Department of Sanitation Under Fire for Nyc Gridlock Again
Photo (cc) 2008 rafael rybczynski
The Bloomberg administration's garbage plan has been sitting on a shelf awaiting total implementation for four years, and some critics think it's on the verge of spoiling.
After extensive political wrangling, the assistants and the City Council in 2006 agreed on a solid waste product direction plan, which shuffled the location of solid waste material stations and relied on trains and barges for moving trash instead of diesel-spewing trucks. Though it was hailed every bit a major step forrad for environmental justice at the time, four years later many of the plan's key proposals have been held up due to permitting delays and lawsuits.
Eight rounds of budget cuts have devastated the Department of Sanitation's public outreach and instruction funds. The city hasn't even come up close to coming together its recycling goals, which were supposed to be accomplished in 2007. And at present we're sending more of our garbage to out of state landfills at a cost that has increased by 51.4 percent between 2000 and 2010.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Bloomberg administration announced it would incorporate its solid waste material direction plan in its long-term sustainability vision — PlaNYC 2030. Environmentalists and garbage experts now say it's time to take another look at how the city handles the millions of tons of trash New Yorkers dispose of every year. Some of them contend we should throw out the city'due south original solid waste plan altogether.
A Garbage Program
Following the closure of Fresh Kills in 2001, the metropolis piled tons of dirty diapers, day-old accept out and spoiled vegetables on to diesel trucks. Those trucks traveled to transfer stations in a handful of impoverished city neighborhoods and and then sputtered to out of land landfills. The city'due south waste management programme was supposed to provide relief for those neighborhoods — particularly the South Bronx and central Brooklyn — which were saddled with about, if non all, of the city's garbage brunt.
The program put transfer stations for both refuse and recyclable materials in more affluent neighborhoods, including the Westward Village and the Upper East Side.
Just since the plan's approving, two of the vii proposed city-endemic stations have received the necessary state permits and are under construction, co-ordinate to the Section of Sanitation. Merely one is fully operational. According to the original plan, four of these proposed transfer stations should accept been completed by 2010. Now, several won't be done until at to the lowest degree 2013.
Defenseless in the Courts
The land'due south permit process gets some of the blame for the delays. In addition, lengthy court and political battles accept stalled transfer stations in flush areas of Manhattan. As a result, the vast majority of the city'southward trash is still being trucked effectually the five boroughs and is still festering in depression-income neighborhoods.
"The process has been boring, merely not as a result, in this instance, of delays at the metropolis," said Eric Goldstein, a senior chaser at the Natural Resources Defense Quango. "There was hope that it wouldn't accept a full decade to really advance the barge and rail transportation ... Information technology does seem at present to be heading in the right management."
But non everywhere, according to environmentalists. One area slated for a transfer station is still trash collection-costless. In the Upper East Side, the Gracie Bespeak Community Council has filed a second lawsuit against the city to try to quash a marine transfer station slated for 91st Street across from the FDR Drive.
Standing at the corner of 91st Street and York Avenue in Manhattan, just one block down from the proposed site, Tony Ard, the chair of the Gracie Point Community Council, said the city had not reasonably considered how a transfer station would affect the customs and its surround — from trucks congesting tiny side streets to the health of its residents. He pointed to the athletic fields next to the transfer station's proposed driveway, where kids from nearby schools play, and to the Upper East Side's air quality — the worst in the city, according to new data from the wellness department.
"We're non saying choose minority residential neighborhoods," said Ard. "It doesn't belong in whatever residential neighborhood."
Ard expects a conclusion from the Supreme Court in Albany any day now. If it doesn't come down in the community's favor, he said, this isn't over.
"Nosotros're going to go on at this until we have no more courts available to united states of america and no more legislatures," said Ard. "Why? Because it'southward wrong."
Ard in front of the old waste transfer station.
A spokesperson from the Department of Sanitation said the city carefully considered the public health and welfare when selecting transfer station sites, and the urban center has proved that the station is reasonable and necessary at 91st Street.
Other parts of the city'due south solid waste material plan accept moved forrard. Twenty-year contracts have been either negotiated or are in consequence with Waste matter Direction of New York to export trash from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. The sanitation department is currently negotiating with the Port Authority of New York and New Bailiwick of jersey for a long-term contract to take the vast majority of Manhattan's turn down to a waste-to-energy plant in New Jersey.
At the fourth dimension of the solid waste management plan'due south approving, the assistants argued long-term contracts would save the city money, and it would go the urban center'south trash off of dirty diesel trucks. Most ninety percent of city trash, the mayor promised, would be sent by rails or barge instead.
According to the Department of Sanitation, the toll of exporting the city'due south trash has increased per ton from $61.30 in 2000 to $92.80 in 2010 — a 20 percent increase over the rate of inflation. As of April, 33 percent of the city's trash has been unloaded from trucks and put on rail cars — an increment from 14 per centum in 2006, co-ordinate to the solid waste plan.
