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<p><b>No Cruise Line</b>
<p>Q. Each morning as I drive up the F.D.R., I see a large boat steaming
down the East River. It says "D.E.P." on the side (which I assume stands
for Department of Environmental Protection) and flies a New York City flag
on the bow. Do you know where this boat is coming from and going to each
day?
<p>A. That is the Sludge Boat, the affectionate term given the vessel by
its handlers at - you guessed it - the New York City Department of Environmental
Protection. The little fleet of Sludge Boats (there are three of them)
is docked at Wards Island; their daily ports of call are the city's 14
waste water treatment plants. Before 1988, the boats - large seagoing vessels,
the biggest of which is 324 feet long - simply picked up the sludge produced
by the plants, carried it out to sea and dumped it. Since that year, when
ocean dumping was banned by federal law, the boats have been used to help
recycle the sludge, ferrying it from the treatment plants to other plants,
which are equipped to "de-water" it. The product is nutrient-rich organic
matter, known as biosolids, that is used as fertilizer. ("It's like cake,"
a D.E.P. spokesman said.) The plants make 1,200 tons of cake daily, he
said.
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