The foul smell of human waste could soon return to the air around the Brooklyn community after a fire destroyed the deodorizers in one of the world's largest sewage plants.
Community leaders and politicians yesterday gathered in front of the Coney Island Wastewater Treatment plant - where almost half of Brooklyn's toilet flushings end up - to demand the city rebuild the carbon air purifiers as soon as possible.
"We're putting them on notice today that the smell is no minor matter," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens).
He said the commissioner of the city's Department of Environmental Protection promised there would be no delay in replacing the purifiers. But he cautioned it took the community almost a decade to talk the city into installing them in the first place.
Before 1994, when the purifiers were built, neighbors said that when it was raining or humid a nauseating toilet smell would rise from the building and spread wherever the wind blew it - earning the block-long plant built in 1935 the nickname "the s- - - factory."
Al Lopez, a DEP deputy commissioner, said that it would take months to rebuild the "air scrubbers," although 80 percent of the odor-treatment system is still working.
But yesterday, an acrid burning smell hung in the air, similar to the one from Ground Zero after Sept. 11, tightening chests and causing sore throats and coughs. Rotten-egg sulfurous fumes wafted from a sewer at the corner of Avenue Y and Coyle Street, across from the plant.
Some residents wore masks. A local pharmacy, The Medicine Shoppe, sold out its mask supply.
"We seem to be the stink corner of Sheepshead Bay," complained resident Kathy Segal.
DEP officials said that initial tests showed that the air, while irritating in the short term, is not dangerous to breathe. The Health Department confirmed that the smoke does not pose a health threat.
Water quality was not affected, since the plant continued to process sewage, even as the fire raged.
The four-alarm blaze started Monday at 7:11 p.m., and it took firefighters 31/2 hours to bring under control.
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