Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

Recycling Hangs Tough


One year after Mayor Michael Bloomberg's surprise proposal to eliminate the household recycling of metals, glass and plastics, the city's recycling program refuses to surrender.

In fact, recycling and solid waste experts are now cautiously optimistic regarding the future of this highly visible trash disposal strategy. They point to the ongoing successes of paper recycling, to a new offer that would pay the city for recycling all of the plastics and metals it collects, and to determined legislators on the City Council who have defended and advanced recycling as part of a rational long-term solid waste strategy for New York City.

To be sure, the city still confronts the daunting fiscal challenges that prompted the Bloomberg administration to seek cuts in funding for recycling last spring. The Department of Sanitation remains ambivalent in its support for recycling and waste prevention. And regular changes regarding what materials the city collects for recycling have left many New Yorkers confused about exactly what is and what is not part of the city's recycling program today. (Currently, paper and metal are still part of the program; glass and plastic are not.)

Still, what is remarkable, according to some waste experts and fiscal watchdogs, is that the long-term economic viability of recycling is becoming clearer -- even as the city faces perhaps its most serious budget problems in a generation.

BACKGROUND

While recycling has been around New York City in one form or another for decades, a landmark l989 mandatory recycling law, initiated by the New York City Council, triggered an increased emphasis on this solid waste strategy during the 1990s. When the recycling law was enacted, then City Council chief Peter Vallone called it "one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the history of the city."

The l989 statute required the Department of Sanitation to meet annual recycling tonnage requirements that were designed to boost recycling over the next five years. And in the summer of 1989, the department launched what would soon become the first citywide curbside collection of recyclables in New York history.

From less than one percent in the late l980s, recycling in New York City climbed to roughly 20 percent of the city's total residential waste stream by mid-2002. And the 1989 statute (and follow-up state court orders) required the sanitation department to achieve further incremental increases in citywide recycling collections.

In February 2002, however, the Bloomberg administration proposed to "suspend" the recycling of metals, plastic and glass. With the city facing a serious budget shortfall, sanitation department officials forecast that such recycling cuts would result in annual savings of $51 million, due in large part to the reduced number of waste collection trucks that would be needed, they said, under the proposed cutbacks. But recycling advocates questioned the validity of the city's estimated cost savings. And former Sanitation Commissioner Brendan Sexton warned at the time that "halting recycling now is likely to cause irreparable harm to a program that took many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to build up."

The City Council, which had long recognized the environmental benefits and political popularity of recycling, stepped up to help save the program. Under the leadership of Solid Waste Committee Chairman Michael McMahon, and in response to vigorous advocacy from environmental and civic organizations, the council brokered a final budget agreement that retained recycling of metals, while suspending recycling of plastics for one year and glass for two years.

The June 2002 compromise worked out by Chairman McMahon and his council colleagues was especially important, say recycling advocates, because it kept alive the separate collection of metals, and set a schedule for the reintroduction of plastic and glass recycling. (As was true of the original Bloomberg administration plan, the final budget deal also preserved the city's successful paper recycling program.)

As a result of the budget agreement announced last summer, the sanitation department ended recycling pick-ups of plastics and glass on July 1st of last year, and returned to collecting those materials as part of the department's regular trash pick-ups.

MOMENTUM SHIFTS BACK TO RECYCLING

Despite last year's cutbacks to the city's recycling program, solid waste experts, public officials and environmental advocates say that recycling is about to experience another one of its 11th hour come-backs. Ironically, the primary reason for their cautious optimism is the increasing cost-effectiveness of recycling when compared to out-of-state waste export to landfills or incinerators.

The Department of Sanitation "justified its decision to suspend glass and plastic recycling on the expectation that the city would save tens of millions of dollars each year," Comptroller William C. Thompson recently wrote. "It is now abundantly clear that merely recycling metal and exporting glass and plastic as waste is more expensive than recycling all of these materials."

