fascinated beach-goers who found it floating near the northernmost end of the beach.

Victoria Torello of Prince’s Bay and Maria Sciabica of Grasmere called the city Parks Department in order to save the shark from becoming poked at and picked apart by seagulls and curious beachfolk. Parks scooped the animal into a black plastic bag and took it away, most likely to be trashed or composted.

“We just felt bad for it,” said Ms. Sciabica. “It’s God’s creature.”

Sand sharks are fairly prevalent in the New York Bay, according to marine environmentalist Jim Scarcella of the Natural Resources Protective Association, who occasionally sees them pulled up on fishing lines off the Ocean Breeze pier.

“They’re becoming more and more common because of changes in the ecosystem,” he said, noting that the scavengers will slither into shallow waters when food becomes scarce further in.

“The good news,” he added, “is that they pose absolutely no risk to bathers or swimmers.”

Another 2-foot sand shark, a live one, washed up at Coney Island over Labor Day weekend, prompting a lifeguard there to rescue it from the blows of frightened swimmers and coax it back to sea.

A 5-foot thresher shark also scared beachgoers at Rockaway Beach in Queens that weekend: A greater threat, because the thresher is known to be more aggressive, Scarcella said.

We Are All Tourists Now

Striking taxi drivers claim success so far:

The alliance’s organizer, Bhairavi Desai, said the action was a “resounding success,” adding that a vast majority of drivers stayed away from work.

“Look at the roads,” she told reporters.

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. umbrella group for the city’s unions, joined her at a news conference and said the strike was effective.

“If you can’t tell the difference between yesterday at Penn Station,” he said, “and today, you’re blind or you’re a tourist.”

If the mayor wants to get creative, he can perhaps play off of that theme during the press conference . . .

The MPAA Smells That Smell

Drugs, bombs and pirated DVDs. It’s all about priorities:

DVD piracy costs New York City about $50 million in lost sales taxes each year. Drawing on his background as a federal prosecutor, John Malcolm decided to try a low-tech solution to the high-tech crime.

“Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs. Lo and behold, they can.”

At a demonstration here yesterday, two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo were able to pick out boxes full of DVDs. They made no critical judgments — for them, all movies stink. They can’t tell the difference between legitimate or pirated products, DVDs or CDs. But their ability to unearth discs makes the jobs of police and customs officials much easier.

“We’d like to get law enforcement interested in using similar dogs,” explained Malcolm.

Oooh That Smell, Can’t You Smell That Smell?

From the Amorphophallus titanum to the Elegant Stinkhorn, Brooklyn leads the city in flora that evokes the odor of putrefying meat:

The stench of raw meat has taken over parts of the Hillside Dog Park on Columbia Heights near Middagh Street. But don’t look for roadkill. The villain here is a slimy florescent orange stalk shooting up between the wood chips and covered with flies.

Say hello to your new neighbor: the Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom.

The Hillside Dog Park, which is covered in wood chips, is practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mushroom, which spends its time decomposing the moist, woody pieces.

. . .

The Stinkhorn’s eau de toilet is its aroma of decaying flesh, and the flies can’t get enough. Lured in by the scent, the flies grab some of the Stinkhorn’s sticky slime and spread the mushroom’s spores.