Where did all the snow go? Down the drain!
Sanitation workers used streets in Red Hook, Bensonhurst, and Canarsie to dump and destroy the city’s snow last week, depositing it in massive heaps before liquefying it and sending the results into local sewers. The epic piles blocked traffic in the streets for much of the week, but one nearby resident said she didn’t mind dealing with the frosty road blocks for the sake of clearing the rest of the borough’s thoroughfares.
“It’s the city,” said Red Hooker Rose Streiff. “They got to do what they got to do.”
The street-wide snow mounds overtook four blocks near the Red Hook Recreation Center and surrounding park, including two blocks of Clinton Street between Lorraine and Halleck streets, and two blocks along Bay Street between Court and Henry streets, before workers began melting them away on Thursday.
The city was also deposited piles as long as two busses and as tall as two-story buildings around E. 105th Street and Foster Avenue in Canarsie, and on Bay Parkway between 59th Street and McDonald Avenue in Bensonhurst.
The Department of Environmental Protection selected the sites as King’s County’s frosted dumping grounds due to their proximity to speedy sewers capable of handling the excess water, according to a spokeswoman for the sanitation department.
Plowers collected snow throughout the borough all week, stashing it in the anointed streets, before workers attacked the heaps with front-loaders, scooping the snow into orange-colored industrial melters, according to the spokeswoman.
— additional reporting by Zach Jones
