Superfund Waterways
A superfund site is a location containing abandoned hazardous pollutants that often require remediation. By contrast, the sounds of these locations can seem rather peaceful, beautiful, or serene.
In this episode, “Superfund Waterways,” Danielle Butler and ND Austin (co-founders of the Tideland Institute), and Jeremy S. Bloom (sound artist) tell a story about the New York Harbor, the possibilities of an NYC water culture, and the extent to which soundscapes can alter our perception of environmental change. As part of this narrative, you will be able to hear excerpts from the collaborative project, The Soothing Sounds of the Superfund Sites—a three volume album that features recordings from six different superfund locations along New York City waterways. The tension between the soothing sound of a site and the description of its hazardous material creates an interesting dialogue between water and urban culture.
All proceeds from this episode will be donated to the Tideland Institute, a collective that connects New Yorkers to their harbor by building on-water opportunities for physical access, celebration, and creative engagement.
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[The voices of all the storytellers from Season One of The Sonocene begin to overlap and blend together in a single, collective gesture.]
Listen.
Listen to my voice.
To spoken words and ambient sounds.
[Ocean waves crash against land. A stream trickles. Moving water bubbles against an underwater microphone. All the sounds begin to blend and overlap. ]
Together they tell the story about people and place; about plants and animals; about the ecological relationships within New York City during a time of rapid change. And the way they all resonate as an interwoven network of vibrations.
[Voices and sounds crescendo, and then hard cut to silence. All the storytellers from Season One exclaim in unison:]
Welcome to The Sonocene—
[The voice of “Superfund Waterways” episode storyteller, Jeremy S. Bloom, replies.]
ecological stories told through sound.
[Ocean waves bubble and pulse against an underwater microphone. Stagnant lulls are interspersed by intense pressure as water collides with land—constantly pushing and pulling against the microphone. A voice begins the episode story.]
[00:56] Intense, constant churning of waves upon land. And you get kind of caught into that, like that rhythm and that slow grind; the grinding away of like water on land. And then you become aware that you're in the city.
[As the pressure of another incoming wave approaches, the microphone is pulled from the watery depths. A clear soundscape of Coney Island Beach enters your foreground. Waves continue to crash against land as seagulls call out and wind whips against the microphone filter.]
[1:35] And that is New York, that conversation between water and urban culture.
[The soundscape of Coney Island Beach crossfades to that of Pebble Beach in Brooklyn. An elevated subway passes overhead with rattling and roar. Waves lap against the shoreline. A second, different voice elaborates on the episode story.]
[2:15] The waves on the pebbles has the same kind of roar, the ebb and flow, of dark, heavy rumbling sound, as this elevated subway passing overhead.
[The subway and water resonate as a third, different voice continues the episode story.]
[2:26] And they're kind of functioning together and playing a similar role, even though one is organic and of nature and one is of technology. They sound sort of the same world to me.
[The third voice continues.]
[2:41] So the project's called Soothing Sounds of Superfund Sites. Basically, what's going on on these albums is we're going to the most disturbed, the most polluted, the most dirty, the most downtrodden spaces around New York harbor. And we're inviting people to engage with those spaces through a different sense.
[The second voice elaborates.]
[3:02] No matter what it smells like, no matter what it looks like, no matter whether it's been remediated yet or not. The sound of a Superfund site is rain on pebbles. It's birds chirping. It's wind in grass.
[The first voice closes the section.]
[3:18] That was kind of our way to take a story that is really complex and overwhelming and give you an access point.
[3:30] Today's storytellers are...
ND Austin (NDA), Co-founder of the Tideland Institute.
My name is Daniel Isidora Butler (DB). I'm co-founder of the Tideland Institute.
My name's Jeremy S. Bloom (JB) and I'm a sound designer based in New York City.
[The Pebble Beach soundscape returns to your foreground.]
[3:56] (ND) And in New York, we have this crazy, historic sound inversion where it used to be, let's say 100 years ago, all of the noise was on the water and none of the noise was on the streets.
[The Pebble Beach soundscape crossfades to water churning. The engines of the Staten Island Ferry propel the vessel with a deep rumbling and splashing of water.]
[4:08] (ND) All the newspaper articles in the late 1800s about noise in New York are all complaints about sound from the water. And that is an entire armada of every single tug boat, ferry boat, everything blowing a whistle, blowing a horn, communicating by whistles and horns. And this is before the invention of modern radio. Once radio was invented, all the boats talk over the radio. No one signals significantly by blowing their horns. Still a little bit of that left today. Every time the Staten Island ferry departs, it blasts its horn.
[The sounds of roaring engine and churning water fade to silence as the Staten Island Ferry loudly sounds its horn.]
