A modern tale of Queens' King of Crap and his port-a-potty empire.

New York Intelligencer

Charles W. Howard is the porta-potty king of New York City. The seat of his vast empire is Broad Channel, Queens; from this windswept rock in Jamaica Bay, you can see the lights of Manhattan twinkling across the water. Early every morning, while the city sleeps, dozens of trucks — tagged with WE’RE #1 AT PICKING UP #2 decals — snake through the five boroughs to clean his 18,000 toilets. The company boasts more than $35 million in annual revenue, thanks in part to “salesgirls” who head out each day in the company’s signature Volkswagen Beetles to poach contracts from competitors who are too shy to sell with sex. Charlie himself arrives at work only around midday in a black Cadillac Escalade. Young female dispatchers and clerks cry “Charlie! Charlie!” while men in orange slickers hose down toilets in the yard.

On a recent Thursday, the gleaming Escalade stops at a pizzeria, and Charlie, 53, steps out, a bit heavy and wearing a rumpled purple dress shirt. He’s brought along Kimberly, the star of his company’s YouTube channel. She’s beautiful, blonde, and his wife. Charlie favors superlatives, like another Queens businessman, and speaks with the accent you’d expect from a man so old-school New York there’s a neighborhood named after his family. And now, not far from Howard Beach, he explains why he’s the greatest toilet man in America. “I had different theories about business,” he says, “and they all turned out to be correct.”

  Nationally, portable toilets are a $2 billion business. Construction rentals are three-quarters of New York’s market, and as America’s real-estate sector has rebounded over the past half-decade, the industry has exploded. Developers pay $100 a month for a pump truck to visit once a week and hoover up blue-tinged waste. Profits are made by building dense routes: lots of toilets at a stop and lots of job sites close together. Events are a growing corner of the business. Go to Smorgasburg and count the toilets: Daily rentals run about $225 each. Use a luxury restroom trailer with flushing toilets at an upstate wedding? It cost the bride’s parents a few thousand bucks just for the night.

 

But now, Charlie might fall off his throne. More than 1,300 former pump-truck drivers, the men who literally haul his shit, are part of a class-action lawsuit that could put him out of business. The rest of the big five covet his empire.

“They would love for us to get destroyed,” Charlie says, though it’s quite a vague “they.” Spend enough time in his world and you wonder if he’s perhaps the most hated man in the city. Kimberly Howard nods. “Business,” she says, “is war.”

Here's where they want you to hold onto your poop

From QNS:

The next time it rains, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants Queens residents to wait until it stops before doing the dishes, taking a shower or flushing a toilet.

The appropriately titled “Wait…” pilot program is expanding throughout western Queens, the DEP announced on Monday. Participating homeowners and tenants are sent text messages alerting them that the Newtown Creek and Bowery Bay Wastewater Treatment plants are near capacity — and that they should minimize their water use in order to prevent sewer overflows from spilling into already polluted waterways such as the Newtown Creek and Flushing Creek.

The pilot program area of Queens covers all neighborhoods north of the Jackie Robinson Parkway and west of the Van Wyck Expressway, as well as portions of Kew Gardens Hills and Briarwood.

According to advocates, the Wait Program is geared at educating the public about where their dirty water winds up after going down the drain. Wastewater produced whenever someone washes clothes or dishes, or even flushes a toilet, travels into the city’s vast underground sewer system, destined for one of many sewage treatment plants for cleanup and processing.

But in a heavy rain event, not all of the storm runoff and wastewater winds up in the sewage treatment plants. When the plants hit capacity, excess wastewater is expelled through combined sewer overflows into waterways across the city. About 90 percent of the overflow is comprised of storm runoff, and the rest is household wastewater containing detergents, chemicals and raw sewage.

Hey, how about limiting the building in these boroughs until the city gets a handle on how much waste they produce?

Crapper cost is astronomical

From Crains:

A 400-square-foot public bathroom in City Councilman David Greenfield's Brooklyn district has cost $2 million to renovate, and after more than 7½ years of work is still not completed, the lawmaker told a Crain's real estate conference today. Greenfield used the project to make the case that more private-sector engagement is needed to rein in the cost of building municipal infrastructure.

