With 300,000 cubic yards of sludge being carted from the recently designated Gowanus Superfund site, a project manager for the effort has an admittedly "out there" idea. Through the process of vitrification he wants to pack and heat the waste, until it's transformed into big glass cubes. "You could construct an aquarium," Christos Tsiamis told the News, adding that "It creates an absolutely safe byproduct," so the fish tanks won't stink. Maybe a Mac store could go in one of them?
Officials still haven't decided what they'll do with the waste ("It's oozy like lava. ... It has the texture of mayonnaise," says Tsiamis, who was also profiled in the NY Times on Tuesday), to be excavated and removed over the next decade, but they're expected to make an announcement by the end of the year. One option is taking it to a landfill, but vitrification—which has been used at other toxic sites—has the advantage of creating a useful byproduct. The drawbacks? Making it work would cost tens of millions, and its success would depend on how sandy the sludge is.