According to the Comptroller, with recent new bids for exporting waste from Brooklyn ranging from $75 to $82 per ton and assuming the sanitation department chooses the lowest bidder, the citywide average waste export costs will rise from $66 to $69 per ton. In Queens, the average cost of waste export is $71 a ton. In comparison, the city has recently received a bid to recycle metal, glass and plastics for $70 a ton. Moreover, the export of waste from Queens requires the city’s sanitation trucks to haul the waste to New Jersey, whereas the reinstatement of full-scale recycling would allow Queens to recycle metal, glass and plastic at a facility within that borough, reducing the department’s transportation costs.

Former New York City sanitation department waste expert Benjamin Miller agrees with such economic analyses. "It is utterly predictable that we'd go back to recycling," he maintains.

"The graph lines for [how much the city pays for waste] export are going straight up and the costs for recycling are coming down," according to Benjamin Miller, author of the book "Fat of the Land," which traces the history of solid waste disposal in New York City over the past 200 years.

The costs for collecting and disposing of city wastes have soared, says Miller, by 60 percent since 1996, when New York began to phase out waste disposal at its Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Independent experts predict another 60 percent increase by 2010 in the cost for collection and waste export. This is largely due, Miller believes, to the fact that the city is now totally dependent on a handful of large national waste industry haulers to dispose of its non-recycled trash.

"Expect the costs of waste export to go up, up, up" under the current approach, warns Miller.

At a recent City Council budget hearing, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty had little choice but to concede that at least the vast bulk of last year's projected savings from cuts to recycling were never actually realized. Under vigorous questioning by City Councilmember David Yassky, Commissioner Doherty acknowledged that most of the projected savings from reduced recycling pick-ups were simply transferred to sanitation department waste collection operations, where hundreds of additional truck shifts were added to handle the increase in plastics and glass (which were now being discarded with regular waste).

As the hearing proceeded, a group of students visited the council chamber to see city government in action. Councilmember Yassky welcomed the students and noted: "I do have to caution them that they should not take their lessons in math from the Department of Sanitation."

RECYCLING IS BECOMING CHEAPER THAN WASTE EXPORT

Meanwhile, the fiscal outlook is improving for that portion of the waste stream that is or could be recycled.

Newspapers, magazines, cardboard, junk mail, and other paper products make up the single largest portion of the city's residential waste stream. And for this commodity, the economic benefits of recycling are readily apparent.

New York City is paid for every ton of paper it delivers to recyclers. For example, the Visy Paper Recycling Plant on Staten Island takes about a third of the city's recycled paper waste from the Department of Sanitation. The Visy plant de-inks these paper products and turns them into paper used to make corrogated boxes and other products. On average, the city is paid $7 a ton for paper sent to Visy and other paper recyclers. In contrast to paying $66 or more per ton for trash export, New York City benefits economically from every ton of paper it recycles.

Unfortunately, as a result of public confusion following the suspension of plastic and glass recycling last summer, paper recycling rates in New York have declined by about 12 percent. This problem, experts agree, is reversible with stepped up efforts to educate the public on the specifics of the city's recycling program and the fiscal advantages of paper recycling.

Metals have historically been among the most profitable materials to recycle, both here in New York and elsewhere. As with other recyclables, the markets for metals often fluctuate. Since last summer, New York City has been receiving as much as $30 a ton for the metals it collects for recycling.

The market for plastics has historically been more problematic. But this winter, New York received surprisingly good news when a family-owned New Jersey recycling company bid on a combined contract to recycle the city's metals and plastics.

The New Jersey company, Hugo Neu Schnitzer East, submitted a bid that proposed to pay the sanitation department $5.10 a ton for metals and plastics. (This bid stands in contrast with those from primarily large waste management haulers, whose bids require the city to pay $66 a ton or more for the bidder to take New York's metals and plastics for recycling.)