"We have to be frank," said Greenfield, who heads the city's land-use committee. "Government sucks at development."

Many high-profile municipal projects are either missing benchmarks or simply costing taxpayers too much. The Second Avenue subway extension cost about $800 million per mile, yet a similar project in London cost around $125 million per mile. And the East Side Access project, which could have alleviated some of the current Penn Station woes, is now 10 years behind schedule and nearly $4 billion over budget. But as Greenfield made clear, even small development projects suffer under the weight of bureaucracy.

Queens preservation's situation summed up in one photo

And there we have it.

Photo by George the Atheist

Public toilets sit unused in warehouse for 10 years

From CBS 2:

If you are looking for a public restroom in New York City, you will find a dozen of them by walking down an off-the-beaten-track lane toward a warehouse in an industrial section of Maspeth, Queens. They are automatic and self-cleaning, and they have been sitting there unused for about a decade.

The public toilets are operated, or should be, by the JCDecaux company of France. But currently, there are only four of them installed on the streets of the city, and the one CBS2 found at Corona Plaza in Queens was not even working on Friday.

Port-a-potty adds just the right touch to Steinway fiasco

More photos from George the Atheist.

You'll just have to hold it

From the Queens Chronicle:

Eight years and holding. That’s a long time to wait for a bathroom, but that’s just what’s happening in Downtown Flushing.

In 2007, the city signed an agreement with Cemusa, a Spanish company, to build and maintain 20 automatic public toilets around the city. Flushing was to get one of two planned for Queens.

The other one for the borough, in Corona Plaza, was erected in 2008. Nothing was heard again about the Flushing site, in Lippman Plaza, a pedestrian connector for Roosevelt Avenue and 39th Avenue.

Marilyn Bitterman, district manager of Community Board 7, said she had received no updates on the project since CB 7 and then-Councilman John Liu requested it in 2007.

The public facility was also lobbied for by the Flushing Business Improvement District. Current BID Executive Director Dian Yu, when contacted by the Chronicle, had never heard of the toilet and was interested in more information. “I would like to know more about it because we do need a public facility in Downtown Flushing,” Yu said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

According to officials at the Department of Transportation, which handles all street furniture such as toilets, newsstands and bus shelters, the Flushing site was approved but there have been delays, though no specifics were given by the DOT.

Queens Botanic Garden has signs against drinking toilet water

From DNA Info:

Signs put up in the restroom cubicles of the Queens Botanical Garden take the prize for stating the obvious: "Toilet water is not safe for drinking."

The messages hang over toilet bowls full of water that is often colored blue.

Because it's not potable and has not been treated by facilities operated by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, the garden said it was required to install the signs.

Little Bay Park's parking lot expanded

From the Queens Courier:

The parking lot at Little Bay Park in Whitestone can fit nearly 100 more vehicles after being expanded as part of a $6.659 million reconstruction project of the park’s amenities.

Public officials and Parks Department representatives were on hand to celebrate the ribbon cutting of the park, and classic cars were on display as part of the event. The new parking lot was expanded to include 224 spaces, 99 more than were previously there.

Green infrastructure was also added for increased stormwater management.

Twenty-nine new retention tanks will capture and manage all of the site’s stormwater runoff, eventually releasing it back into the ground to minimize any strain on the city’s stormwater sewage system. Bioswales, or raised beds of soil and plants meant to capture and filter rainwater into the ground, were also installed above the retention tanks and planted with perennials, grasses, trees and shrubs.

The project was funded through $3.65 million allocated by the mayor, $720,000 from the City Council and $2.016 million in federal grants. Although work on the comfort station was delayed due to bad weather, construction is now underway and scheduled for completion this fall.

DEP looking to recycle toilets

From the Queens Courier:

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is looking for contractors to crush 200,000 toilets so the city can put the porcelain bits to other uses.