(ND) That is an actual, that's a historic signal indicating it's about to back up out of its slip. So there's still a few little pieces of that left today, but mostly the sound on the water has completely disappeared.
[The sound of horn and churning water blend and crescendo before a hard cut to silence. This occurs in union with the storyteller as they say the word “disappeared.” Then, the soft lull of waves against the shore enter your foreground. People chat and birds chirp. Wind softly “pops” against a microphone filter. This is the East Riverwalk soundscape.]
[5:01] (DB) I would say that we're we're pretty estranged from the water and we're really curious to know how New York would be different if we allowed the culture and the vibrancy of the city to extend to the edges and onto the water.
[5:20] (ND) New York Harbor is not just one type of waterway. There's the Hudson River, which is a swift flowing river. There's the East River, which is not a river at all. It's a tidal estuary. There's canals. There's narrow hidden pockety, very calm portions. There's rough, wild, crazy portions. There's parts of the harbor that are full of industrial traffic. There's parts of the harbor that are actually really calm and protected. And in every different place, there's different ways of interacting with the water there. So it's not like there's only one thing that can happen in any one place.
[5:55] (DB) And doing it through culture creation and social infrastructure and just recognizing that we have this great asset.
[The East Riverwalk soundscape continues in your background. A boat horn sounds in the distance.]
[6:04] (JB) When we were working on the Soothing Sounds of Superfund Sites project, the real challenge was curatorial. And that's all about avoiding and accounting for noise pollution of other elements that would otherwise not be there.
[A horn sounds. Birds chirp. Waves, created from boat wake, lap against the shoreline nearby.]
[6:27] (JB) So the project is called, Soothing Sounds of Superfund Sites. Basically what's going on on these albums is we're going to the most disturbed, the most polluted, the most dirty, the most downtrodden spaces around New York harbor. And we're inviting people to engage with those spaces through a different sense. If they briefly divorce the visual aspects of that space and listen to them through the sound experience, they're struck by the beauty of these places. And then that works in contrast to a very brief textual description in the liner notes that is maybe more aligned with some of the conventional descriptions of these places. And that tension creates a really interesting moment of discovery for people, a really interesting moment of kind of thwarting their expectations. And for every person who listens, that happens in a different way.
[7:28] (ND) So if you've never been to a Superfund site, whatever it is that you imagine that super toxic place might be like, you might be surprised to discover that no matter what it smells like, no matter what it looks like, no matter whether it's been remediated yet or not, the sound of a Superfund site is rain on pebbles. It's birds chirping. It's wind and grass.
[7:53] (JB) It's nature. You're in nature…
[A hard cut to silence, followed by a slow fade into the first track of Soothing Sounds of Superfund Sites.]
(JB) and the nature is disturbed. But still, nature.
[8:02] (JB) Volume One: Dumps.
Side A: Fresh Kills Landfill (Track 1)
[The audio for this section of the episode is best captured by the descriptions curated by the storytellers themselves. Please follow the story narrative and text below. The audio of each track fades into your background during the liner note readings, and then transitions into the next track. All liner notes are read by storyteller, Jeremy S. Bloom.]
[9:14] Once the largest landfill in the world, this giant heap of New York City trash is slowly being rehabilitated into a heap shaped park. Orange tinted leachate gently flows down a rocky ditch underscored by songbirds and laughing gulls.
[9:34] Side B: Horseshoe Road Drum Dump (Track 2)
[10:37] At the site, toxic waste processors abandoned "tar like piles, dioxin laced ash, and pesticide drums that oozed unknown gelatinous substances." For many years, the EPA monitored a "purple puddle," ultimately concluding that despite extensive analysis, it is impossible to determine the chemical specific nature of the material that makes the puddle purple. Thriving songbirds chirp over the persistent hum of a distant highway as light rain falls on remediated foliage.
[11:18] Volume Two: Oil
Side A: Greenpoint Oil Spill Groundwater Well Pump (Track 3)
[12:23] Dozens of active oil wells are currently removing spilled oil from beneath Brooklyn. Since the late 1970s, more than 13 million gallons have been recovered and sent to a refinery to be made into gasoline. An oil pump hums with a deep undulation.
[12:43] Side B: Newtown Creek Groundwater Treatment Outfall (Track 4)
[13:46] After the spilled oil is extracted, the remaining water is reintroduced into Newtown Creek through this pipe, becoming the cleanest source of water entering the creek. Crystal clean water rushes through riprap onto the waterway below.
[14:04] Volume Three: Waste.
