Urban Gadabout: Walking the Newtown Creek Nature Walk with its designer, George Trakas

A popular feature at the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is this long series of steps along the park's Newtown Creek frontage. Visitors are free to relax on the steps and look out on the Long Island City (Queens) shorefront opposite, or to peek at the view to the left.

by Ken

Some of life's sweetest rewards can't be planned; the most you can do is to position yourself in the path of possibly happy surprises.

I had signed up for Jack Eichenbaum's Municipal Art Society tour today (check out MAS tour listings here), "A Renaissance in Newtown Creek," even though I had done what looked to be basically the same walk with Jack before, when it was called "Crossing Newtown Creek": starting in the heart of Brooklyn's northwesternmost outpost, Greenpoint, then proceeding to the northwestern corner of the 53-acre site of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Management Plant to see the Newtown Creek Nature Walk designed by artist George Trakas installed between 1997 and 2007, then proceeding across the Pulaski Bridge over Newtown Creek to Long Island City, Queens. (Newtown Creek forms the western section of the border between Brooklyn and Queens.)

So why do the walk again?

First, when I first did the walk, some 15 months ago, the primary attraction was laying eyes on Newtown Creek, which to my knowledge I had never done before. You have to remember that like most industrial waterfronts it was pretty well closed off to civilian eyes and feet. But in that intervening year and a quarter I had done more walks around various parts of the creek than I can remember and also cruised the creek, mostly under the auspices of the Newtown Creek Alliance (it's definitely worth signing up for their e-mail list), and mostly with NCA historian Mitch Waxman (whose blog, "The Newtown Pentacle," is always worth checking out).

Second, there's the Jack Eichenbaum factor. In all the many walks I've done with Jack, I can hardly remember one where I didn't learn something of near-life-changing importance -- certainly a change in my way of perceiving the city, and likely the world around me. Walking with Jack, you learn to see how basic factors of physical and human geography have shaped the way regions and neighborhoods have developed and redeveloped.

Third, there's the "I forgot" factor. Even if today's walk turned out to be identical to last June's, the chances are that I haven't retained more than 10 percent of what I "learned" then.

BUT TODAY'S WALK TURNED OUT TO BE
FAR FROM IDENTICAL TO LAST YEAR'S


Here's George at another of his projects, Beacon Point 2007, a Hudson River-front space that provides waterfront access in Beacon, NY.

The first surprise as we gathered for the sold-out tour was that none other Mitch Waxman was on hand, recruited by Jack to share his particular knowledge of Newtown Creek and its surrounding areas. Then Jack, arriving fighting through a massive subway outage in Queens, bore news: Not only would our walk be coinciding, by happenstance, with Field Trip Day and the closing weekend of the "Newtown Creek Armada," a flotilla of little radio-controlled boats in the Whale Creek inlet side of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk. More important, the park's designer, George Trakas, was scheduled to be on hand for the festivities, and had agreed to talk to our group about his handiwork.

-- from the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection's
PDF brochure on the Newtown Creek Nature Walk

Since this was my third or fourth visit to the nature walk (I figure that by the time you lose count, you qualify as a habitué), I already had a rich appreciation of the wonders of its design, incorporating into its particularly limited space the history of the area, its past and present natural history (all through the park there are sections of plantings featuring all sorts of indigenous trees and plants), and a record of the people who have lived and worked along the creek.

But what a treat to walk through it all and get a glimpse of it through George's eyes. He's been living with the project since he was first approached about it in 1996 or 1997, not just through its opening in 2007, but keeping abreast of it since then, and also in the planning of what he described to us as Phases 2 and 3 of the park, which I didn't know about at all. He's actively involved in the planning of Phase 2 (he said he had a meeting about it just yesterday), which has a whole list of steps to go through -- especially as a project that has city, state, and federal components and also community involvement -- as well as additional construction that has to be completed to the waste-water plant itself in order for construction on Phase 2 to begin late in 2014 with a view to a 2015 opening.

Everywhere we looked there was a design feature whose history George could share, generally involving collaboration and coordination with those various government and community groups. He explained how he arrived at the dramatic entrance, which required some sort of bridge or overpass over a portion of the plant. He talked about the nautical themes he had incorporated into the design to reflect the shipbuilding business that had once occupied the sight, and noted that he hadn't troubled the engineers with the fact that the walkway as finally built aligns with the distant Empire State Building, of which visitors get one of the city's great views!

George talked about the startled response he got when he disclosed his idea to put a "fragrance garden" underneath that entryway overpass. A "fragrance garden" alongside a waste-water management plant? The most startling fact about it is that there isn't, by and large, and fragrance of waste water!

There was also much consternation about George's idea for those long concrete "step benches" (pictured above) alongside the park's Newtown Creek frontage, which have become one of its most user-appreciated features. I can vouch for the considerable pleasure of just sitting on those steps and observing nature as it exists today along the creek. And as Mitch Waxman always stresses on his walks in the area, if we give nature even a sliver of a chance it can regenerate itself, and despite the creek's still-heavy pollution (it is a Superfund site, after all), it's teeming with life -- yes, there's marine life in the creek and its tributaries, and all kinds of bird life in and around the creek. (George pointed out that plants and trees for the park were chosen in part for their likely appeal to birds.)

