[Photo courtesy of chicapoquita/flickr]

Anyone who knows Greenpoint knows the site and, uh, smell of the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Facility, which collects crap from far and wide. It has many distinctions, not the least of which is its long standing dysfunction and the epic and ongoing $2.3 billion upgrade that it is getting. Miss Heather has put together an interesting post for the Poop Report about what she and others call the “shit tits” of Greenpoint:

There are over eight million people in New York City. Invariably, each and every one of them will go to the bathroom. So after that fateful flush, where does it go? Well, if they happen to live or work in North Brooklyn or the East Side of Manhattan below 72nd Street, the odds are that their poop will surface two blocks from my home. You see, I live in the shadow of the largest waste treatment plant in New York City, and perhaps on the entire east coast….An upgrade of this plant was green-lighted by the city in 2003. The end product of this $2.4 billion project will be a thirty-seven acre facility equipped to handle 1.2 billion gallons of sewage. (That’s a lot of poop, people!) The projected date of completion for the new and improved plant is 2013 (although it’s rumored that the city is trying to push it back to 2022). The completed plant will also sport a state-of-the-art odor control system (which I can attest, as of July 2008, is NOT up and running).

It’s also one of the nation’s only sewage plants with a park and an architectural pedigree. There’s more great detail. Do read.