The color of the snow — rusty white with patches of dirt — matched that of the sanitation trucks that brought it to the mounting pile in the center of a New York City Financial District block on one Wednesday afternoon this winter. Workers from the towering office buildings nearby who were on a smoke break gazed at the story-high pile and rumbling tractors that were shoveling it. One snapped a photo.
At the other end of the block, which was roped off from traffic, two tractors shoveled the snow inside a large, orange, steaming metal vat on wheels — a snow melter. The shoveled loads seemed to disappear into the rising vapor.