None of the city'southward waste is currently exported by clomp, according to the Department of Sanitation, considering those transfer stations have not been completed.
Dismal Recycling Rates
Politics may have held up parts of the city'due south garbage plan, just ordinary New Yorkers bear some of the responsibleness for the city's failure to meet its recycling goals.
By 2007, according to the solid waste product management plan, the city was supposed reach a 25 percentage recycling charge per unit for residences and a total rate citywide of 35 percent. Co-ordinate to the Mayor'southward Office of Operations, only 15.9 percent of trash was diverted from the residential waste stream for recycling so far this financial year, and only 24.6 percent of trash was recycled citywide.
Bottom line, New Yorkers aren't recycling like they should be.
"It's a combination of a lot of things and to notice out the answers to those things you have to spend a lot of money," said Robert Lange, the city's director of the Bureau of Waste product Reduction, Reuse and Recycling, of the urban center's dismal recycling charge per unit. "We only take 2 tools at our disposal: One is public education and one is enforcement. Conspicuously a lot of elected officials are not in favor of enforcement, including the City Council."
The problem is worse in some communities more than than others. Public housing facilities take fetid recycling rates, said sanitation officials. If you dropped by Melrose or Port Morris in the Bronx during fiscal year 2009, less than 5 percent of the trash at the adjourn was set aside for recycling. Ten other neighborhoods, including Brownsville, Bedford Stuyvesant, Harlem and Hunts Point, put between 10 and 5 percentage of their trash out for recycling in the same time catamenia, according to the mayor's direction report. Those neighborhoods also typically have the lowest median incomes in the city.
The best and worst recycling rates for fiscal year 2009: Red is less than a 5 percent diversion rate, xanthous is between 5 and x pct and green is higher than 25 percent.
At the commencement of the Bloomberg assistants, the city recycled more than than 330,000 tons of metal, glass and plastic. In fiscal year 2009, most 231,000 tons were recycled — a subtract of 30 percent.
Officials in the Bloomberg administration and at the City Quango are at present turning to more regulation to boost the book of clear plastic bags on city streets. Last month, Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a package of legislation aimed at increasing the city's recycling rate, including a proposal to expand the types of plastics the city recycles. A bill, which has widespread back up among the council, would add rigid plastics, like yogurt cups and take-out containers, to the city's recycling program. Another bill would found textile-recycling driblet off locations throughout the urban center, and another proposal would beginning chancy waste material collections for toxic household products. The council is besides exploring forcing the city to written report the feasibility of a widespread composting program.
The Department of Sanitation has expressed back up for the vast bulk of the ideas.
While advocates champion the proposals, some say there is still a long haul alee.
Waste in a New Century
Now that the administration has decided to comprise its solid waste product management into PlaNYC 2030, advocates say the metropolis should rethink the entire waste cycle: from the packaging of products to the 500-mile journey to a landfill down due south.
"The revision of PlaNYC and the fact that solid waste is being brought into that plan now provides the opportunity to expect at these issues of ultimate disposal and land filling and waste reduction," said Andy Darrell, the New York regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Starting time with a carrot: use the city'due south buying power to curtail the amount of packaging of sure products, said environmental advocates. Concentrate on recycling construction materials, others add. (During his address in Times Foursquare on Earth Day the mayor said the city would look into waste product reduction.)
Other decline experts are willing to employ a stick instead.
"Nosotros need to piece of work through the system step by step," said Benjamin Miller, an author and former managing director of policy planning for the Section of Sanitation. "We should forbid as much waste material as we tin can. The unmarried most effective organization to practice that is to accuse people for the waste they send out."
In one case the city's waste has been reduced, advocates say the assistants should consider its far larger challenge: exporting trash.
A majority of Manhattan's trash goes to an incinerator in Newark, but the residue of our turn down is sent to speedily filling landfills out of state — in the far reaches of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Due south Carolina. Set up aside the environmental adventure of landfills for now, advocates say. Consider this: As these garbage pits fill up, it costs more for New York Urban center to reserve infinite for its trash — hence the 20 percent increase over inflation in the cost of exporting pass up.
A solution, Miller argues, would be for the city to explore another waste to free energy facility in the metropolitan area. Once extremely controversial, this applied science, some environmental advocates say, has caught up with the manufacture, and now incinerators that burn down trash and convert it to usable energy are much cleaner than they used to exist. The idea is not palatable to all of the city'due south environmentalists, like Goldstein. And it too would come with a hefty price tag.
Clean solid waste management may exist a strange concept to some. But ultimately, experts say our trash piles need to go somewhere, and Southern hospitality won't last forever.
"There aren't many good things you can do with garbage at the stop of the solar day," said Darrell. "We're a metropolis of between 8 and nine one thousand thousand people. We generate a lot of trash."
Source: https://www.gothamgazette.com/environment/509-city-garbage-plan-falls-short-of-goals
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