George recalled that in the design process he was warned that the park was bound to be a gathering ground for homeless people and to be subject to graffiti. Based on its nearly five-year history, not at all. He thinks that the common sense and approachability of the design (he noted that the community groups frequently stressed the need to provide explanations for historical- and geographical-based design features) have produced an attitude of respect on the part of the people who visit. He also noted that for some presumably unknown reason, despite the appeal of the park to all sorts of birds, pigeons haven't had much presence, even though (or perhaps because) the waste-water plant itself has some rich feeding grounds for them.

One detail that especially delighted me, perhaps because I hadn't given it any thought in my previous visits, is the very surface we walk on through most of the park. It turns out to be a carefully chosen material, a version of what is known in trademarked form as "compressed gravel." It's very low-maintenance, George explained, and I suddenly noticed what an easy, cushiony surface it provides for walking. (It's much used in Europe, George said.)

George, by the way, seems to have become expert on all matters related to the waste-water management plant itself, and I kept wanting to ask if he had ever imagined -- in all those years he was building his reputation before being invited to take part in this project -- if he had ever imagined he would one day have this degree of expertise in this particular field!

There was so much more -- you had to be there, and I'm sorry you weren't. But I'm sure glad I was! Naturally the Nature Walk portion of our walk grew to unexpected proportions, and Jack kept tabs on people whose time situation didn't permit them to go beyond the original two-hour schedule. In the end, I'd gotten so much out of this portion of the walk that I accompanied the rest of the group as far as the base of the stairway onto the Pulaski bridge and then parted company.

As it happens, my terror of heights makes walking across bridges a nightmare for me, and after all I'd already done this crossing once. It had been on my mind the whole time last June when I first did this walk with Jack, and I wondered this morning whether it would be any easier the second time. It didn't escape my attention that as soon as I had an excuse, I wiggled out of finding out.


For a short film about the Newtown Creek Wastewater Management Plant, with its famous "digester eggs," click here.


DON'T FORGET JACK'S UPCOMING
"DAY ON THE J" -- SUNDAY, OCT. 21

In July I wrote with breathless excitement about the announcement of a date for Jack's first offering in eight years of his daylong exploration of the route of New York City's J train from Manhattan through Brooklyn to Queens, an even more exciting prospect than his now-famous (I hope) daylong "World of the #7 Train," a much more familiar train and route -- though I expect that most if not all of what Jack has to show on the #7 train outing is unfamiliar to most participants. (Translation: If you've never done it, you must watch for the next time Jack offers it.)

As I wrote in July:

Like The World of the #7 Train, A Day on the J is organized in the form of six walks in dramatically different areas, reflecting widly different geography and development histories, spanning the three boroughs through whichf the J runs: Highland Park, Richmond Hill, and downtown Jamaica in Queens; Bushwick and South Williamsburg in Brooklyn; and the Lower East Side in Manhattan. The walks are linked, of course, by rides on the J train itself (unlimited-ride Metrocard highly recommended). As with the #7 tour, A Day on the J has a lunch break built in, in this case in Jamaica.

I noted that on request Jack will e-mail you a great information sheet, which includes a registration coupon, though you can register without it by mailing him the information specified in the description below along with your check.

I didn't have a chance to ask Jack how registration is going, but I can warn you that any places that remain going into tour weekend are likely to be snapped up in a flurry of last-minute registrations, when disappointed would-be tour-takers are likely to be turned away. Here's the official description.

A Day on the J
Sunday, October 21, 10am-5:30pm

This series of six walks and connecting rides is astride the colonial route between Brooklyn and Queens. We focus on what the J train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service (in part) in 1888. Walks take place in Highland Park, Richmond Hill, downtown Jamaica, Bushwick, South Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program, registration coupon and other info is available by email: jaconet@aol.com. The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

Take the J Train: Jack Eichenbaum's Oct. 21 Day on the J will feature walks in Queens (Highland Park, Richmond Hill, and downtown Jamaica), Brooklyn (Bushwick and South Williamsburg), and Manhattan (Lower East Side), plus lunch in Jamaica and of course lots of trips on the J.

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Urban Gadabout: Walking Dutch Kills with Mitch Waxman, "Your Guide to a Tour of Decay" (NYT)

Mitch Waxman: "This would be a great place
to base yourself if you were a supervillain"

"You don't get to have Manhattan without having a Newtown Creek," Mitch says at 2:33 of this NYT video. "It's funny because the comic-book guy in me wants to find a villain. You know, I want to find a Lex Luthor. He's out here somewhere, I could tell ya. But the thing is that there is no villian here. The villain is us. We use too much and waste too much, and this is just a theme that you have to come back to continually -- that there's a price of those skyscrapers and that fabulous modern city, in this place."

by Ken

Mitch made this same point today at the end of the three-hour walk around Dutch Kills, the Queens-sided tributary of Newtown Creek which I mentioned earlier this week. The tour ended at the lovely Newtown Creek Nature Walk adjoining the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant on the Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek (opposite the mouth of Dutch Kills), the once-crucial industrial highway flowing into the East River which still provides the western part of the border between Queens to the north and Brooklyn to the south. Throughout the walk Mitch had emphasized the role the area around Newtown Creek played, not just locally but nationally, as a receiving ground for materials shipped in by water for the manufacture or processing of substances crucial to the country's supply of energy, food, and building materials, among many others.

