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By Will Bredderman
Brooklyn Daily
The long-closed bathrooms in Dyker Beach Park near Bay Eighth Street have residents and Community Board 10 getting antsy — and the city says what’s going on inside the locked-up loos isn’t pretty.
The Parks Department put the lid down on the comfort stations near Independence Avenue a year and a half ago in order to do repairs. The water closets were supposed to re-open for business in 2012, according CB10 district manager Josephine Beckmann, but parkgoers have had to hold it in well into the New Year — and the city has not given a date for when relief will come.
Beckmann said her office has gotten countless complaints about the stopped toilets from adult and little league baseball players who use the nearby fields, and from people who enjoy relaxing in the greenspace. Those in need currently have to wait to use one of the sparse — and sinkless — portable toilets placed nearby, or make the painful trek to the bathrooms near the corner of 86th Street and 14th Avenue.
“It’s a major inconvenience. Residents are very upset,” said Beckmann.
Parkgoers argued that the padlocked privies can lead to unsightly scenarios.
“You don’t want people urinating on trees and stuff. You’ve got families and kids around the park,” said George Adamopoulos, a member of a baseball team that uses the fields.
Others claimed that the closed commodes — combined with the warming weather — put incredible pressure on the park’s other accommodations.
“They’ve got to fix them,” said Ronald Rosa. “On the weekend, there’s a lot of people here.”
But the Parks Department said that the public will not be able to reclaim the thrones until the end of the summer — at the very soonest. Spokeswoman Meghan Lalor explained that the agency discovered that the latrines’ deterioration was far worse than they had anticipated, and the repairs will have to extend to the pipes underneath Bay Eighth Street,
“An assessment of the issue at the Dyker Beach Park comfort stations revealed damage beyond our expectations,” said Lalor.
So comfort still remains a long way off.
Reach reporter Will Bredderman at wbredderman@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4507. Follow him at twitter.com/WillBredderman.