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In The News: Trashing the Littoral


Few New Yorkers are aware that the waterfront begins at their doorstep. In fact, the quality of City beaches and water is related to consumption and use of water at home. City streets connect to the waterways through catch basin, storm drain and combined sewer systems. A cigarette butt casually tossed to the ground in Manhattan can wind up in a wildlife refuge in Brooklyn or on a Staten Island or Queens beach. Motor oil dumped in a catch basin in the Bronx can find its way to Manhattan shores. Everyday actions of New Yorkers, many of whom rarely think of the City's waters, affect City shores dramatically.

According to Andrew Willner, of the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper, "industrial and institutional polluters were the biggest threat to the waterways." "Now," he stresses, "'non-point sources' are the most significant water discharge issue we face." Non-point sources include easily disposed items such as paper trash, oil products, plastics, dog feces (scooped and then dropped down a catch basin) and cigarette butts.

On a visit to the marshes of Bayside's Little Neck Bay, cigarettes float in abundance alongside fluttering plastic bags and bottles bobbing on the tide. The marsh is urban habitat for turtles, bullfrogs, red fox, geese, swans and striped bass. "Over 320 species of birds live in or migrate through the area" says Lora Harris of the nearby Alley Pond Environmental Center. The floating pollution migrates from the Long Island Sound and from catch basins in Northern Queens. These 'floatables' become caught in the wetlands' high marsh grasses. Though jostled by the tides, the trash accumulates becoming a threat to wildlife as well as an eyesore.

The Bronx River, the City's only true fresh water stream, is afflicted with extraordinary accumulations of trash that detract from the considerable natural beauty of that scenic, canopied watercourse. In water that ducks, herons and muskrat call home, Snapple bottles, Dunkin Donuts Styrofoam and Burger King paper form a trash flotilla.

Not content to let their nascent canoe route be befouled, fifty civic groups and government agencies including the Department of Parks, Partnership for Parks, Bronx River Restoration and The Point Community Development Corporation have organized clean-up efforts and river festivals. Presently, they are attempting to create boat launches at key river sites. Urban Park Rangers offer canoe lessons and tours (800-201-PARKS) focused on water safety.

Such efforts publicize the improbable amenity that is the Bronx River. These actions create access for nature lovers and for recreation. Trash ranging from junk food wrappers to junked cars is being removed. Jenny Hoffner, coordinator of the Bronx River Working Group, described the work. "Last year, we removed eighty tons of debris and twenty-seven cars. Twenty-two blockages were also removed." Eleven community groups have now adopted stretches of the river ensuring ongoing stewardship. According to Ms. Hoffner, "Partnering has been phenomenal. The Parks Department has been instrumental."

In Jamaica Bay, residents also face a complex challenge though in a much larger ecosystem. The issues include beach cleanliness, bay water quality, commercial and recreational fishing, wastewater flows, wildlife protection and dune erosion. Recently, on a Jamaica Bay list serve, residents and organizations prepared for beach clean-ups, trash awareness campaigns with elected officials and public education about the link between storm drains and the shores. An educational conference on litter has also been proposed. According to Shino Tanikawa of the NYC Soil and Water Conservation District, a clean up of the bay's many abandoned boats will kick-off on June 10th.

Some list serve participants have suggested a renewal of abandoned efforts to stencil catch basins throughout the city as part of a floatables educational campaign. Stenciling drains, under permits granted by the Department of Environmental Protection, alerts passers-by to the connection between the street and the sea. Stenciling also aims to deter dumping of motor oil and restaurant grease by would-be polluters.

Peter Sounds Off:

There used to be a bumper sticker that read "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance." The average New Yorker lacks awareness of the waterways that surround the City and his or her role in protecting them. In this highly urban environment, it is easy to forget that New York is encompassed by a natural world. The water itself is an amenity offering open space, recreation, and alongside its industrial and infrastructural roles. City shores offer wildlife refuges, beaches, parks, and marinas serving a multitude of urban purposes.

