Riverbank State Park

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Riverbank Park and North River Wastewater Treatment Plant

Riverbank State Park is a 28-acre acre park built on the top of a sewage treatment facility on the Hudson River, in the New York City borough of Manhattan.

The park includes Olympic-size pool (which is home to the Redtails swim team), a covered skating rink for roller skating in the summer and ice-skating in the winter, an 800-seat cultural theater, a 2,500-seat athletic complex with fitness room, and a 150-seat restaurant. A popular work is the Totally Kid Carousel created by Maria Reidelbach and Milo Mottola.

The park is 69 feet above the Hudson. It is located on the West Side Highway from 137th Street to 145th Street in Upper Manhattan. The only state park within Manhattan, it is built over the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, which processes 125 million gallons of wastewater every day during dry weather, and it is designed to handle up to 340 million gallons a day when the weather is wet. The plant claims that its state of the art facility emits no odors, though frequent visitors to the park would disagree. The plant sits on 2,300 caissons pinned into bedrock up to 230 feet beneath the river. The plant was completed in two phases between 1986 and 1991.