drunkie the snowman, by brainware3000 at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an officer shot on Vandalia Ave & Ardlsey Loop in Brooklyn, a gas leak at Dongan Pl. off Broadway in Manhattan, and an aircraft emergency at JFK in Queens. The City's investigating whether its artificial turf fields are poisonous. The Brooklyn Paper finds Obama did get votes in many Brooklyn districts (here's the congressional district breakdown for all of NYC). Blogging by......

The 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show arrives at Madison Square Garden Monday. The two-day event has thousands of dogs undergo a winnowing process that culminates with the awarding of Best in Show. The American Kennel Club recognizes 157 disinct breeds that are eligible for competition, and four of those breeds are brand new entries to the field. They include the Tibetan mastiff (a working dog), the Beaucerand and Swedish vallhund (herding dogs), and the......

Photographs by SilvaAzniv on Flickr (left, right); the steam in the right photo is from Con Ed - not a fire At West End Avenue and West 59th Street, a water main broke, flooding the Amtrak tracks. The FDNY is pumping out the water and a number of other city agencies, including the Office of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection are on the scene. According to other reports, a new building (an......

The NY Times reports on Mr. New Jersey's ties with the political elite. With it being common practice for high-ranking politicians to attend his concerts, it's seems it's a two way street, with Bon Jovi also showing his support at their functions.He calls her “Mrs. C.” And she calls on him to add a little celebrity gloss to her presidential campaign. Jon Bon Jovi and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been friends for more than a......

Yesterday's explosion at 1211 Avenue of the Americas (aka 6th Avenue at 48th Street), the building that houses News Corporation and entities like Fox News and the NY Post, was caused by two chemicals reacting together. About 700 people were evacuated from the 42nd to 45th floors as the explosion occurred on the 45th floor, where the mechanic room is located - and where chemicals are stored. Newsday reports that the explosion occurred while "hazardous......

Earlier this year, the city's new noise code went into effect, and the city has definitely been enforcing it on Staten Island's Kinborn Street. The Department of Environmental Protection has fined Lucie Liebman $1,000 for a noisy ice truck jingle. The thing is, Liebman doesn't have an ice cream truck! A Lickety Split truck had parked outside Liebman's house and sounded its jingle. The DEP sent two summonses to Liebman, before dropping off the hefty......

No news is bad news when it comes to the long-delayed opening of Radegast Hall & Biergarten, the new 2,000 square foot Williamsburg bar owned by the savvy Czechs who run Astoria’s Bohemian Hall. The establishment, designed to feel like a turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungarian beer hall, has been physically ready for business since Oktoberfest, but owners have been hung up on various permits and paperwork. The last hurdle was supposedly the certificate of occupancy, which......

Green Brooklyn (via Brownstoner) has a not-surprising-as-it-should-be post on, well, the Gowanus Canal having a touch of the gonohorrea. According to a Scienceline article, "a biologist at the New York City College of Technology, has her students analyze water samples and observe the oily substance that coats the water’s surface each afternoon. 'One group of students found gonohorrea in a water drop,' said Haque. She’s particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the......

In the shadows of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, residents of Greenpoint will soon be able to go on a nature walk. The Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the sewage plant, is officially opening the Newtown Creek Nature Walk this Saturday. The 800-foot nature walk along Newtown Creek, which took 9-years and $3.2 million to complete, is landscaped and features access points to the polluted creek. The Times even observed a school......

There was a bit in the MTA's August 8 Storm Report which mentioned that the MTA was working on some street furniture designs to "raise vent heights to prevent water inflow." As part of the recommendation to "Implement corrective action plan for top flood-prone locations," the MTA, with the Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection, is developing short- and long-term solutions at the most flooding-vulnerable locations. Perhaps a more promising and intriguing......

Tenants of the office building at 370 Lexington Ave. and East 41st St. are alleging that while they were barred from the building for more than a month during clean-up and decontamination of the area following July's midtown steampipe explosion, their offices were looted of cash, cellphones, electronics, and other portable valuables. The New York Post talked to the president of a graphic-arts company located in the building, who found that approximately $45,000 in items......

Following complaints that a persistent odor was permeating the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx and nauseating residents, the Department of Environmental Protection hired an outside consulting firm to sniff around the borough and see what it could discover. According to the New York Post, smell inspectors were dispatched throughout the south Bronx with cellphones to take calls directly from residents calling an odor hotline. They discovered that a lot of different things smell very......

The rebuilding process at Ground Zero took another small step forward today as final plans for Towers 2, 3, and 4 were unveiled. Larry Silverstein and a group of architects unveiled updated designs for the buildings, which are supposed to start construction in January. These plans are more detailed than the initial designs released last year, with more information on the lobbies, public spaces, and building facades. Silverstein says the buildings will be environmentally......

Why did a patch of West 17th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues give way under the weight a sanitation truck? It turns out there was a broken sewer. We wonder if the sewer had recently broken or if the Department of Environmental Protection knew about it but was waiting for the street to fall in. Con Ed told Metro that there were no gas leak, though there were reports of a threat of......