Of course not a lot of attention was paid to the environmental impact of the way the Newtown Creek area was industrialized, leaving behind a waterway of EPA Superfund-level toxicity. And today, let me tell you, the creepy shade of green of the water of Dutch Kills looked as scary as chemical analysis tells us it is. Newtown Creek itself, however, looked surprisingly and quite deceivingly okay. And it's not just the water's toxic. Vast quantities of oil from the numerous storage tanks still highly present on the creek pollute the water table -- not just in Brooklyn's northernmost neighborhood, Greenpoint, as is well known, but through much of the Brooklyn side of the creek and (not at all well-known) the Queens side as well.

As it happens, as Newtown Creek Allliance Executive Director Kate Zidar happily informed us when we met her at one of the street bridges over Dutch Kills, Mitch is about to become a citywide celebrity, with the publication of a really good piece about him by Steven Stern which will appear in the Metro section of tomorrow's NYT (and of course is already posted online).

Mitch stressed that the NCA, which he serves as historian (Kate Zidar told Steven Stern, "Mitch got that title by proving it, over and over"), isn't trying to convert the area around the creek into an upscale theme-park-type environment (my words, not his). The city needs its increasingly lost industrial base. But industry can be brought back and new industry created in an environmentally sustainable way, and that's the kind of development strategy that NCA likes to champion.

CRUISING NEWTOWN CREEK WITH MITCH: JULY 22

Even in its present state of pollution, Mitch insists, the area around Newtown Creek isn't "dead." Give nature even a small opening, he said, and it will come back. We saw bird life in the mouth of Dutch Kills (there are nests all over the area, he said), and as I mentioned the other day NCA has a birding tour scheduled for June 24. It's free, but you have to RSVP (to rsvp@newtowncreekalliance.org).

The next big event is a Newtown Creek cruise with Mitch, in association with Working Harbor Tours.

On July 22nd, Mitch shares his unique point of view and deep understanding of the past, present and future conditions of the Newtown Creek as the narrator and expedition leader for this years Hidden Harbor Tours: Newtown Creek exploration.

Our NY Water Taxi leaves from South Street Seaport at 11 a.m. sharp on a three-hour tour of the Newtown Creek. From the East River we’ll move into the Newtown Creek where we’ll explore explore vast amounts of maritime infrastructure, see many movable bridges and discover the very heart of the Hidden Harbor.

Limited seating available, get your tickets today.

AND SPEAKING OF WORKING HARBOR TOURS . . .

Don't forget the new walking tour of the northern shore of Staten Island which Mitch is doing, from the Ferry Terminal along Kill Van Kull to Snug Harbor, offered on three Saturdays -- June 30, July 28, and October 13, from 11am to 1pm.

NOW HERE'S THE NYT PIECE

Your Guide to a Tour of Decay


By STEVEN STERN
New York Times, Metro section, June 17, 2012

Stand on the pedestrian walkway of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, and you might notice a vaguely ominous red brick tower on the Queens side of the Newtown Creek, looming over the railroad tracks and asphalt plants.

If Mitch Waxman is your guide, he will identify it as the derelict smokestack of Peter Van Iderstine's fat-rendering business, which first set up shop in 1855. But he won't stop there.

He will expound on the archaic waste-disposal operations that once flourished on the creek, conjuring scenes of putrescent horse carcasses floating in on barges from Manhattan and docks piled with manure three stories high. The narrative will extend to Cord Meyer's bone blackers and Conrad Wissel's night soil wharf -- the gothic names of these forgotten businesses rattled off in a distinct Brooklyn accent.

At some point, he will start in on the horrors of the M. Kalbfleisch Chemical Works, eventually making his way to the sins of Standard Oil.

If the city's dead industries leave ghosts behind, Mr. Waxman is an adept medium.

The Newtown Creek watershed, his field of expertise, is a place where such specters are all too real. In the murky depths of the 3.8-mile estuary, the past haunts the present. Since the creek was designated a Superfund site in 2010, contractors from the Environmental Protection Agency have been dredging and testing in search of that past. The sludge acid that the Kalbfleisch factory sluiced into the water back in the 1830s is of more than academic concern.

Not that Mr. Waxman is any sort of an academic. While the Newtown Creek Alliance, an environmental advocacy group, lists him as its resident historian, his credentials were earned on the street and the Internet, through countless solitary walks and countless nights poring over obscure archives. ("Mitch got that title by proving it, over and over," said Kate Zidar, executive director of the organization.)

