Massive hot tubs are a key tool in New York City’s herculean effort to clear the heaps of snow that fell on the streets during last weekend’s blizzard.
The sanitation department on Wednesday showed off part of its elaborate snow-melting operation on Broad Street on Manhattan's southern tip, where a steady stream of dump trucks hauls snow from collection sites throughout the borough. The powder is then lifted and dumped into the massive hot tubs — which can melt up to 120 tons of snow per hour — and spewed into the sewers as water.
Sanitation officials said the machines have been in use for at least 20 years. The city has eight of them in operation to help thaw the heavy snow that has obstructed streets, sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops since Sunday.
Sanitation workers are now hard at work to keep the blazing-orange snow-melters fed with snow.
“If we don't melt it, it'll sit there for a while,” acting Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan said. “We want to melt because it's not going to go away anywhere anytime soon.”
A fresh snow delivery, coming in hot.
The sanitation department is under growing pressure to free public space from Old Man Winter as the snow is slated to stick around for at least another week while a deep freeze sets in.
The city’s round-the-clock plowing operation is being supplemented by 500 emergency snow shovelers hired on a temporary basis to clear sidewalks and bus stops, according to Lojan.
The storm was the first of its magnitude for Lojan, who became the head of the agency in November 2024 after Jessica Tisch left the job to run the NYPD. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has received largely positive reviews for his handling of the storm, though some have complained that crosswalks have remained hazardous for days after the storm.
At least 10 people were found dead outside since Friday amid the frigid temperatures, according to city officials.
Sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman said the department had activated all of its resources to clean up the mess, and that property owners are responsible for clearing the majority of the city’s sidewalks.
The massive mounds of snow grew so large that an entire block of Broad Street was closed to traffic near FDR Drive, frustrating commuters like Victoria Azarian, who said she was on her way to get her car so that she could visit her mother, who was suffering from COVID.
“So now I'll take another route, which will take me twice as long,” she said. “Whoever’s in charge has no clue what's going on. I propose that they dump it in the river.”
Sanitation officials said that simply dumping the snow in the river wasn’t possible because it was contaminated with garbage and other waste that could harm the waterway.
Mamdani told reporters on Wednesday that he was open to exploring new ways to get snow off the streets more quickly in the future.
Correction: This story was updated with the correct capacity of the snow melters.