Managing the City's shores and waterways for multiple use must be the goal of the responsible city, state and federal agencies. In particular, City Parks, DEP, the NYS Department of Conservation (the agency with enforcement power) and the National Park Service should expand efforts to make the public aware of ITS role in protecting these valuable water and shore resources. Prevention is far less expensive than remediation.

Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.

In The News: Pier Pressure


In recent weeks, while the weather still spoke more of winter than spring, the Hudson River Park Trust severed a number of Hudson River piers. With little fanfare, HRPT contractors cut a fifteen-foot slice out of three piers thereby creating three long flat islands off the coast of the West Side. It's been a long time since Manhattan was made smaller.

West Manhattan is not the only city coast where access to the waterfront is at risk. In neighborhoods surrounding Jamaica Bay, local residents are warily watching a State proposed plan to place contaminated dredge spoils in bay waters. The Bay's Channels have unused depth creating space on the bottom for unwanted muck. Bay residents, protectors and users fear for the health and safety of that diverse waterway and wildlife refuge.

In the South Bronx, the City is rebuilding the Tiffany Street pier. Its predecessor, an innovative plastic pier built five years ago, burned after a lightning hit only two years after it opened. The City promises to re-open the pier for the summer of 2000. During the two years the plastic pier was operational, it was a heavily used community resource. It was also the only place along more than eight miles of Bronx coast where residents of the South Bronx could access their shores. Along that lengthy stretch an industrial iron curtain severs half a million people from water's edge.

Access to the water's edge has markedly improved at two sites in the Brooklyn harbor. At Red Hook, a new pier at the end of Coffey Street offers its users a fine view of the Statue of Liberty. Alongside the pier is a small sand beach -- one of a very few harbor sites from which kayakers and other small boats can access the harbor. The return of small boat access reconnects New York City to hundreds of years of its maritime past. In Brooklyn, the 69th Street Pier is being rebuilt. Opening is expected for the summer of 2000.

Fort Totten, in Northeastern Queens is at the other end of the City. This 120-acre waterfront site is a former U.S. Army Base. Though the Army is mostly gone, the base is largely closed to the public. Almost entirely surrounded by water, Fort Totten includes the "Old Fort", an abandoned nineteenth-century fortification set into the highest point along the Queens shore. The forts, old and new have commanding views of the East River and Long Island Sound.

A Reuse Plan for Fort Totten would provide public access to some of the old base. Plans suggest making 35-50 acres public open space. Access to the base' waterfront esplanade, to the bluff that encompasses the "old fort", and to the docks or small boat launching sites near the existing parking lot would create a fine waterfront amenity.

Peter Sounds Off:

Not since the glaciers rearranged Manhattan has any force voluntarily eliminated real estate on that valuable and crowded island (Marble Hill may be the exception). Never mind that HRPT says that the piers will be rebuilt in just a few years. Manhattan is now smaller. Its links to the sea have become more tenuous. Many West Side residents are nervous about the Trust's commitments and funding. Many regret having to wait for years.

Piers are traditional and obvious link to the water. Severing them reduces waterfront access while increasing crowding on the already cramped shorefront esplanades. In this bustling metropolis, access to the waterfront for fishing, strolling, sunbathing, boating, solitude or open space is an antidote to urban ills and a catalyst for the imagination.

The good news is, providing access is relatively inexpensive, and is often a capital expense. Lightning aside, piers, bulkheads, esplanades and beaches last for a very long time, needing little in the way of ongoing maintenance.

Waterfront space, in all boroughs, is heavily used and appreciated. Uses tend toward the creative. Recently, I saw two running dogs take their leash-holding rollerboarding owner for a West Side esplanade stroll. Such accessible waterfront space is still limited. Thus, in the Bronx, fishermen walk out on rock jetties surrounding landfills to find solitude.

The City has a great deal of idle or inaccessible waterfront on the slow track toward beneficial use. With the land and streets safer and the water markedly cleaner, it is time to accelerate and fund access to this unique and timeless source of urban quality of life.

Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.

