Community groups have been fighting diesel fuel emissions for years. Finally, in late January, four bus companies representing 60 percent of the yellow school buses that are contracted by the Department of Education agreed to stop idling when they are parked near schools following an investigation by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Three companies have also agreed to retrofit some buses with new exhaust filters.
Spitzer’s office reportedly found that the four companies routinely parked their buses with the engine running for as long as half an hour, even though city law limits idling to three minutes. Idling by the four school bus companies, according to the attorney general, resulted in annual emissions in the metropolitan region of some 1.3 tons of particulate matter, 20 tons of carbon monoxide and 60 tons of nitrogen oxides. The companies are required to monitor their drivers and will have to comply with the agreement within 30 days, by the end of February. They will also pay the city $47,000 to plant trees near schools.
(The Attorney General will continue to investigate a dozen smaller companies that operate the remaining 40 percent of buses.)
New York City’s poor air quality is particularly hard on children, whose lungs are fragile and still developing. The city’s 6,000 yellow school buses, because they are run on diesel fuel, are particularly lethal to their 173,000 riders: Particles from diesel exhaust are carcinogenic; truck and car emissions can lead to heart disease; air pollution aggravates allergies, asthma and other respiratory illness. “Major airborne pollutants such as lead, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, contribute to the city’s high incidence of asthma (double the New York State average, in some neighborhoods, and up to six times the national average) and other respiratory ailments,” says the New York League of Conservation Voters. And it’s worse for those inside the bus than those outside, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
More than two years ago, the New York State Power Authority launched a $6 million program to install diesel fuel pollution control systems on a thousand of the buses. “Diesel particulate filters trap exhaust particles and, combined with an engine adjustment and the switch to using ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (with all related costs covered by the power authority), emissions on the school buses are reduced by 90 percent,” Gotham Gazette reported last June. But not one school bus company took advantage of the free program.
One of the sites Spitzer’s office investigated was a public school in the East Village, says Rebecca Kalin of Asthma Free School Zone, which works to reduce asthma-related absenteeism and illness by working with parents, teachers, school staff and area residents to improve air quality in and around public schools. “There are three schools inside the building and 11 school buses outside,” Kalin says. “They idle as long as two hours at a time. It’s a narrow street and the teachers slam their windows shut at pick-up time. And cars trying to pass get stuck by the buses, so they idle, too.”
Kalin is working with City Councilmember Margarita LĂłpez to introduce legislature to designate all public schools in the city asthma-free school zones and post a sign saying as much. “We hope the sign will become like the Good Housekeeping Seal,” Kalin says. “We want to empower people to knock on windows, point to the sign, and ask the driver to turn off the engine.”
To further emphasize the danger of the poor air quality in New York City, a new study(in pdf format) finds that exposure to a combination of smoke and pollutants is even worse than exposure to just one factor. It causes lower birth-weight and smaller head circumference in newborns, standard measurements of fetal growth. Lower birth weight has been linked with learning disabilities.
The study, which was conducted by Columbia University’s Center for Children's Environmental Health, compared 226 infants whose mothers lived during pregnancy in households with an active smoker to those whose mothers did not. The newborns of mothers living with smokers weighed seven percent less than average and the circumferences of their heads were three percent smaller. The women in the study were African-Americans and Dominicans living in Washington Heights, central Harlem and the South Bronx, where the asthma rates are the highest nationwide and the rates of low birth weight are the highest in the city.
Using a new technique, researchers tracked the pollutants by measuring DNA damage to get an individual measure of exposure to hydrocarbons, which are caused by truck and car emissions, home heating systems and power generation. “These findings underscore the importance of smoking bans, public education and policies that limit pollution,” said center director Dr. Frederica Perera.
The findings are noteworthy because pollutants affect the human body simultaneously, rather than separately, which is the way they are frequently studied, the researchers told the New York Times : “Previous research has explored the effect of secondhand smoke and urban air pollution independently on fetuses.”
Sasha Nyary, formerly on the staff of Life Magazine and the mother of a public school student, edits the newsletter of The Fifth Avenue Committee, a community-based organization.
New York City has traditionally regarded clean air as more of a journey than a destination. Since Congress passed the first Clean Air Act in 1970, ozone, smog, and particulate matter levels have decreased dramatically throughout the city and the surrounding region. Still, with the prevailing winds bringing in a fresh (or, rather, stale) supply of pollution every day, local levels remain disappointingly high when measured against most other regions of the country.
The Bush Administration says it would like to change that. In 2002 it proposed a new rule that it says will reduce emissions faster by introducing a more flexible permit process. Critics, however, argue that "flexibility" is simply a code word for relaxed standards and are fighting the proposal.
The Bush argument, which parallels that of administration allies in the coal and power industries, has it that the current interpretation of "major" is absurdly low. In 1999, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency filed seven lawsuits against utilities that had modified their facilities without reapplying for a new permit. In one suit, the agency cited a new furnace floor and replaced steam drum parts as sufficiently major modifications.