The Department of Sanitation has not yet officially accepted the New Jersey company bid to handle city metals and plastics recyclables. But given the financial benefits to the city of accepting this offer, solid waste experts believe the contract will be awarded shortly -- with citywide collection of plastics to resume this summer.

CHALLENGES REMAIN

There is no longer much doubt that recycling makes environmental sense, that it preserves natural resources, and that it could provide additional opportunities for local jobs, when compared to garbage export. But recycling advocates say that the city must still reform and enhance its system for collecting recyclables. And pressures to find cheaper ways of disposing of the 11,000 or so tons a day of trash that the sanitation department is responsible for will continue to dominate solid waste discussions for the foreseeable future.

"Despite the positive economic news on recycling of paper, metals and plastics, for New York City's recycling program to be fully successful will require both a stronger city commitment to make recycling work and implemention of new approaches to make the program even more cost-effective," says Mark Izeman, an attorney and waste specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (where I work).

With such concerns in mind, the Mayor's Office and the City Council have jointly released a task force report on the city's recycling program. Although the report is only six pages long, it offers several recommendations that could help foster the continuing growth of cost-effective recycling. For example, it recommends restoration of plastics recycling on July 1st (based upon the favorable bid from the New Jersey recycling firm). It calls for an analysis of "single-stream" collection (in which all recyclables are placed in one receptacle) and for consideration of "pay-as-you-throw" systems (a revenue neutral trash collection approach designed to encourage maximum recycling). And it calls upon the State Legislature to expand the "bottle bill" (so that the five cent deposits would cover non-carbonated beverages) and to return unredeemed beverage deposits to the municipality in which the original purchase occurred (to provide a big, new revenue stream for the city's recycling program).

These and other reform proposals will also be the subject of a comprehensive recycling report, scheduled for release by a coalition of the city's leading environmental and waste organizations in early May.

These are challenging times for the New York City Department of Sanitation, which under the city's new budget proposal is facing lay-offs of hundreds of employees. Fortunately, recycling, which has long been championed because of its wide-ranging environmental benefits, may soon prove to also be one of the most cost-effective weapons in the city's waste disposal arsenal.

Eric Goldstein is co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The City's New Spending Plan For The Environment


The Bloomberg Administration is expecting to make major changes in how billions of dollars are spent on the environment. Chris Ward, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, seems to be doing some big thinking about the city's future, judging from his presentation at a City Council hearing of the department's new $16.5 billion, ten year capital plan — the blueprint for how much the city will spend from 2004 to 2013 on such needs as water tunnels, sewage treatment plant upgrades, and reservoir protection.

The plan, which would double current expenditures, is not yet in final form, nor have all of its details been released. That will happen in May, with the release of the executive budget.

Some elements are certain to stir opposition, and several proposed alterations would require state or federal approval.

TOP PRIORITY — DRINKING WATER

"Our paramount responsibility over the next decade and beyond is to ensure the uninterrupted conveyance of clean, safe, and sufficient drinking water to nine million people," Commissioner Ward recently told the City Council's Environmental Protection Committee.

The plan shifts focus away from where it has been over the last few decades — sewage treatment plant construction — and places highest priority on the infrastructure needed to bring New Yorkers their drinking water.

One reason for the new focus is that the city's world-class water supply network is aging. The city's 85-mile long Delaware Aqueduct, which has brought water downstate from four reservoirs west of the Hudson River for more than half a century, has sprung several serious leaks. As the city moves to repair these leaks, it is also seeking to make sure that it could supply sufficient drinking water even if this aqueduct, which ordinarily supplies up to 50 percent of the city's water, must be temporarily closed.

Other parts of the water supply system are also aging. The two in-city water tunnels that transport upstate water to connector mains and then to smaller mains under local streets, were constructed in 1917 and 1936, and have never been shut down for inspection.

Funds would be expended to continue work on the third water tunnel within city limits, continuing an initiative started 30 years ago that is already the single largest capital project in the city's history. Millions of dollars a year would also be provided for ongoing maintenance of reservoirs, dams, pump stations, water mains and other water system components.