 

Solid Waste


THE LOWDOWN:

Until the mid-1980s, New York City disposed of virtually all of its garbage locally: burying it in landfills or burning it in incinerators. Since then, with time running out local landfills and new incinerators rejected as environmentally unacceptable, New York has been transitioning to a system of exporting its garbage to distant, rural landfills. Virtually all of the City's commercial garbage, which is collected by private carters, is now exported. And a steadily increasing percentage (now over 50%) of the residential garbage collected by the Department of Sanitation is now being exported as well. By the end of 2001, when the City's last landfill, Staten Island's infamous Fresh Kills, closes, NYC will export 100% of its residential garbage.

Exporting garbage requires a new infrastructure facility: the transfer station, where collected garbage is consolidated and transferred to long distance trucks. There are now roughly 100 such facilities for commercial garbage citywide, and they are generally loathed by the residents of the industrially zoned neighborhoods like Greenpoint where they are concentrated. The closing of Fresh Kills will require an additional system of transfer stations for residential garbage.

In many ways, New York's solid waste management has had a very successful decade. Recycling is up, the cost of commercial waste disposal is down, incineration has been abandoned, Fresh Kills is on the way to being closed, and out of City landfills are accepting the City's garbage with a minimum of difficulty. The City has transitioned to an export system of garbage without the disposal crisis many predicted.

But the transfer station system works badly and faces ongoing attack. Unlike other integral components of the City's infrastructure, which at some fundamental level are accepted and accommodated, even after a decade transfer stations continue to be regarded as illegitimate temporary expedients. The problem is that New York has been unable to make its newest infrastructure system work except by allowing transfer stations to externalize their very high social, environmental and financial costs - costs that are disproportionately paid by working class and lower income communities.

THE TRANSFER STATION PROBLEM

Transfer stations handling commercial waste have brought to their local communities major odor, noise and traffic problems. They are frequently a major obstacle to community renewal efforts, while their concentration in lower income neighborhoods, often ones with large populations of people of color, is raising growing issues of environmental justice and fair share.

City and state solid waste planning and permitting processes have done little more than mitigate the worst transfer station impacts. Oversight agencies have been hobbled by their recognition that transfer stations have become an essential component of the City's infrastructure and by their resulting fears that aggressive regulatory enforcement would disrupt the outward flow of garbage. The governmental memory of New York's two garbage strikes and streets filled with rotting garbage remains vivid and frightening.

(NO) MORE TRANSFER STATIONS

13,000 tons of commercial garbage now move through transfer stations each day. 15,000 tons more of residential garbage will have to go through transfer stations once Fresh Kills is closed in 2001.

To create this capacity while avoiding the perils of siting the new transfer facilities itself, New York City has issued a series of Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for private waste entities to ship specified amounts of garbage out of the City, with the understanding being that the private entity would either establish a new transfer station or expand an existing one.

Unfortunately, the problems associated with transfer stations, and the lack of confidence in government oversight of them, has spawned bitter local opposition to many of these private sector efforts. Two battles in particularly are currently energizing opposition to the transfer station system - one in Red Hook and the other at Hunts Point in the South Bronx.

These and other battles have divided neighborhoods and pitted borough against borough and New York against New Jersey. The resulting stalemates have forced the City into a series of short term contracts to directly truck waste across the river to New Jersey disposal sites and transfer stations, which has greatly increased the cost of solid waste disposal and garbage-related truck traffic.

GOVERNMENT VS. COMMUNITY

The transfer station system evolved through individual ad hoc decisions, as private garbage collectors went into industrially zoned areas and set up on the cheapest, most immediately convenient sites. These operations were often undercapitalized and environmental concerns like odor control came last. Since this unpromising beginning in the late 80s, regulators have been playing catch-up, with marginal success.

Government's failures to solve the transfer station problem are rooted in two major fears. The first is the fear of regulators that aggressive enforcement could cause too many transfer stations to close, with unwelcome consequences for the smooth flow of garbage out of the City. And second, government has also feared that overly active enforcement role would leave it with the dread responsibility for siting transfer stations. Even having the unequivocal ability to prevent transfer station siting has been seen as something for government to avoid, for community opposition would almost certainly embroil sanitation and environmental agencies in an endless series of siting conflicts that governments perceive would be lose-lose choices that could similarly threaten smooth garbage export.