Side A: Marine Garbage Transfer Station (Track 5)
[15:10] Because New York City is an archipelago, much of its waste ultimately exits via barge. Recycled metals, garbage, and poop sludge. A retired Marine transfer station rests in tranquility as a distant mechanical claw shifts scrap metal from land to barge in gently crashing Sisyphean cycles.
[15:33] Side B: Queens Broadway Combined Sewer Outfall (Track 6)
[16:37] The most active polluter in New York City remains the city itself, annually and illegally, dumping 27 billion gallons of raw sewage into New York Harbor. Drips echo within the depths of a concrete sewer tunnel, interrupted by the occasional resonant slosh of a passing ferry wake.
[An airplane passes overhead. Waves “plop” against stone. The East Riverwalk soundscape returns to your foreground.]
[17:07] (DB) We loved the idea of superfund sounds being really relaxing and soothing. That was kind of our way to take a story that is really complex and overwhelming and give you an access point and never being prescriptive about what people are learning or should feel. And so that's what relationship building is, is giving an opportunity for somebody to connect in their own way.
[17:37] (ND) You could entirely have a relationship to the harbor that is all about it being super polluted, all about it being really inaccessible, all about it being really too big to handle, too much of a mess, to deal with, too many conflicts and conflicting interests. And you could just be scared of sea level rise. But it doesn't have to be that way. You could also interact with this place with joy and connectivity. When you think about how nice it is to be in a street that's full of life, there's no reason why the harbor couldn't reflect that too. It's actually really strange that New York has so much culture happening in the streets and almost none on the water.
[The East Riverwalk soundscape continues in your background, but other sounds begin to join the texture. The Staten Island Ferry churns the waterway.]
[18:15] (DB) I think we often find ourselves using the word "vibrant" to describe our vision for the future of the water, because it's a word that's very open. Because I think we have some ideas about the type of life and culture that we'd like to bring to the water, but we'd also like to create opportunities and platforms and resources for other people to bring their vision to the water. Because the thing that I think vibrancy means to us is that it is alive. And a way to describe that more is that the water in the coastline could reflect the city, and what would that be like? It feels so good to be connected to the water and your place and nature.
[An elevated subway passes overhead. Water brushes soft pebbles. Ocean crashes onto a beach.]
[19:01] (ND) I think a lot of times people feel like ecological issues don't coincide with what humans want. But this is one of the few places where, just on a very simple level, if we clean up the harbor in a way that makes it more welcoming for humans, it's also going to make it more welcoming for animals and nature to thrive.
[A collection of sounds from the episode continue to ebb and flow together. These are the sounds of NYC waterways.]
[19:19] (DB) Every time I'm on the water, I very quickly experientially begin to understand this really complex conversation of water and environment and city and waste and resources. And it's really incredible to be able to just do that experientially by exploring a place that is really interesting and beautiful.
[The waterway sounds crossfade to the sound of Coney Island Beach. Seagulls call. Ocean waves crash. Wind blows.]
[19:46] (ND) In New York, in particular, where we're at a moment of great change when it comes to how we interact with the harbor that surrounds us. And it's not all frozen and fixed and decided how it's going to be, what the future is going to be like, what kind of city we're going to live in and what it's going to look like. It is not yet decided. It's not fixed. And there's a lot of room for new voices and new ideas.
[The volume increases as a large wave begins to break. As it crashes onto land, the microphone becomes submerged by the wave. Ocean waves bubble and pulse against an underwater microphone. Stagnant lulls are interspersed by intense pressure as water collides with land—constantly pushing and pulling against the microphone.]
[20:40] (DB) And that is New York, that conversation between water and urban culture.
[A final wave breaks and the audio fades to silence.]
[A simple electronic melody, alongside a resonant percussive groove elicits a feeling of earnest contemplation. This is the outro music, composed by UCC Harlo.]
[20:55] (ND) This Soothing Sounds of Superfund Sites project is something we're in the middle of, so we're making new recordings in some new locations. We are still assembling what the final version is going to be like, and we are intending to publish this as a real physical album in the world.
[21:13] The Sonocene is supported by Humanities New York, the NYU Center for the Humanities, and the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science Music Department. Our production team is a collective of environmental humanities scholars and artists, including Elizabeth Fickey, Bailey Hilgren, Konstantine Vlasis. Original Music by Annie Garlid, a.k.a. UCC Harlo. Sound Design and Mixing by Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan. And voiceover by me, Elizabeth Geist. All proceeds from today's episode will be donated to the Tideland Institute. If you'd like to support this podcast, have an ecological story you'd like to share, or would like to learn more about the topics of today's episode, please visit our website at www.thesonoscene.com or check out our social media pages @thesonocene. Thanks for listening.
