Patriot Brief
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Weapon cache uncovered: A fisherman found a taped-up pistol and brass knuckles after water levels dropped at Staten Island’s Silver Lake reservoir.
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Water levels falling: The reservoir has dropped more than eight feet as New York City halted refilling as part of conservation efforts.
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Public warned: City officials caution residents to stay out of the fenced-off reservoir despite growing curiosity.
Sometimes the truth really does surface when government decisions drain the swamp, literally. As New York City lets one of Staten Island’s most visible reservoirs wither in the name of conservation, it has exposed more than muddy banks and forgotten trash. A sudden drop in Silver Lake’s waterline has uncovered a taped-up bundle containing a pistol and brass knuckles, raising questions about how long it sat hidden beneath the surface and what story it might tell. One local fisherman went looking for history and instead stumbled into something far darker.
New York Post reports:
“You can see somebody had bundled something up and taped it to this rock with like a mile of tape, which piqued my interest about it,” said Chris Sammon, an avid fisherman and Staten Island native who searched the newly exposed Silver Lake reservoir.
“I figured it was probably either somebody’s pet that they had given some kind of weird water burial to, or it was probably a weapon of some sort,” he told The Post. “So I was a little concerned that it was going to be some decomposed animal, but luckily it was not.”
“Actually, it was the more troubling stash — which he quickly turned over to a nearby cop in case it was key evidence missing from a police station in some long-forgotten crime, he said.
The creepy bundle was just one of the bizarre items that surfaced after the waters in the popular lake dropped more than 8 feet in the past year as part of a city-led water conservation effort.
The storied fishing pool is filled with just 239.5 million gallons, as of Dec. 17 readings — nearly half of its 400-million-gallon capacity.
That’s down from 361.5 million gallons last October, making for an 8.5-foot drop.
“That I can remember, that’s definitely the lowest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it getting close to that level. Every year it seems to go low, but not like that,” Sammon said.”
City officials may call Silver Lake “purely aesthetic,” but this discovery proves otherwise. When infrastructure is neglected and history is left submerged, reality eventually resurfaces. For Staten Islanders peering into the newly exposed shoreline, the lesson is simple. When the water goes down, the truth does not stay buried.
Photo credit: Brigitte Stelzer, Chris Sammon