Formerly a comic-book artist and writer, Mr. Waxman earns his living doing photo retouching out of his apartment in Astoria, Queens. Since 2009, he has documented his passion for the creek -- in oddly beautiful photography and beautifully odd prose -- on his blog, The Newtown Pentacle.

Lately, he has been leading public walking tours of the waterfront for the alliance and other groups, as well as personally guiding anyone else who comes calling. He has lectured to local politicians and environmentalists, shepherded documentary filmmakers around Calvary Cemetery and taught German industrial ecology students a thing or two about sewage. Somehow, almost everyone interested in the polluted waterway seems to find his or her way to Mr. Waxman. He's become a docent of decay, the cicerone of Newtown Creek.

Mr. Waxman begins his tours with a well-rehearsed opening line: "This is not the world you know."

For most visitors, that's probably true. The Newtown Creek area was once one of the nation's great manufacturing centers, the waterway carrying more freight than the Mississippi River. Walking around the massive factory buildings of the Degnon Terminal in Long Island City, Queens, now mostly repurposed as warehouses, you catch a glimpse of a lost working-class city only blocks from the gleaming condominiums now rising by the East River.

After World War II, that industrial greatness faded, just as its environmental cost started to become apparent. A 1950 sewer explosion in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was the first indication of the huge quantities of petroleum poisoning the water and leaching into the soil. But the full extent of the damage wasn't discovered until the late 1970s: At least 17 million gallons of oil spilled over the previous century (more than the Exxon Valdez), much of which, after years of legal wrangling and recovery efforts, is still there.

Mr. Waxman calls the area a "municipal sacrifice zone" -- the urban equivalent of the bomb test sites of Nevada. And his tours are meant in part to expose the unsavory infrastructure that has been shunted there. He can name the 19 waste-transfer stations lining the creek and point out each of the 23 combined sewer outflows that disgorge their contents into the water. The lurking danger of the creek's emanations is a constant undercurrent. He will intone: "The very air you're breathing is a poisonous fume!"

But despite the toxic atmosphere, Mr. Waxman is clearly in love with the place. Based on the enthusiastic groups that show up for each tour, that perverse attraction is shared by others.

The journalist Andrew Blackwell, who traveled to some of the world's most polluted places for his recent book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, seemed unsurprised that such a blighted area would hold an aesthetic appeal. Ravaged industrial sites, he suggested, might actually fulfill a longing for nature.

"Part of what people are looking for in a wilderness experience," Mr. Blackwell said, "is the sense that it's not a mediated thing, that it's not made for them. A place like Newtown Creek isn't a product. It's supposedly a place that no one wants to go. That almost makes it more wild, makes people feel like they're discovering something about the world."

Mr. Waxman's own discoveries began, strangely enough, as an effort to improve his health.

Until 2006, his life was sedentary and circumscribed, revolving around wife, dog and (primarily) computer. "My friends called me ‘veal,' " he said, "because I never left the little white room."

That led to a heart attack at 39, a weeklong hospital stay and a command to exercise. So he began walking. Headphones blasting Black Sabbath, camera at his side, he circled out from Astoria, exploring colonial graveyards, abandoned factories and, eventually, the Newtown Creek waterfront.

"I started to see all these things I couldn't explain," he said. So began the cycle of wandering and research that continues to this day. "The more time you give it, the more stuff you find, and the more questions get asked," he said.

These questions brought him in contact with a circle of like-minded seekers: amateur urbanists and self-taught historians, railroad enthusiasts and infrastructure aficionados. In their company, Mr. Waxman distinguished himself as someone equally comfortable on the street and in the archive. "Mitch is the type that will go up to a stranger and ask things," said Kevin Walsh, creator of the popular urban history blog Forgotten New York. Mr. Waxman's social ease, combined with a willingness to share the knowledge he was acquiring, helped him "make allies among the people who work along the creek," Mr. Walsh said.

One day, Mr. Waxman signed up for a boat tour narrated by Bernard Ente, a maritime devotee from Maspeth. They hit it off, and Mr. Ente, a founding member of the Newtown Creek Alliance, became a sort of mentor. When he died, in April last year, Mr. Waxman essentially stepped into his shoes.

The distinctively apocalyptic spin he brings to his newfound role, however, is his alone. That "sense of looming menace" comes to full flower on his blog. An oddball mix of history, reportage and genre pastiche, it is written in a self-consciously florid prose modeled on H. P. Lovecraft, the cultish writer of pulp horror fiction. Slipping in and out of the voice of a demented antiquarian, the daily posts portray the creek as home to unspeakable, possibly supernatural, terrors.

"You have these buried secrets," he said, explaining the thinking behind the occult conceit. He's spotted early-19th-century terra-cotta pipes protruding from bulkheads, antique masonry sewers connected to who knows what. He added: "There really is no telling what's in the ground there."

The more Mr. Waxman discovers about the creek's hidden past, the more he has become an advocate for its survival. Last summer, while out on the water surveying bulkheads with the crusading conservation group Riverkeeper, he discovered and documented a previously unreported oil spill on the Queens side.