If government policy toward transfer stations is problematic, so too are community and civic efforts to reform transfer station management. First, many of these efforts have pursued essentially process strategies: better solid waste planning and regulatory enforcement, and genuine consideration of issues such as environmental justice and fair share. But after a decade of such efforts, the continuing persistence of transfer station problems demonstrates that process strategies alone cannot overcome the inherent governmental fears.

Second, advocacy efforts have generally had limited or single target goals: block a particular facility, improve recycling, address fair share, etc. But from a citywide perspective, even when such efforts succeed, they simply push the impacts elsewhere.

Third, advocates and critics of transfer station management have never developed a real systematic alternative to the existing system. Advocates also have political realities that dictate caution. They are wary of accepting involvement in site selection, or of being seen as an ambassador for ideas like consolidating residential and commercial garbage that could raise local fears that their neighborhood will wind up getting more garbage. And often, they lack the resources to do anything more than focus on the immediate crisis.

Yet the current folklore that transfer stations are an intrinsic evil needs a major reality check. Like it or not, transfer stations perform a critical environmental and infrastructure function. They are important sources of blue collar employment and light industrial activity, and are critical for preserving public health. The question therefore is not how to get rid of them, but where should they be sited, how should they be run, and what changes in current laws and practices are needed to bring civic peace and resolution to the issue.

PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED

So what will it take to create a viable transfer station system? The answer would probably include the following: 1) Obtain agreement on a policy goal of siting transfer stations where they will minimize both local and interstate truck traffic and maximize garbage movement by barge and rail; 2) Combine the currently separate commercial and residential garbage streams to minimize the need for transfer stations; 3) Understand the implications of those concerns for current siting controversies such as Red Hook and AMR in the South Bronx ; 4) Make transfer stations operate in an urban friendly manner; 5) Shut down existing substandard stations as new ones come on line; 6) Determine the role of recycling and waste reduction, and the role of marine transfer stations once they are no longer needed; 8) Lower the rapidly escalating costs of garbage handling; 9) Determine the right division of labor between public and private sectors and assess the current administration's privatization program. These questions should all be answered, and then of course, there remains the task of putting them all together and making the right solution work politically.

THREE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In recent months, some critical local stakeholders have realized that they must go beyond opposing proposed local transfer stations and work as well for an overall solution. Thus, spurred by the Red Hook Civic Association, the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods has proposed that the City consider conversion of its eight marine transfer stations (which are currently used to load garbage into barges for shipment to Fresh Kills) to waste transfer stations once Fresh Kills is closed.

This proposal is appealing because it avoids the complications and community costs of siting new facilities. It is far from a complete solution. Yet the willingness of community interests to recognize the need for an alternative presents a major opportunity to engage community interests in a process of a viable solution. But so far, government interests are responding to this opening in a vague and desultory manner.

Under State law, the City has to modify its solid waste plan to include its program for managing residential garbage post Fresh Kills. The long delayed Draft Environmental Impact Statement for such a plan is supposedly going to be issued by the New York City Department of Sanitation "soon." Since the plan modification must be approved by the City Council, advocates are looking towards using the plan amendment process to raise community concerns over transfer stations, citywide garbage truck traffic increases, and the rising costs of solid waste management. Many advocates see these hearings, if and when they occur, as a first step towards making transfer stations an issue in the 2001 mayoral election.

Third, though citywide civic groups have long been involved with solid waste, most of that involvement has been at the policy planning level or in promoting recycling. Issues of siting have largely been left to local community groups. Now two of the citywide civics, EDF and RPA are actively reaching out to community and environmental justice interests, seeking to forge a local-regional coalition that can put forth a credible alternative program to the existing jerrybuilt transfer station system.

THE OUTLOOK

Only two things seem certain at this time. The first is that the Fresh Kills landfill will close on schedule and the City will be exporting 100% of its solid waste by the end of 2001. Everything else - how it will be done, at what price and with what external impacts - seems up for grabs.

