TUP or DUP

You can refresh–a choice word here– your memory as to the meaning of GUP, or just trust me that it’s my euphemism for Scheiße….  In the spirit of creating a parallel term to GUP, I offer “trashed [or discarded] universal product,” or TUP and DUP.  I prefer DUP, as it sounds like a term in a doo-wop song.  Seen from the water, here’s an important node in the DUP flow.  The E91st Street Marine Transfer Station (MTS) is one of a number around the city.   NY’s strongest* trucks enter from the landside and dump their DUP to be containerized by either Waste Management or Covanta.  When the containers are loaded and securely lidded, they’re transfered onto barges and moved to the railheads . . .

*NY’s strongest is the nickname for DSNY’s workers.  You’ve possibly heard of NYPD as the finest, FDNY as bravest, Corrections as boldest, public school teachers as brightest . . . But is there a term for the crews now moving DUP around the waterways that make up the sixth boro?  I think we need such a term . .  NY’s saltiest, maybe?

The railhead is near the Goethals Bridge, one on the Howland Hook side, and another

on the Elizabethport side. Black, I’m told is Covanta, and green is Waste Management.  Norfolk Tugs has the contract to move both sets.  

Thanks to NY Media Boat, I recently had the opportunity to see the transfer of green containers taking place.

These gantry cranes are a smaller version of the those that transfer containers in container ports, working on ULCVs and the smaller forebears.

Standing by here is Captain D, one of the vessels operated by NY’s saltiest.  Other tugs moving these DUP barges are Pathfinder, Paula Atwell, Robert Burton, and more.

All photos and acronym creation, WVD.

For more on NYC’s outsourced DUP, click here.

For some of these cranes arrival five and three and a half years ago, click here and here.

For floating these containers around the boro, click here.

As to calendars, thanks for your orders.  Over half of the 25 are already spoken for.  I may have to do a second run, but in that case, I can’t guarantee the same print costs/price.

 

Float Trash

What?!@#!!  See the end of this post.

 

For the past few years now, NYC municipal trash has traveled by barge and train to landfills in several states.  Captain D here is pushing this barge with containerized trash from a transfer point in Queens to a rail loading facility in Staten Island. Click here for animated explanation of trash movement overseen by DSNY.

As I understand it, the green containers are covered by a Waste Management contract, whereas the black ones, the older slightly contract, by Covanta.

One constant in the harbor has long been the Staten Island ferry; the new “constant” is these trash containers.

 

 

As a resident of NYC now for almost two decades, I have to say that for all the population density and numbers, NYC’s five terrestrial boros are relatively “tidy.”

You just can’t do what we did in my youth . . . set up a burn barrel at the hedgerow end of the farthest field and stoke it once a week.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who got photos of the new DSNY container cranes moving to the SW Brooklyn transfer station here.

And the first photo was taken from the mouth of the Bronx River, where the trash barge lined up with the Arthur Ash Stadium with a LaGuardia runway in between. Captain D was coming out of Flushing Bay.

Sixth Boro Summer 4

As I went to one of my locations Thursday, I saw this tow headed up the Upper Bay toward Bayonne, and lamented being too late.  I knew it was one of the new DSNY garbage cranes recently being deployed to new marine transfer stations in Manhattan & SW Brooklyn…

Panning slightly to the right, a group on Miller’s Launch boats were attending Afrodite . . .

Panning more than 90 degrees over past the VZ Bridge, I noticed a crane and some tugs over in the direction of Coney Island . . .

Shortly thereafter, I realized the sanitation cranes were returning . . . outbound, moved by Catherine C. Miller.

The next day, from the same vantage point, I noticed two large tugs in Gravesend Bay, one less familiar than the Moran tug.

The unusual stacks identified it immediately . . . Lauren Foss, which I had not seen since 2014, three and a half years ago here….  By the way, notice the ferris wheel and roller coaster on the skyline of Coney Island?

If you’re new to reading this blog, the high point of summer in the sixth boro shoreside for me is the first day, because it brings the mermaids ashore, a whole series of posts about which you can find here . . .

But back to Lauren Foss, a large oceangoing tug used for large barges.  RORO barge American Trader , 400′ x 105′ qualifies as a large barge, although some of the Crowley container barges are larger as seen here and here.

Click here for the specs on the 8200 hp Lauren Foss.

CCA . . . here’s info on this busy but mostly invisible corporation that dates back to the Reagan era.

Here’s the scoop on McLaren Engineering.

 

The sixth boro is truly the part of NYC that never sleeps.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Untruckster

So yesterday was of course a day for a little  . . . Aprilscherz or poisson d’avril . . ., but now I am serious.  What you see below transports garbage, which might not impress you–but that unit towed by a single tug replaces 48 trucks between Queens and Staten Island.  Spaced for safe driving, that would mean about a mile of highway congested by that garbage alone.   Many thanks to Jonathan Steinman for the photo, which he took yesterday afternoon about 4 pm yesterday.

Piecing the whole system together–I hope correctly–here’s a photo I took of Happy Delta in Bayonne less than two weeks after Sandy roared through.

Here’s another shot taken the same day, showing Happy Delta arriving with its cargo, the blue Kunz cranes marked NYC Sanitation, WTC1 serving as the time stamp.

Here’s a close-up I took yesterday about an hour and a half before Jonathan took his.  Here’s the story, six of these barges were built by Senesco and completed last summer.  Here’s the story in print about the time the order was placed.  Each barge carries 48 sealed garbage containers.  The barge is light here, heading for an eastbound passage on the East River.

Compare the freeboard above to that in the next two photos, which Jonathan took half a week ago, as the tug and barge headed westbound–and south–on the East River.

Another four feet or so deeper in the water.  That’s a load of garbage that’s not making potholes and stressing the BQE and other roads.

And where’s it coming from with empties?  Here’s the answer in a recent SIlive version of the Advance.  I haven’t gotten over to the south side of the Goethals Bridge yet to confirm what I think is there . . . those blue Kunz cranes.  Anybody confirm this?  Am I way off?

I took this photo as Captain D–a single 41-year-old tug–towed the 48 empty containers out of the Kills yesterday.

So if you needed another reason to love tugboats . . .

Here and here are more articles on moving garbage this way.

If you think “untruckster” doesn’t work as a name for this transportation system, consider the history of the word “dumpster,” here.

Many thanks to Jonathan for his photos from the East River.   Any photos he didn’t take . . . came from Will Van Dorp.