It's been just about two weeks since the 7-alarm fire at the Deutsche Bank building, and the city and state are still trying to figure out how to proceed with the WTC-dust contaminated building's dismantling. The Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation asking for the building to be sealed up "to protect public health and the environment." It was only when the EPA had given its approval for a......

After Wednesday's drenching that caused the subways to melt down, terrible flooding, and sewage to back up into streets and into homes, officials are creating task forces for review what the hell is going on. But the sad truth is that NYC's drainage systems are complicated. The NY Times has a fascinating and frightening (if the ideas of lots of sewage frightens you) article that looks at the dirty secret of NYC's storm water......

Ironically, the multi-billion dollar plan to build a subterranean water treatment plant in the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park, which has been delayed by large projected cost overruns, is now accruing $30,000-a-day fines for the city. The New York Times reports that the Feds are applying the fines because work on the filtration plant has barely begun and the city hasn't even selected a primary contractor. In the city's defense, we'll note that it had a......

The marshlands in Jamaica Bay that make up a portion of the Gateway National Recreation area and includes the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge are disappearing so quickly that some estimate all of the marshes could disappear in as few as five years. The New York Times reports that recent satellite images indicate that about 33 acres of tidal wetlands in the bay are disappearing annually, almost double the prior estimate of 18 acres per year......

The frozen zone around the Midtown area of an exploded steam pipe is getting smaller: East 42nd Street is opened to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. East 41st between Lexington and Park Avenues is still closed (the explosion was at 41st and Lexington), while parts of Lexington and Park Avenues are still closed between 40th and 42nd Streets. It's expected to take at least another week for Con Ed to "remove heavy debris from the......

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:The......

As we know, Con Edison and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection have confirmed that asbestos was found in debris after the steam pipe explosion at 41st Street and Lexington, but that there is no airborne asbestos. If you were in the area of the explosion and have contaminated clothing, Con Ed is actually accepting clothes and will dispose of them:Anyone who was in that area around 6 p.m. who has dust or......

A new noise code will go into effect tonight/tomorrow morning when the clock strikes midnight, and that clock better have muffled bells. It's the first comprehensive overhaul of noise ordinances in about 30 years and was proposed by Mayor Bloomberg three and a half years ago. It's mostly oriented towards bars and clubs, where a growing nightlife presence in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side has left many residents sleepless. The New York Times notes......

Former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (and former NJ Governor) Christie Todd Whitman testified in front of Congress yesterday about the EPA's September 11 response. With critics like Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner of New York and Representative Bill Pascrell of NJ questioning her, Whitman called statements made about her leadership "misinformation, innuendo and downright falsehoods." The Daily News, which made Whitman its cover girl yesterday, called her a woman of "many......

There's nothing like testifying in front of Congress as the Daily News puts you on the front cover and asks you to "come clean" about the post-WTC collapse toxic air in an editorial. Today, Christie Todd Whitman appeared before a Democratic-controlled Congress; the Daily News editorial demanded that former EPA head explain why she and the EPA led New Yorkers to believe the air downtown was safe. During her testimony, Whitman spent the time denouncing......

Former NJ Governor and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman is alleging that in the days after the 9/11 attacks, she urged the city to get rescue workers and first responders to wear respirators, but was rebuffed by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. If true, the allegations would seem to severely damage Giuliani's Presidential aspirations, as he is running on the perceived strength of his leadership in the days following 9/11/01. Whitman also......

New York magazine has a great examination of the Greenpoint pollution problem lurking beneath the neighborhood's surface, and floating along the surface of Newtown Creek. It describes a ten million gallon reservoir of industrial pollution that includes, fuel oil, naptha, gasoline, parrafin wax and likely many more materials that were used along the industrial area of the waterway that separates Brooklyn and Queens. The contamination of the area is hardly breaking news. Brooklyn drew its......

After higher-than-safe levels of the chemical terachloroethylene, also known as PERC and used by dry cleaners and auto body shops, were found in Queens drinking water last month, a Queens politician wants to phase PERC from use. State Senator Malcolm Smith proposed legislation to help businesses switch to environmentally friendly products by 2012. Sounds like a no-brainer, but probably having the Department of Buildings check up on whether buildings have backflow preventer valves would help......

When it comes down to it, learning about various problems with NYC buildings is like an episode of This Old House. Though the the city's Department of Environmental Protection says that the drinking water supply in southeastern Queens is safe, after last week's brief scare when tetrachloroethylene (PERC) was found in higher than normal amounts (though the water was still apparently safe), it turns out that many city buildings lack a special water valve. The......

Sunsets at the Harlem Yacht Club won't be the same anymore. A state appellate court ruled that the club must follow the DEP's orders and stop firing a miniature cannon when the club lowers the flag. The yacht club, which is on City Island, and its residential neighbors have been facing off over the cannon firing since 2000, when the neighbors brought a petition asking the club to consider "another maritime tradition that does not......

The Department of Environmental Protection says that Thursday afternoon tests of tap water in southeastern Queens found little or no traces of tetrochloroethylene, aka perc. The chemical, used in dry cleaning and in auto repair, can cause cancer if exposure is high, but the DEP says that the higher-than-normal levels found last week were "minute" and "were not expected" to lead to health risks. Here's the DEP's press release:After conducting extensive inspections of water/sewer connections......