{"id":379308,"date":"2026-10-22T05:04:25","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T05:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379308\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T05:04:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T05:04:25","slug":"mamdani-opens-staten-island-time-capsule-from-1976-with-a-letter-to-him-inside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379308\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani opens Staten Island time capsule from 1976, with a letter to him inside"},"content":{"rendered":"

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 What\u2019s old is news. <\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani ceremonially opened a time capsule Wednesday, 50 years to the day former Mayor Abraham Beame and a delegation of local officials placed it in the cornerstone of the Port Richmond Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible to see a time capsule from 50 years ago and see the words from Mayor Beame and what his hopes were for our city,\u201d Mamdani said following a tour of the facility. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen advances since 1976, but there\u2019s still work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pair of Staten Islanders, both workers at the Port Richmond plant, actually opened the metal box time capsule earlier this year as they prepared for ongoing work at the facility, but said they kept the contents as they were to make sure Mamdani was the first to review them.<\/p>\n

Richard Mazza, an Annadale resident who serves as plant chief, and Muhammad Amin, a Westerleigh resident who serves as deputy chief, unsealed the box around February after getting tipped off about its existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the decision not to look in it because when they said it was a letter for the mayor, I was hesitant because I wanted to make sure he was the first,\u201d Mazza said. <\/p>\n

\"RichardRichard Mazza and Mohammed Amin, staff at the Port Richmond Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility, pose for a photo next to a 50-year-old time capsule left at the plant Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026.(Advance\/SILive.com | Paul Liotta)<\/p>\n

The opening of the sewage treatment plant in 1976 marked a milestone in the city\u2019s efforts to address its severely-polluted waterways.<\/p>\n

The modern Port Richmond sewage treatment plant operated by the Department of Environmental Protection has nearly 50 facility staff and serves about 200,000 Staten Islanders. <\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s time capsule visit Wednesday also served as an announcement for a $185 million capital project<\/a> to modernize the Staten Island facility. Much of the equipment in Port Richmond doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s seen much of an upgrade since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the equipment that is being used here is still equipment that\u2019s being used from 1976,\u201d Mamdani said, crediting plant workers\u2019 ingenuity for helping the plant stay running. \u201cWe want to make their job a little less tough by ensuring that they\u2019re dealing with the very best of what today has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PortA rendering shows plans for the future Port Richmond Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility thanks in part to a $185 million investment.(Courtesy: New York City Department of Environmental Protection)<\/p>\n

The Port Richmond Wastewater facility, located on the Richmond Terrace waterfront near the street\u2019s intersection with Dongan Street, has seen a number of multi-million dollar investments over the years, including a $30 million project completed in 2015 <\/a>that brought a new solar roof and new boilers to the facility.<\/p>\n

Construction of the plant began in 1972 when sewage ran freely through the city\u2019s waters and even made its way onto the beaches of Long Island.<\/p>\n

The Port Richmond plant is part of a five-borough network of 14 plants that process about 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater daily helping keep the city\u2019s waterways clean.<\/p>\n

Efforts to clean the city\u2019s waterways have largely been successful with the Department of Environmental Protection touting the cleanest waterways in over a century<\/a>, largely thanks to the wastewater treatment plants. <\/p>\n

\"1976Mayor Abe Beame places a letter, addressed to the mayor of 2026, inside a time capsule inserted in the cornerstone of the Port Richmond Sewage Treatment Plant.(Staten Island Advance\/Frank J. Johns)<\/p>\n

Mamdani found a host of articles in the time capsule on the past\u2019s water pollution, and a letter from the city\u2019s first Jewish mayor, Beame, to the first Muslim to hold the title about hopes for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to a very-near future in which we, ourselves, will be able to use rivers and beaches, which at one time, were unfit for swimming, fishing, or other recreation,\u201d Beame, who died in 2001, wrote in the 1976 letter. \u201cWe are doing all we can, despite a current period of governmental austerity, to leave you a legacy of a clean and beautiful environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other contents of the time capsule included the Oct. 21, 1976 edition of the Staten Island Advance, a 1976 coin collection, and copies of the Port Richmond plant\u2019s blueprints. <\/p>\n

Front page headlines from the Advance edition found in the time capsule included reporting on fundraising for Staten Island cultural institutions, utility rate hikes, and the high price tag of the 1976 State Senate race between former State Sen. John Marchi and former Borough President Ralph Lamberti, about $20,000 a piece.<\/p>\n

For a hypothetical time capsule of his own, Mamdani focused on memorabilia from the recent Knicks title run and said he\u2019d like to leave behind his own collection of news clippings for the later readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to just get copies of papers from across the city, put them in that capsule because it really gives you a sense of a moment in time,\u201d the mayor said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 What\u2019s old is news. Mayor Zohran Mamdani ceremonially opened a time capsule Wednesday, 50…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-379308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}