Utility industry lobbyists and the agency's current leadership argue that such strict interpretations -- and the cost of buying the new "best available" technologies that goes into qualifying for a new permit -- only encourages power companies to let their aging power plants grow dirtier and less efficient.
Given the challenge of cleaning up its own skies, you would think that New York City would be sympathetic to such arguments. Not so. Last March, together with the city of San Francisco and 27 Connecticut municipalities, the city joined in a 14-state lawsuit that aims to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule change.
For the city, the issue comes down to health care costs: More upwind pollutants means more asthma and more hospitalization cases.
"It doesn't take a genius to see that this is a rollback," says one city attorney close to the case. "If they're not rollbacks, the government has a role to explain why they aren't, and they haven't done that yet."
For decades, Republican lawmakers and their conservative Democratic allies pushed for compromises that would take regulatory power away from the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, states and municipalities, even as they flex their own regulatory muscles, are insisting that the federal agency retain its tough Clinton-era standards.
The one state leading the way is New York. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has built on the successes of his predecessors in going after the out-of-state polluters whose smokestacks contribute to acid rain and other local problems.
Judith Enck, a policy advisor to Spitzer, says the Office of the Attorney General has targeted 30 coal-burning power plants both in New York and out of state over the last five years. Until last November, when the Environmental Protection Agency suspended ongoing investigations into 50 facilities, citing the rule change, the state was counting on the federal government to carry out a similar crackdown in other regions.
"Three years into the dance, we lost our partner," says Enck.
City lawyers, meanwhile, have undergone a role reversal. Only four years ago the city was the defendant in a civil lawsuit citing the Clean Air Act. Settled in 2000, the lawsuit stemmed from EPA charges that the New York City Department of Sanitation had been improperly handling discarded refrigerators and air conditioners, allowing the ozone layer-depleting freon inside to escape into the atmosphere. In the final settlement, the city agreed to pay a $1 million penalty and implement $3 million in new environmental programs.
Since then, the city has worked to get its own environmental house in order. Included in that effort are a series of epidemiological surveys studying the direct and indirect health impacts of air pollution on city residents.
One city attorney, speaking anonymously, says the Law Department was "happy to jump in" on the states' case, albeit in a background role.
The city has assisted the state in building its case mainly by offering local statistics on the hospitalization costs related to ozone and fine particulate matter -- the two local byproducts of increased upwind pollution. Dr. Thomas Frieden, commissioner of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, says these statistics are the product of a two year long campaign to fill in the "major gaps" on local air pollution and its after-effects.
"What we know is that particulate matter and the amount of particulate matter in the air correlates with heart disease and death," Frieden says. "Both particulate and ozone are reasonable markers of air quality problems that may exacerbate asthma and other conditions for vulnerable people."
This linkage has been enough for the states’ legal argument to include dramatic information about health care in the city. Thanks in part to the city's data, federal judges have agreed to put the federal rules change on hold pending the outcome of the case. A three judge panel in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the primary venue for such policy disputes, made its decision on December 23, just three days before the revised policy was slated to go into effect.
Mike Leavitt, the new commissioner of the Environmental Protection Agency, says the agency will "vigorously defend" the new rule. He also maintains, however, that the agency, via the Department of Justice, would continue pressing the 1999 lawsuits filed under the old, Clinton-era interpretations.
Meanwhile, the former Utah governor has pushed the wind-borne pollutants debate into a new direction, unveiling the "Interstate Air Quality Rule." Aimed at the 29 states that currently fail to meet federal standards, the new rule would nationalize the "cap and trade" pollution credits program -- an outgrowth of the 1990 Clean Air Act.
"Our belief is simple: people do the right things faster, and they do more of it, when they have an incentive and the latitude to do it in a way that makes sense for them," said Leavitt in a Jan. 19 speech at the Edison Electric Institute, an electric utilities trade group.
Such comments, while rooted in federalist Republican doctrine, acknowledge the failures of a policing system that, to date, has allowed more than half the nation's states and 530 individual counties to skirt compliance. With air standards set to get even tougher in the coming years, it also acknowledges that, like it or not, the federal government has to play a stronger leadership role on the environmental front -- something Enck and her colleagues have been calling for all along.
"The EPA has been missing in action when it comes to air pollution," Enck says. "We truly want them involved in these cases."
![]() An unused building a few blocks from City Hall in lower Manhattan has become a magnet for grafitti writers. |
"It's in the middle of the night, it's in the middle of the afternoon," patrol president Frank Kotnik said. "They are teenage girls. They are middle-aged men. They are white. They are black. They are poor. They are from affluent families. But one thing is for sure. They keep on coming."
While some New Yorkers look at graffiti nostalgically as an art movement from a bygone era, and others as an old war long since won, plenty of New Yorkers say it is a problem that has not gone away; they fear it is getting worse. In response, Councilmember Hiram Monserrate of Queens has introduced a bill that would require property owners to take responsibility for their defaced buildings. Owners of commercial or residential buildings with six or more units would have 30 days to remove graffiti before the city issues fines of up to $300. The bill also calls on the state to provide property tax exemptions for those landlords in order to cover the cost of graffiti removal.
