Welcome to the Bronx Grit Chamber, where solids (everything from sand and gravel to turtles and dogs) are removed from the sewage of the western Bronx as it makes its way toward the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Here's some great info on NYC's wastewater treatment system. One of the most taken-for-granted pieces of the city's infrastructure, it somehow makes the filth and waste of more than 8 million disgusting people magically disappear! (Except on rainy days.)
Day 424
They don’t build ’em like this anymore
February 26th, 2013
Well, the building is impressive-looking, given its function…and the attached blurb was pretty about it was — uh — “different”….
“From the baby’s bathwater to the dead rat washed down a curbside storm drain, from a slop sink at Gracie Mansion to a Washington Heights bodega bathroom, it all goes into the street sewers, which, in their intricate latticework, are laid out so that the sewage flows by gravity to one large main bound for a tunnel running under the East River to the plant on Wards Island, surrounded by Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. There it is cleaned of toxins and released as purified water into the river.”
Yumm….I knew the purified bottled water in the stores tasted like sewer, now I know for sure.