Hudson River Tales Gets Stinky
It wasn’t all plain sailing.
There were also the nuclear power plant intake screens, that got cleaned twice a day.*
We had to be there, since we were monitoring how many fish the plant was killing. In the winter it wasn’t too bad, but in the summer, the fish stuck on the screens rotted in no time.
The workers would flush the screens right onto an enormous table, which would be piled high with rotting fish.
What did we have to do? Well, count them, of course, but also identify every last one by species.
Ever held up a half-eaten, rotting, raw fish tail and try to identify it by species? I think a little “creative taxonomy” went on, though of course I would never do anything like that.
That wasn’t the worst. The worst was the “mung” that constantly dripped from the pile. A dark brown fluid that looked rank, smelled worse, and if it got on your clothes…
Fast-forward a few years, to Boston, and I get into cooking Thai food. I particularly get to like “nam pla” (fish sauce). Then I read an article on how it is made.
Yup, it’s basically “mung.” I still love it…
*————————-*The Indian Point nuclear power plant gets its cooling water straight from the Hudson, killing millions of fish every year. The outlet water warms up all of Poughkeepsie Bay by about 4°, which causes an ecological explosion of life, sorta making up for it.