The biggest new project unveiled by Commissioner Ward is a proposed $2.5 billion aqueduct that could carry drinking water from the Westchester County Kensico Reservoir, which collects water from all other Catskill and Delaware system reservoirs, into New York City. The 16 mile underground tunnel would provide needed redundancy, according to the department, at a critical juncture in the entire downstate water supply.

One controversial expenditure is the roughly $1.5 billion cost of constructing a filtration plant to treat drinking water coming from the city's oldest reservoir system — the Croton, whose watershed is located primarily in Westchester and Putnam counties. The Department of Environmental Protection maintains that this facility is needed to assure safe tap water quality and to meet federal law. Activists counter that reducing pollution discharges into the Croton watershed is a less expensive way of safeguarding water quality and that the city has not yet presented a convincing public case for why Croton filtration is necessary to protect health. There is also continuing debate about where to site this facility, with the city's desire to locate the plant in Van Cortlandt Park colliding with the plans of a determined parks constituency.

Other priority drinking water expenditures in the plan include an ultra-violet disinfection plant for water coming from the West-of-Hudson Catskill and Delaware reservoirs and continued implementation of the programs begun in the 1990s to reduce pollution into reservoirs and safeguard upstate watershed lands, in an effort to avoid the estimated six billion dollar cost of constructing filtration facilities for the Catskill and Delaware reservoir supplies.

SHIFTING FROM SEWAGE TREATMENT

Over the past decade, the single largest category of capital spending by the Department of Environmental Projection was for the upgrading and modernizing of the city's 14 sewage treatment plants — about 41 percent of total capital spending by the department from 1993 to 2002. These expenditures were necessary for the city to bring its sewage treatment plant discharges up to federal Clean Water Act standards, and reduce the amount of sewage being discharged into New York's surrounding waters.

But much of that work is now complete, or nearing completion, and the department is now looking to lessen the costs for such projects as nitrogen reduction and controlling combined sewer overflow.

A consent decree requires that the city remove nitrogen from wastewaters being discharged from city sewage plants into the Long Island Sound and the Upper East River. (Nitrogen discharges deplete water of oxygen needed to sustain marine life, and this program has been viewed as an essential part of efforts to restore the Long Island Sound ecosystem.)

Rather than ignoring this mandate, Commissioner Ward is asking the state and federal governments (and water quality advocates) to work with him to find less expensive ways of meeting the consent decree's ten year goals.

The commissioner is also seeking new approaches to control the combined sewer overflow problem — when storm water runoff that has combined with sewage drains into surrounding waterways.

Activists express some concern. "We hope this doesn't mean that necessary upgrades to pollution controls and air monitoring at the problematic North River Sewage Treatment Plant will be sacrificed, because we have seen that happen many times in the past," said Swati Prakash, environmental health director of West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT).

But Ward said all the department is asking for is some flexibility: "Existing consent decrees dictate specific construction projects and schedules, and they leave little room for innovation, technological progress or prioritization of projects."

Ward argues that if the plan were to include all of the projects the department deems essential to keeping its water supply in a state of good repair and at the same time meeting all of its consent decree obligations as currently written, total costs could balloon to as much as $24 billion. Under a $16.5 billion capital plan, water and sewer rates would increase annually at somewhere between six and nine percent a year, a rate the department maintains is equitable when compared to water prices in other big cities.

Though City Councilmember Jim Gennero, who chairs the Environmental Protection Committee, deems the city's plan too "foggy" on the details to evaluate it yet, he shares the priority of "insuring that the watershed lands around our reservoirs are protected in perpetuity so that we have a safe and unfiltered drinking water supply for generations to come." At the same time, he is concerned about keeping water rates down for New Yorkers who have "already been socked with property tax and transit fare increases."