The DEP announced in May of this year that it is launching a $23 million program to replace 200,000 inefficient toilets in up to 10,000 buildings across the five boroughs. An inefficient toilet can use up to five gallons of water per flush, compared to a high-efficiency toilet, which uses only 1.28 gallons or less per flush.

But what to do with all the old fixtures?

The city intends to use the crushed porcelain in the reconstruction of sidewalks and bioswales, landscaped areas built to absorb storm water.

The porcelain from the toilets will create a flat, compact layer on which the city can lay the concrete for the sidewalk, according to Christopher Gilbride, a DEP spokesman. It will also replace the crushed stone in bioswales.

Just leave mine be, please.

Geraldine Ferraro School design is an improvement

The new school on Metropolitan Avenue and Tonsor Street in Ridgewood is coming along and I have to say the design is a step up from the recent school designs built.

The curve is cool.

And there's even a port-a-jane amidst the port-a-johns!

Polly want a crapper?

From Capital New York:

Transportation commissioner Polly Trottenberg firmly believes New Yorkers need more in the way of public lavatories than the city's Starbucks, hotel lobbies and McDonald's can provide.

Today, during a City Council hearing on the transportation department's budget, Trottenberg said she's not giving up on a Bloomberg-era plan to install 20 public toilets in New York City.

"I think we really need to get that done and it's something we’re going to focus on," she told the Council.

“One thing I’m certainly interested in is getting the rest of the public bathrooms that are in the contract up and built," she said. "And I’ve actually asked our team at D.O.T. to figure out how we expedite that."

Little Bay crappers should be completed on time

From Bayside Patch:

Construction on the long-awaited comfort station at Little Bay Park is progressing and remains on schedule for completion by the fall of 2014, state Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, said.

The contractor has obtained the required permits from the city’s Department of Buildings and excavation for the building footing has begun, according to the city’s Department of Parks.

The $5 million project has been in the works for eight years.

The comfort station will include a new public restroom and an expanded 224-car parking lot with bioswales to absorb runoff.

Little Bay Park construction stalled

Dear Community,

Many of you have noticed that work on the Little Bay Park Comfort Station and parking lot expansion have come to a grinding halt. That's not completely true because in actuality construction never began.

Initial inquiries to the Department of Parks & Recreation were met with the sounds of silence. When the Parks Department did respond they would deny the existence of a problem. They even went so far as to make the ludicrous claim that work was taking place but it just happened to be at times when no one was nearby to view the progress.

As is so often the case, the story has once again taken a new turn. A spokesperson for the Parks Department now reports that work was delayed because the contractor needed to obtain the proper construction permits. What this means, if it's accurate, is that a contractor hired by the Parks Department fenced off a large area of parkland and moved dirt and large pieces of construction equipment onto the worksite without have all the permits in place. Would anyone reading this email allow a contractor they had hired to perform in such a reckless and irresponsible manner? I don't think so.

Individuals employed by the Parks Department are dedicated and hard working. However, incidents like the Little Bay Park fiasco emphasize the need for greater oversight. Hopefully a new mayor will bring about much needed change.

Sincerely
Warren Schreiber

More path problems at Little Bay Park

"It seems Parks Dept is flip-flopping on leaving a temporary Bike/Pedestrian path by Fort Totten's Little Bay Park "Comfort station construction project. Last weekend they opened up the fence on both sides so the path was completely usable. But I went today and its all closed up again. Can we talk to Parks; I was told Mike Agnella was in charge there of that park. Or give me the keys to the truck, I'll lay down some asphalt over the grass, as temp path.

At least they put up a sign on the fence by the 212 street side of the parking lot explaining what will be built AND, "Scheduled Completion: Fall 2014".

That's 2 complete seasons! If they leave it with no access from one side to the other, without risking one's life tangling with cars on the CIP entrance ramp!" - Upset in Bayside

Bayside High School gets new crappers

From the Times Ledger:

New porcelain thrones have been sitting well with administrators at Bayside High School, where a new city initiative has helped save energy one flush at a time.