The second certainty is that the issue of solid waste and transfer stations will wind up in the 2001 mayoral race. If the advocates follow the course of the past, then the Mayoral campaign will hear a primal scream of "help us" and the candidates will respond with various pledges to feel your pain and make solid waste planning and regulation work better. There will be improvement at the margins but all the basic problems will remain. But if civic stakeholders can come up with a specific strategy, one that they can make a touchstone of solid waste concern that candidates can safely respond to, then the prospects for finally resolving the transfer station problem and replacing today's motley set of ad hoc facilities with modern, community friendly transfer stations will be greatly improved.

ADDITIONAL PERSPECTIVES

John McGutrick of the Red Hook Civic Association, is a major opponent of Waste Management Inc.'s proposed Red Hook transfer station and a strong force in the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods. Steve Hammer, Co-chair of the Citywide Recycling Advisory Board, writes about the role that recycling should play in lowering the pressures to create transfer stations.

LINKS:

New York City Department of Sanitation - Admired for their operational skill in doing an unattractive job, but without the kinds of planning and community relations skills needed to address the transfer station problem. Also responsible for enforcing transfer station compliance with local solid waste regulation.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation - Oversees the state required solid waste plan development process municipalities are supposed to go through. DEC also grants permits for transfer stations and other solid waste facilities, and enforce state solid waste regulations. Given that the solid waste planning process is designed to insure garbage is disposed of without the external costs of New York's current transfer station system, most regard that as prima facie evidence of DEC failure to properly administer the solid waste planning process.

New York City Council - Must approve the solid waste plan and future amendments to it. The Council has been a strong and effective defender of recycling, but otherwise has yet to carve out for itself a substantial role in formulating solid waste policy.

Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari - Has taken advantage of a Republican Governor and Mayor, and of the critical role he played in getting both elected, to insure Fresh Kills is closed on time and keep new waste facilities on Staten Island to a minimum.

Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer - A major actor in the Hunts Point AMR facility controversy and has been working to develop integrated areawide and citywide solutions to transfer station issues. A voice of reason on the need to recognize that transfer stations are needed and must be properly managed.

Neighbors Against Garbage (NAG) - Greenpoint, Williamsburg based group concerned with the clustering of transfer stations for commercial garbage in the northeastern Brooklyn.

New York Environmental Justice Alliance - Focuses on transfer stations, their siting and their concentration in neighborhoods of low income and color.

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest - Active in providing legal muscle on a number of transfer station issues, including the two leading current controversies, the Red Hook and Hunt's Point facilities.

The Point Community Development Corporation - The community organization in Hunts Point that has led the community opposition in Hunts Point to the AMR facility.

Environmental Defense Fund - Long time environmental force on New York issues thanks to its stalwart Counsel Jim Tripp, is now working actively with local communities on waste transfer issues. A major focus of the EDF effort is exploring combining management of the two main waste streams, commercial and residential garbage, to rationalize facility siting and minimize the number of stations needed.

The Regional Plan Association - Also involved in the issue, driven by waterfront and community renewal concerns. One RPA focus, reflecting its transportation interests, is using the rail system for solid waste export, to minimize truck traffic and help fund the proposed trans-Hudson rail tunnel. RPA is also working on minimizing transfer stations on the waterfront and replacing the current sprawling network of 100 plus transfer stations with a handful of modern facilities modeled on successful overseas best practices that could serve as nodes of local, light industrial redevelopment.

Inform - An environmental organization with a distinguished record in environmental education and analysis, is reportedly preparing a new planning analysis of the potential for local waste reduction.

Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods - A citywide coalition of communities bordering the waterfront that are concerned with conditions of current transfer stations and threats to bring new ones into their communities.

Uprose - A Sunset Park based community organization that is not currently fighting any transfer specific new transfer station proposal but sees the Sunset Park waterfront as a prime target for future garbage management and is determined to head it off.

The Solid Waste Advisory Boards are a borough by borough system of citizen advisory oversight set up by the New York City Department of Sanitation.

The Citywide Recycling Advisory Board is a similar entity focusing on recycling. Currently preparing a Snuff Mill Manifesto on new opportunities for waste reduction and recycling.

 



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