From a strategic standpoint, DEP Commissioner Ward seems to have positioned himself well to begin the debate over the future direction for the environment. He has a vision with protection of the water supply system at its heart. He recognizes the need for sustaining vital city infrastructure, and he is seeking to carve out a middle ground between an unrealistically high capital program that would trigger overwhelming water rate hikes, and a status quo capital plan that limits expenditures but does not set out to meet the city's most essential long-term capital needs.

LINKS IN THE NEWS

Earth Day is April 22nd — a great opportunity to speak with city and state elected officials on various environmental issues of interest.  Here are two links that offer information on how to participate and have your voice heard:

New York League of Conservation Voters
The website of the New York League of Conservation Voters,click on Earth Day. The League is sponsoring a "Lobby Day at New York City Hall" on April 22nd is setting up meetings in advance and provides training for those who are making their maiden visits.

Environmental Advocates
The website of the statewide environmental group Environmental Advocates. This group also coordinates an annual lobby day in Albany. This year, the event takes place on April 28th (so you can make it to both City Hall and the State Capitol, if you so choose). Click on Earth Day for all the details.

Eric Goldstein is co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Environmental Aftermath


Many of the people closest to the World Trade Center relief efforts are not satisfied with how government agencies are handling the cleanup. There appear to be a lot of gaps. In particular, residents, workers and advocates have expressed concern about the lack of coordination, and the lack of information, on environmental health issues at Ground Zero and the neighborhoods around it.

"People feel like they are not getting a clear picture from the authorities," says Foster Maer, a downtown resident and member of the Warren-Murray Street Task Force. "To the extent that information is being released people are not getting it. And there is probably a lot of information not even being released."

The federal, state and city governments have hundreds of people monitoring air quality in and around the site. The United States Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring for asbestos and particulate matter in the air, and for asbestos in the dust. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is monitoring for carbon and fine particulate matter in the air. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is in on the action as well.

Yet, in the last two weeks it has become increasingly apparent that the government scientists are not looking for precisely the right thing, or, if they are, they are not releasing that information to the public.

Dr. Paul Lioy of the University of Dentistry and Medicine of New Jersey announced last week that he had found levels of lead in dust samples from around the World Trade Center disaster area that may pose a threat to the public health. At a public meeting at New York University, Dr. Lioy characterized the levels as "moderate", and said that the lead needs to be removed from homes and buildings, especially where children are likely to come across it. He advised homeowners to apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for aid, and that renters approach their building managers.

At the same meeting, Dr. Jacqueline Moline of Mt. Sinai Medical Center reported that fiberglass is one of the main constituents in air and dust samples at Ground Zero. Fiberglass is a suspected carcinogen. It also causes significant irritation of the eyes, nose and throat. In a telephone interview, Carrie Loewenherz, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Health, explained that NYCOSH has found fiberglass to comprise five to 95 percent of the weight of outdoor samples taken in the area, and 30 to 50 percent of indoor samples taken from a Church Street location across from the World Trade Center. Loewenherz pointed out that there are no state or federal standards for levels of fiberglass or for fiberglass cleanup. "There are guidelines [for cleanup] by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, but OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulates it as if it were regular, household dust."

And, in a third development, an independent study by Virginia-based toxicology firm HP Environmental has shown higher levels of asbestos in the fallout dust than previously measured. The study, which used an EPA-approved test, found that the force of the explosions shattered the asbestos into fibers so small that they slipped under the agency's radar. Scientists and public health experts are unsure about the health risk. Some argue that the smaller fibers do not possess the pine-cone shape of the larger fibers, and therefore are unlikely to scrape the lungs in the same way and lead to the same results. Others argue that the smaller fibers will more easily lodge deep in the lungs. EPA has not released any information on the smaller asbestos or HP Environmental's study.