"Graffiti continues to be a major nuisance in many areas of this city, fostering an atmosphere of neglect," said Councilmember Peter Vallone, a co-sponsor of the bill. "We've reached a point where something more has to be done, because there are many owners in my district and other neighborhoods that have shown every inclination that they will never clean up their properties."
There is opposition to the measure. Opponents are not arguing artistic freedom, but claiming economic hardship. Neal Dunatov of Small Property Owners of New York said a fine would burden property owners already suffering from the economic downturn and the increase in property taxes.
The city's multi-agency Anti-Graffiti Task Force has removed more than 16.3 million square feet of graffiti from about 6,250 sites across New York City since July 2002. And the task force is not alone. Since July 2002, the Department of Transportation has painted over more than 4.1 million square feet of graffiti on areas surrounding the New York City highways. During that same time, the Department of Parks and Recreation has removed over two million square feet. Other city agencies have removed scrawls from hundreds of other sites. The police department has made 468 arrests for graffiti-related crimes.
These efforts are not driven solely by aesthetic considerations. Graffiti, many believe, conveys an image of urban decay and despair. In expounding their "broken windows" theory in 1982, conservative theorists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling wrote in an article, "If the first broken window in a building is not repaired, then people who like breaking windows will assume that no one cares about the building and more windows will be broken. Soon the building will have no windows."
When graffiti emerged in New York City on a large scale in the mid-1960s, it was primarily the work of political activists and street gangs. In 1971 the New York Times profiled a Washington Heights writer who went by the tag TAKI, marking the first mainstream recognition of the graffiti subculture. Writing rapidly spread to the subways. A 1973 article in New York magazine by Richard Goldstein entitled "The Graffiti Hit Parade" hailed the artistic value of the graffiti artists. But many saw the bulk of graffiti writers simply as vandals, tagging as many subway cars as possible, much to the frustration of a beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
By the late 1970s, the authority made elimination of graffiti a high priority, buffing trains to remove it and increasing security in train yards. In the mid-1980s, the city restricted the sale of spray paint to minors, further reducing graffiti. On May 12, 1989, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority officially declared graffiti dead in the system.
It is not that graffiti has exactly risen from the dead. It simply moved from the train yards to city streets. And there it has stayed.
"We have seen a resurgence in graffiti in this city, matching a rise in gang activity in some areas," Monserrate said. "These gangs use graffiti as a source of communication. The reality is, the longer it stays up, the worse the criminal activity in an area becomes. The city is suffering at the hands of these graffiti vandals, who I refuse to call artists."
In response, most council members have launched anti-graffiti initiatives in their districts. And in January, 2003, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed two laws -- one that toughened penalties for people repeatedly arrested for doing graffiti and another that makes it more difficult for minors to buy acid etching cream that some use to make their mark on windows and other surfaces.
But some say additional legislative efforts are needed to address the many privately owned sites around the city smeared with graffiti. Currently, before cleaners -- whether they are paid city workers or community volunteers -- can clean a property, the owner must sign a waiver granting them permission.
"It's a matter of access and liability," said Councilmember Anthony Avella, who has led clean-up campaigns and founded the North Shore Anti-Graffiti Volunteers. "We've got the supplies, we've got the manpower, and we do it for nothing, but if we can't get the owner to sign a waiver giving us permission, we can't gain access."
"I can't tell you how much time we've spent calling and banging on doors, but either they [the owners] can't be found or just don't care enough to have it cleaned," testified Councilmember Melinda Katz.
"It's very frustrating that no matter how hard we try to remove this blight, there are many landlords, mostly absentee landlords, that just don't give a damn," Councilmember Philip Reed said. He supports placing liens on properties whose owners ignore multiple violations.
Kotnick of the Glendale Civilian Observation Patrol admits Monserrate's bill "would victimize the victim twice, hitting them with a fine on top of the act of vandalism," but, he adds, "This isn't aimed at the responsible, law-abiding owners. There are property owners who have lost faith in the system and simply collect their rents and don't put a dime back into their properties."
The legislation faces an uphill battle nonetheless. Testifying at the hearing, Community Assistance Unit Commissioner Jonathan Greenspun said he "applauds the concept" of Monserrate's proposal. But he called the measure "unworkable" because it does not define what graffiti is, nor address the issue of added costs from the massive influx of requests for clean-ups that the legislation would drive.
In the meantime, private groups continue to do what they can. The Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corp. -- a non-profit organization that charges a $100 fee for cleanings in the area covered by Community Board 5 -- uses labor supplied by a work release program from the Department of Corrections and a community service program from the Department of Probation.
As one former "tagger" who "bombed" train yards and other sites throughout Brooklyn in the 1990s, Eric Berg adamantly opposes prison sentences for graffiti vandals, but concedes that such laws were definitely a deterrent for him. "As I developed a goal for my life," Berg said, "I no longer felt that doing graffiti was a risk worth taking."