The school installed 102 new toilets to serve its more than 3,200 students in August and has saved roughly 3 gallons per flush ever since, according to school engineer Richard Fricione. In these new toilets, a straight path allows the water to drain directly out of the bowl instead of following its predecessors’ more twisty tubes.

“We have been monitoring our water usage all year and have seen it gone down quite a bit,” Fricione said of the new 1.2-gallon toilets, which replaced older equipment that used 4.5 gallons per flush.

The city tapped Bayside as well as Hillcrest HS in Jamaica to participate in its pilot program that aims to conserve water with new low-flow toilets, according to the city Department of Environmental Protection. By the program’s completion in five years, a DEP spokesman said 500 city schools will have received 40,000 new energy-saving toilets with the goal of draining their water usage by 70 percent, saving roughly 4 million gallons per day.

The $31 million city initiative also preps for something greater, when the Delaware Aqueduct is temporarily shut down in 2020 for repairs. The aqueduct has supplied the city with more than half of its public water and its closure will demand that administrators find alternative sources while it is repaired, the DEP said.

Crapper for Little Bay Park a long time coming

From the Times Ledger:

Residents of northeast Queens took some comfort in hearing that one long-awaited project at Little Bay Park would be moving forward soon.

In an e-mail to his community last week, Bay Terrace Community Alliance President Warren Schreiber said he was cautiously optimistic to report the city Parks Departments’ intention of breaking ground on a new comfort station at Little Bay Park in March.

“I am hopeful, but also skeptical,” Schreiber said. “I just don’t want to see the community disappointed again if they come up with another reason why the project cannot move forward.”

According to a Parks spokesman, the project should be finished by fall 2014 and will include a new comfort station, trees, plantings, and an expanded 100-car parking lot equipped with the ability to clean and absorb storm water runoff, reducing the burden on the area’s drains. The bidding process for the project is nearly finished and the project’s contracts are awarded, or soon to be awarded, the spokesman said.

Photo from Bayside Patch

Still no crapper at Little Bay Park

From Bayside Patch:

Neighborhood activists have become increasingly frustrated with the NYC Parks Dept., because though $1.3 million dollars was allocated to build to build permanent washrooms in 2005 by then Councilman Tony Avella, D-Bayside, that money has not been put to use.An additional $4.12 million in Congressional funds from Congressman Gary Ackerman, D-Bayside, for the purpose of expanding parking and to reconstruct an overpass near the entrance, was bundled with the bathroom funds, and also goes unused since it was allocated in 2004.Last year, following inquiries by community members, NYC Comptroller John Liu did an audit, revealing that the Parks Dept. sometimes did not renew contracts, or offer them for contractor bidding in a timely fashion, though the Parks Dept. said they were not culpable.The Parks Dept. had said that the replacement of porta potties—which are not always present at the park—with permanent bathrooms, is tied up with the approval of other agencies, like the Dept. of Environmental Protection.The group that wants to install the new dock, which would be used for ecological education for kids, purports to have gotten fairly quick permission from the DEP to go ahead with their project.

An authentic old crapper

From Scouting NY:

Last week, I was out scouting a semi-abandoned farmhouse in the outer boroughs dating to the early 1900s. After touring the main house, we came to this barn/shed in the back…

At the time, I assumed the seats had been nailed down, but looking at my photograph, it appears they’re on hinges. Could the last outhouse in NYC still be functioning? Looks like I’m going to have to make another trip to find out…

Trade in your old crapper for $125

From the Village Voice:

Carter Strickland, Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, announced a plan that would make Sir Thomas Crapper cry with joy: The DEP has planned an upcoming toilet rebate program to swap 800,000 NYC loos with water-saving models.

That program would start in 2013 and would "reduce water consumption, typically one billion gallons per day, by 30 million gallons per day -- a 3% total reduction," the DEP announced. That's because newer, high-efficiency latrines only use 1.8 gallons of water -- compared to as many as 5 gallons on old versions.

If you are interested, you will likely get $125 for switching out your old pot, "covering all or most of the cost of a typical toilet."