Groups Announce Support For A NYC Water- And Rail-Based Solid Waste System

Four organizations with a long history of working on NYC solid waste issues, Environmental Defense, the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods (OWN), the NY League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council, released a letter today to all members of the NYC Council urging support for major features of the City’s Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP). 

Those features include:

• a commitment to maximizing opportunities for moving both commercial and residential waste through water- or rail-based transfer facilities;
• opening state-of-the art marine transfer stations (MTSs) at 59th Street on the Hudson River, 91st Street on the East River and the Gansevoort Peninsula, at 12th Street, also on the Hudson River; and
• improving operating rules applicable to the existing land-based, truck-dependent commercial transfer stations that are concentrated in the South Bronx and certain Brooklyn and Queens communities.

The groups also stressed that these new Manhattan facilities must be designed and operated to minimize truck and facility impacts on near-by neighborhoods and be compatible with adjacent park, recreational, residential and other waterfront uses.  The letter states that facility and truck technologies, if fully employed, make this possible.

The current system, with so much of the City’s commercial and residential waste, including much of Manhattan’s commercial solid waste, hauled to truck-dependent commercial waste transfer facilities concentrated in the South Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, imposes an unfair and unacceptable burden on those communities.  Instead, the letter proposes a commercial and residential solid waste system designed to lead to the closure of the truck-based facilities, significantly reduce waste truck vehicular miles traveled in the City, maximize opportunities for recycling and water-based recycling transfer and processing facilities and minimize community impacts of new water- and rail-based transfer facilities.  The letter focuses on the need to site new marine-based facilities in Manhattan that generates half of the City’s commercial solid waste.

Environmental Defense supports the need to open new marine-based facilities in Manhattan at 59th, 91st and 12th Streets based on the findings of a two-year study of the truck impacts of Manhattan’s current commercial and residential solid waste practices and alternative scenarios for dramatically reducing those impacts on Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens communities.  The findings from that June 2004 study, Trash and the City, can be found at http://www.environmentaldefense.org/go/trashandthecity.

“The burden of solid waste in our city is now too great, especially for low-income and minority communities,” said Jim Tripp, General Counsel for Environmental Defense.  “We intend to work with the City Council and City Administration to make sure that the new facilities in Manhattan at 59th, 91st and 12th Street are properly designed to minimize community facility and truck impacts.”

Eddie Bautista, Director of Community Planning for NY Lawyers for the Public Interest and lead organizer for OWN, added:  “Over 80% of New York City’s 47,000 daily tons of waste is processed in a handful of low income communities of color bearing some of the City’s highest asthma rates.  Since the late 1990’s, OWN has championed the redistribution of waste export burdens from the discriminatory and unsustainable truck-based system currently ravaging communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, to a more equitable and sustainable marine transfer-based system.  As OWN has long advocated, the proposed SWMP aims to re-open the same marine transfer station sites used in Manhattan for over 50 years while Fresh Kills operated.  We are calling on the City Council to approve Manhattan doing its fair share with state-of-the-art MTSs at W 59th Street, E 91st Street and Gansevoort.  Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Mark Izeman, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental organization headquartered in NYC, stated: “An important component of the draft SWMP is to maximize the movement of recyclables generated in Manhattan and other boroughs by water rather than by truck.  The opening of a marine-based transfer station at Gansevoort will allow efficient, water-based transport of Manhattan recycled paper and metal, glass and plastic materials to the newly planned recycling processing plant on the Brooklyn waterfront and to the paper mill on Staten Island.”

Marcia Bystryn, executive director of the New York League of Conservation Voters, a statewide organization headquartered in New York City, stated: “The League has long supported the development of a solid waste management system that is both environmentally sound and economically sustainable.  The proposed plan, with its reliance on barge and rail significantly advances that goal.  Moreover, NYLCV recognizes the need to site necessary water-dependent infrastructure.  In our view, it is both possible and necessary to design such facilities to be compatible with adjacent waterfront uses such as parks and open space, as well as the needs of near-by residential communities.”