I got the chance to tour New York City’s brand new Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station. It is scheduled to open next year and is located on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. It will be the transfer point for household waste from ten Brooklyn community boards. It is the first marine transfer station there. All other waste is moved on trucks and rail. It is very impressive. Once operational, it will operate 24 hours a day and six days a week (no Sundays). Currently waste from the area goes to waste to energy incinerators. There will be 12 sanitation workers per shift plus one supervisor.
Trucks enter the building and are first weighed on a scale.
Scale where trucks get weighed when entering station
Once inside the building, the trucks back up to the edge of the floor and lower their trash onto the mixing floor below.
Area where trucks enter and then deposit waste onto mixing floor (right side)
Front loaders and other equipment on the floor below are used to push the waste through openings in the floor into containers waiting below the mixing floor.
Waste mixing floor with equipment to push waste into containers, the elevated floor on the left is where the trucks will lower their loads
The openings in the mixing floor are only as big as the standard containers that will accept the waste. The station aims to put 20 tons of waste in each container.
Looking down from waste mixing floor into hole where waste will be pushed into a waiting container
Once the container is full, equipment is then used to place a top on the waste container.
Row of toppers, equipment used to place top on top of container
The containers are moved the loading area to the topping area to the storage area on rails.
Loading bay, in foreground are toppers and behind, with yellow frames, are where containers will sit to receive waste
Cranes that are also on rails are used to move the containers from the building to stacking areas to finally the barge.
Equipment that is attached to crane to move containers
There are two cranes, but for safety, only one is used at a time. The other one is a backup during maintenance.
Container crane
Base of container crane, on rails
Container cranes with station building to the left