His fascination with the darker aspects of the landscape has made him a fitting counterpart to the environmentalists working toward its future. As E.P.A. scientists begin the long process of rehabilitating the waters, Mr. Waxman is engaged in a parallel effort. His work is a kind of historical remediation, reclaiming the waterway's forgotten role in the life of the city.

"It's an odd thing," he said. "The creek has been waiting for me all this time. And I've been waiting for it."

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Kathmandu Essentials: Flying, Breathing, Eating

Look really hard and maybe you'll catch a glimpse of Kathmandu

Did you think I was exaggerating the other day when I mentioned Kathmandu's air is the most polluted of any big city on earth and that it's dangerous to go out without a carbon-filter mask? See that photo above? When I first started visiting Nepal in 1971, you could actually see the Shangri-La-like city from the ridge of mountains that sound it. Now you're just as likely to see... filthy air.

And it turns out that it's even dangerous to fly in the soupy mess. The top story in today's English-language newspaper, Republica is ominously entitled "Smoggy Skies Threaten Aviation in Kathmandu."

Many times, environmental issues are sidelined with the assumption that its consequences will be gradual and hence can be dealt with in the future. The question is, how long though?

“We could’ve been killed in that flight. The air pollution in Kathmandu has gotten so bad that if people don’t act now, we’re putting lives in danger here,” Kevin A. Rushing, the former USAID Mission Director to Nepal, commented in a recent conference.

“Just when our plane was about to land in Kathmandu, due to thick smog over the Valley, we couldn’t see the runway, we couldn’t see anything.

The plane then had to divert all the way around, reroute and keep flying in such a condition despite the turbulence risking the lives of all people on board.” He added, “If things don’t improve, you’d really think twice about flying to Kathmandu.”

Captain Vijay Lama, a pilot with Nepal Airlines who has been flying for more than two decades, says that Rushing’s anxiety is valid.

“The flying conditions in Kathmandu have become terrible, especially during winter”, he says. “In winter, when fog combines with smoke and other pollutants in the air, the resulting smog worsens the visibility, and it’s far worse than when it’s foggy.”

According to Lama, the rising pollution can have drastic effects on visibility on both land and in air. “There’s an increase in the number of flights being backlogged, and there are always delays after delays.

It’s all because of the smog and haze condition,” he says. “As the smog is heavier, it settles in lower altitude, and with the amount of smoke and dust particles that adds on with the moisture in the air, it becomes denser, making it impossible to fly.”

Whereas smog is mostly formed in the winter due to the mixture of smoke and fog, haze often occurs in pre-monsoon seasons that have relatively dry air, combining with the smoke and dust or particulate matters or total suspended particles (TSPs) in the air.

The chemicals which contribute to formation of smog also include harmful man-made and naturally occurring compounds, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and ozone.

As reported by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), when these components of smog mix up, they can create dust clouds, black soot and gray fog. This can result in a smog cloud that can reduce visibility by 70 percent.

Captain Lama stresses that if the situation in the Kathmandu Valley isn’t addressed soon, the flying conditions will just get worse, and with the risks involved, the future of aviation in Nepal could be very bleak.

According to the 2006 report “Urban Air Quality Management Strategy in Kathmandu Valley” by Jitendra J. Shah and Tanvi Nagpal, atmospheric visibility data from Kathmandu’s airport, analyzed onwards from 1970, show that there’s been a very substantial decrease in the visibility in the Valley since about 1980.

The number of days with good visibility around noon has decreased in the winter months from more than 25 days per month in the 1970s to about five days per month in 1992/93.

“Visibility is the measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly distinguished or seen. In aviation, it can differ with the aircraft type,” says Mishri Lal Mandal, Deputy Director of Air Traffic Services (ATS) Division of Tribhuvan International Airport Civil Aviation Office (TIACAO).

Basically, for Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or visually aided flights, the minimum visibility to be maintained is 5km.

This means the pilot has to be able to clearly distinguish an object as far as five kilometers away with his eyes whereas for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) or instrument aided flights, pilots can fly even with the visibility is 800 meters while taking off and 1,600m for landing, he informs.

As helicopters in Nepal only operate with VFR, it’s more risky for helicopter pilots, according to Captain Nischal KC, helicopter pilot at Air Dynasty.

“When there’s haze or smog, it gets very difficult for pilots not just in terms of visibility but they also get disoriented and nauseous at times,” says KC “As helicopter pilots don’t have an instrument landing aid, we have to fly by considering the artificial horizon, and a lot of experience is required.”

KC adds that it’s the reason why during pre-monsoons and winters, when haze and smog problems are at its peak, new pilots aren’t allowed to fly without experienced co-pilots.

Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, General Manager of TIACAO, says, “Instrument flights for the Kathmandu Valley are more complicated with its hilly terrains. (So) We’re planning to bring Required Navigation Performance Authorization Required (RNPAR) technology that can help flights operate even in poor visibility as it operates through satellite signals and follows a specific path and reduces pilot workload.”

Suman shares that the increasing trends in poor visibility conditions result in flights being diverted or stranded. Then, as soon as the conditions become favorable, flights start piling up, and there’s more load than the capacity of the terminal building.