Joel Kupferman of the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project is pressing the EPA to release information on these and other substances, including dioxins, PCBs and other toxins which may be released from burning wood, paper, plastics, vinyl-coated wiring and cable, urethane foam upholstery, vinyl floor tile, synthetic fiber carpets, or oils from old fluorescent light ballasts; and carbon monoxide and sulfur oxides, which may be released with the smoke and gases. In addition, a report from the project points out that while some scientists believe that the freon from the Trade Center's air conditioning system escaped during the initial explosions, others say that pockets of freon remain and may have converted to phosgene, also known as nerve gas.

Part of the problem in organizing an effective cleanup of the area is that the collapse of the Twin Towers seems to have created something like a new form of particulate matter, a minute dust smaller than anything regulated by EPA. There are no standards for this material, which like other fine dust and soot dries out the lungs and makes them susceptible to opportunistic organisms.

CLEANING UP

Many of the workers at Ground Zero, perhaps tricked by not seeing the fine particles in the air, do not wear gas masks or other respiratory protection. Dr. Moline of Mt. Sinai reported that there have been reports of new onset asthma and reactive airways, an asthma-like condition that arises from sudden exposures to toxic materials. In addition, she said, there have been many reports of increased irritation of the eyes, nose and throat. But nobody is enforcing federal cleanup laws on the site, which, under other circumstances, may have been listed as a federal Superfund site and subject to rigorous hazardous waste cleanup regulations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not performed tests whose results could compel employers to make workers use respiratory protection. Indeed, OSHA has claimed status as an advisory agency, rather than an enforcement agency. Unfortunately, the regional administrator from OSHA was unavailable to comment on the legal basis for the administration's decision.

As the science trickles in and new threats come to light, the city is left to consider what cleanup standards should be used in apartments and offices, and who should pay for it. Anecdotal evidence paints a chaotic picture of downtown: insurers tell tenants they will not cover cleanup unless levels exceed EPA levels; tenants do not trust building managers; building managers clean up the apartment but leave the balcony untouched; people have been seen sweeping dust from the roof into the air.

"At this point, the non-economic problem, and there are a host of economic problems, but the non-economic problem is that the burden of the cleanup and the assurance that it is done properly has been dumped on the private sector," says Alan Gerson, the Democratic candidate for City Council in District 1. "What we have is a process of self-certification, which is a problem in normal times. Now it is just inappropriate."

Ordinarily, asbestos cleanup is a quarantined procedure which employs plastic sheets to contain the affected area and negative air pressure to make sure nothing escapes. Workers have full-face respirators, suits that cover their whole bodies, and gloves. After the cleanup, workers take their clothes off and put them into labeled bags that are taken straight to a landfill. "The whole point is to make sure asbestos does not get disturbed and spread more widely, and to make sure the workers do not breathe it in," says Lowell Peterson, legal counsel to Local 78, the asbestos, lead and hazardous waste abatement union. "A lot of the cleanups are being done without any of those protections."

Yet, air samples taken by EPA in rooms with dust on the floors show levels above EPA's clearance standard for asbestos. Of 143 bulk samples in Lower Manhattan, 109 have had detectable asbestos, and 37 of those 109 are above EPA?s standard for defining asbestos-containing material. Of course, the other 72 also had asbestos, and even borderline levels of asbestos in dust present significant threats to health. During cleanup the asbestos is liable to get kicked up into the air and linger for days. The EPA's standard levels for asbestos were meant to address tiles and other seemingly stable materials, not dust. In the present situation, asbestos fibers are so tiny that the only way they will remain on the floor of an apartment or office is if no doors or windows are open, and no one enters the room. Whoever is cleaning up any of these rooms will be exposed to high levels.

"What we need is a coordinated, concerted cleanup effort for lower Manhattan under the auspices of a city agency or authority," says Gerson. "We need block-by-block, building-by-building certification. Like what the city is doing with the crime effort, and what it is doing with removal from Ground Zero. It is not that the city should clean every office, but the city should see to it that every apartment and rooftop is clean."

Other Resources

Michael Burger writes Gotham Gazette's Environmental Topic Page.

###


Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years