"Safety is our first concern. So we don’t authorize any flight to operate in poor visibility," says Suman. "Besides that, we also lose out on a lot of revenue when flights have to be cancelled, diverted or rerouted due to poor visibility."

KC, however, points out that flights and helicopters are also given the go ahead if there’s a visibility of more than 1,000m. From then on, it’s the pilot’s decision whether to fly or not.

In the article "Are Nepali Skies Safe?" by Amish Raj Mulmi and published in the Kathmandu Post in August 2010, Lama also mentioned that there is pressure for pilots to fly no matter what the weather condition or visibility is like. And the pressure came from everywhere-- political leaders getting late for a meeting, to airline operators losing out on revenues.

...As air pollution in Kathmandu worsens and its skies become obscure with layers of haze and smog looming in its atmosphere, nothing is being done to assure the safety of the thousands of passengers flying in and out of there everyday. Civil aviation remains at risk, and if these conditions remain unchanged, it can only get worse.

Health impacts, Dr Arjun Karki, Chest Specialist at Patan Hospital, says that the primary effects due to smog or haze would obviously be on respiratory health.

"Lung diseases can become chronic, proportionate to the concentration and density of smog," he says. "And if the gases present in the smog comprise specific toxins, the harm could be even greater."

According to Karki, on one hand, smog and haze can aggravate the health of people who already have respiratory problems, like asthma, it can also trigger lung disease in healthy people as well.

"Besides, it also depends on the length of exposure," he says. "Besides respiratory health problems, it can also cause eye irritation for some people."

However, Dr Mukunda Prasad Kafle, physician and Lecturer at the Teaching Hospital, says that while the unhealthy effects of smog or haze in particular can be many, not enough studies in this regard have been conducted here.

"As smog and haze come under air pollution, we can deduce that the health problems are similar to the ones caused by air pollution, like lung diseases and other respiratory problems. And smog can have its own adverse effects as well."

Safe to fly into Nepal? Not anymore safe than breathing the air when you get here. And this week, the tarmac at Tribhuvan International Airport buckled, "developed" potholes, and collapsed, delaying all international and domestic flights to and from and within the country for at least three hours. There seems to be a consensus that the board of Nepal Airlines is responsible.

Lucknow's nearby & Kathmandu's Kakori offers fabulous Awadhi cuisine

Now what about the restaurants? Nepal isn't a culinary destination. The best that can be said about the restaurants in Kathmandu is that they're pretty good... for Kathmandu. The acclaimed tourist spots in the tourist ghetto of Thamel are universally mediocre, although some are rated less mediocre than others. But there's no reason to ever visit one twice, unless you're just looking for fuel for your body. There were three stand-outs and I'll leave the best for last, since it's the only restaurant in the country that's actually good, not just "good for Kathmandu.

We had dinner twice in what used to be the best Indian restaurant in town, Ghar-e-Kabab in the Hotel de l'Annapurna on Durbar Marg (Kathmandu's sad version of 5th Avenue). It's relatively fancy and formal although, by our Western standards, pretty inexpensive for a quality meal. Like all restaurants we visited, around half the menu catered to vegetarians and they're very aware that most westerners are afraid of spices. If you tell them you like it spicy, they give you a normal Indian meal.

We also ate in a few of the tourist-only Nepali restaurants that serve authenticish Newari food (surprisingly decent with music and dancing). The best one was Bhojan Griha on Dilli Bazaar, a medium walk from Durbar Marg. It's in an historic old house and the hospitality is wonderful. The set meals are fine and they offer an à la carte menu as well. We found the food much better than in Thamel House, an old hippie standard, or the newer Utsav, which-- at least the night we were there-- seems to cater primarily to tourists from China.

Now, the one world-class actually excellent restaurant in the whole city is Kakori, an Indian restaurant in the Soaltee Crowne Plaza Hotel, far the hell away from anywhere else in town-- a 200 rupee taxi ride (less than $3). It was briefly called the Bukhara, having been developed and run by the folks from the restaurant of the same name in New Delhi's Sheraton, probably the best high-end restaurant in India. I reviewed it when I ate there in 2007. Kakori serves Awadhi cuisine (from Lucknow) and the restaurant's menu was developed by Nawab Sayed Nazir Haider Kazmi, grandson of Great Nawab Mir Wazir Ali Kazmi of Kakori, Uttar Pradesh's princely family. We had as good a dinner as we would have had in a fine Indian restaurant in India or London and at a fraction of the price, though expensive by Nepal's standards. And if you read my review of the ultra-rich dahl they serve in the Bukhara in Delhi... yes, it's pretty much the same-- not exactly but at least just as good.

We're staying at the Yak & Yeti and their signature restaurant, The Chimney-- which I remember as Boris'-- serves Russian and "continental" cuisine. The menu didn't appeal to us and we passed it up this time around. My tip: acclimate yourself to the fact that Nepal has other traits than great cuisine (or air) to recommend itself and... bring some of your favorite bars with you as a backup.


UPDATE: Tourist Plane Crashes Near Kathmandu

Both times I went to get a look at the Himalayas, I walked. This last time, we noticed there were flights-- really expensive ones-- that take a couple dozen tourists for a ride around Mount Everest. One of them crashed today, killing everyone on board.

A plane carrying tourists to view Mount Everest crashed while attempting to land in dense fog in Nepal on Sunday, police and eyewitnesses said. A witness said 18 bodies were pulled out of the wreckage of the plane, which was carrying 19 people.

The Beechcraft-made plane belonging to Buddha Air was carrying 16 foreign tourists and three crew members and crashed in Bisankunarayan village, just a few miles (kilometers) south of the capital, Katmandu.

...An eyewitness, Haribol Poudel, told Avenues Television that the plane had hit the roof of a house in the village and that 18 bodies were pulled out. He said a man who appeared to have survived was taken to a hospital.

Poudel said it was foggy, and that visibility was very low in the mountainous area... The plane had taken the tourists to view Mount Everest and other high peaks and was returning to Katmandu. The “mountain flight” takes tourists over the Everest region, and passengers can view some of the world’s highest peaks from the airplane windows.

Most of the tourists on board were Indian-- most tourists in Kathmandu are from India-- but there were two Americans on board as well.

Kathmandu, Not #1 For Much... Except Pollution

I'm guessing anyone will look this dirty if they walked around Kathmandu for a day or two

I don't remember Kathmandu being especially more polluted than any of the Asian cities I visited in the late '60s and early '70s. Even in 1991, the last time I was here, the air quality wasn't especially unbearable. It is now. If there's one item not to forget when you plan a trip to Kathmandu, let it be as high a quality face mask as you can find. I've got one with a carbon filter by a company called I Can Breathe! I wouldn't go out of my hotel without it. Think I'm exaggerating? A couple weeks ago the Vancouver Observer published a feature by Linda Solomon, Air Pollution in Kathmandu Off The Charts.

She starts by pointing to a World Health Organization report that declares Kathmandu is now the most polluted city in Asia. The air here can kill you.

WHO scientists estimate 537,000 people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific die prematurely each year due to air pollution. The level of PM10 in the air of Kathmandu is 120 microgram per square meter. As per the standard of the World Health Organization, the level of PM10 should be 20 microgram per square meter. The level of PM10 is higher than the official standard in most of the places of Kathmandu valley.

The air in several Asian cities will kill you sooner of later: Beijing, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kolkata, New Delhi, Shanghai... But Kathmandu is worst of all, a big development since our report on the world's worst city air in 2009. In the list from 2004 Kathmandu didn't even show up in the Worst 20. Solomon knew it was going to be polluted but she wasn't prepared for how terrible it is now. No one could ever be.

Kathmandu in the dark on the way to the hotel from the airport had been hard to evaluate, beyond the obvious: people were poor.   Millions.   And the air stank and didn't go down easily into the lungs.  It was as bad or worse than the air I breathed in New York City right after 9/11.  I had fled  from post-World Trade Centre attack air, because I couldn't inhale it, and I believed it would do serious damage to my children's health.  And people here were much breathing worse, like it was normal. They were stuck in it. 

I had certainly HEARD about the pollution in big cities in the developing world. I'd experienced it in the nineties. But  between the nineties and now, pollution had taken quantum leaps. I thought of my friends in Canada working so hard to fight climate change. By comparison Canada seemed so pristine. Here was where the real work would need to happen. Cities in the developing world. Cities like Kathmandu.

The noise pollution is easily the worst I've ever heard. All drivers honking all the time. It's almost unbearable to be out in traffic. That's why everyone who comes to Kathmandu can't wait to get away from the valley as soon as possible.

Albania-- Second Impression: Shqipëria Has Plenty Of Room For Improvement

We've been out of Tirane, traveling around the country on buses. If the capital was all energetic/optimistic hustle and bustle with everyone looking forward to a brighter future with McDonalds and everything that makes life worth living, the interior is probably as wary of anything new and foreign as Albanians have always been. Most people seem resigned. They don't see much difference-- at least not in their own lives-- from the bad old Enver Hoxha days when communists ruled the roost. (A bright spot is that the inevitable excesses of religious fanaticism are nowhere to be seen. If a third of the country is nominally Christian and a third nominally Muslim, 90% are practicing non-believers. London is at least 10 times more Muslim than Albania.)
 
One guy we met-- who dreams of winning the lottery (and here "the lottery" means the U.S. visa lottery, not the Irish Sweepstakes)-- told us most people, and virtually all older people, would gladly trade in "democracy" and the vagueries of the market system for the security of the bad old days. How is that possible? Start with something like 80% unemployment/underemployment. Our friend down in Gjirokastër said since 1990 it's been all Law of the Jungle. A few natural predators have gotten very rich. Most people feel left behind. One in eight Albanians are working abroad and the country's economy seems to function off remittances from fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, sisters and daughters working in Italy, Greece, Germany, England and the U.S. We see American flags everywhere, indications not of the fealty they feel towards our country but because they have a relative in the Bronx or Westchester sending home money. Here nearly 60% of the working people are farmers, eking out a meager existence through backbreaking toil. We saw it everywhere in the country.

God made Albania beautiful-- green and verdant, wild, rapidly moving rivers overflowing their banks-- valleys, canyons, lakes, a beautiful sea coast... Albanians have turned it into an eye-sore of a never ending garbage dump. Throughout the country every barren tree is decorated with plastic bags. The whole country looks like a landfill for aluminium cans, plastic bottles, and every sort of detritus man uses to pollute the environment. If I were looking to start a business in Albania it would center on cleaning up the environment. In fact, the EU should make Albanian membership conditional on a serious cleanup effort. Just cleaning out the thousands of round Cold War era cement bunkers would employ a good part of the unemployed for years! I can't think of anywhere in the world I've ever been where a good, solid recycling program would do more good. The Albanians, who seem to have a cigarette permanently grafted to their mouths and whose main occupation apears to be working-- or at least hanging around-- at a lavazh (car wash), don't hesitate to throw trash on the ground anywhere and everywhere.
 
On the other hand... Albania is incredibly cheap for tourists. We're staying in the best hotels in each town we visit and they cost around $25/night. Food is delicious and fresh and... well, we just had dinner in Kerkulla overlooking Gjirokastër, ate starters, main courses, and desserts (and Roland had a pitcher of local red wine-- plus, he says, 3 baskets of the best bread he ever ate) and it cost us less than $20. It's by far the best restaurant in town! Bus trips between cities cost like between $4 and $7. And it's one of the places were the dollar has become more and more valuable in recent years. 

What Are The Most Polluted Cities On Earth? Is It Even Safe To Breath The Air In Indian And Chinese Cities?

Chongqing: bring a gas mask

The first time I was in Delhi, in 1970, the air was so unbelievably filthy that I got out of town as fast as I could. Like many cities-- Los Angeles and Bangkok being two good examples-- Delhi is a lot cleaner now. But not so much, apparently, as I thought it was when I was there last year. According to the World Bank in 2004 it still had the second worst air pollution of any city in the world. Numero uno was Cairo. Here's the list of the 20 most polluted:

Cairo
Delhi
Calcutta
Tianjin
Chongqing
Lucknow
Kanpur
Jakarta
Shenyang
Zhengzhou
Jinan
Lanzhou
Beijing
Taiyuan
Chengdu
Ahmadabad
Anshan
Wuhan
Bangkok
Nanchang

Twelve are in China and five are in India. I'm finishing up on Robyn Meredith's NY Times best selling book on the economic changes in India and China in the last two decades, The Elephant And The Dragon and she has a lot to say about the overwhelming pollution in both countries.

Nothing can prepare visitors for the pollution in China... One of the worst places to breathe on the planet is the world's biggest city: Chongqing, China, with a population of 30 million people counting the exurbs, about the same number of people as live in the entire state of California. There the New China coexists with the Old China: skyscrapers and construction sites decorate downtown, but scrawny bong-bong men wait for work on street corners. Bong-bong men are paid sixty cents an hour to ferry heavy loads-- from building materials to groceries-- up and down the city's hilly streets using bamboo poles slung over their shoulders. They must have powerful lungs, not just strong legs: the city is half dark most days. Sunlight barely reaches the ground, dimmed by thick, gray smog. Skyscrapers just three blocks away are mere outlines because of air pollution. Emerging from the inside of a building onto the streets prompts one's eyes to water. The air is filthy but that is not all. The raw sewage produced by 30 million people-- 30 million-- is dumped straight into the Yangtze River as it flows past. The countryside nearby is not the place to go for fresh air: there you notice that the leaves of trees-- along with everything else-- are coated with black dust from the coal mines and factories in the region. More acid rain falls on Chongqing than anywhere else on earth.

...Nearly a third of China's rivers are so polluted that they aren't even fit for agriculture or industrial use, according to Chinese government statistics. Village doctors have documented increased cancer rates near polluting factories and chemical plants. Untreated waste water dumped into China's famed Yangtse River is killing marine life and turning its water "cancerous," according to Xinhua, the state-controlled media outlet.

...Lack of enforcement of environmental laws is also a big problem in India. Its capital city, Delhi, used to have pollution levels ten times higher than the nation's legal limit, mostly because of the high-pollution taxis, trucks and buses on its roads. Delhi has the world's worst air pollution in 2002, but managed to clean up its filthy air after being taken to task by India's Supreme Court. The overhaul began in 1997. Some steps were long overdue: the city finally banned lead gas. However belatedly, the city reduced pollution from Delhi's power plants by installing scrubber to clean up smokestack emissions and requiring them to burn cleaner coal. It banished motorized rickshaws and buses built before 1990 from the roads. In 1998, the court required all city buses to run on compressed natural gas (CNG)-- a cleaner fuel than gasoline-- by 2001... Just 10 percent of sewage is treated in India, with the rest dumped into waterways, along with industrial pollution. India's rivers-- even the holy Ganges-- have become sewers.

I still remember leaving a restaurant in one town after dinner and seeing some kids behind it filling up the "bottled water" from a garden hose.