Around the clock, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, crowds fill the narrow Chinatown sidewalks waiting to board buses run by companies such as Double Happiness, Fung Wah and Lucky Star. For as little as $15, these buses take budget-conscious riders to Philadelphia, Boston or Washington, D.C.
Critics of the buses say while they might benefit riders' pocketbooks, they put a burden on residents and businesses near the stops, polluting the air and crowding the streets and sidewalks.
"The cheap service is only possible by the very fact the bus companies that profit off of this don't have to pay for the problems caused," said Community Board 3 member Thomas Yu. Yu, co-chair of the Chinatown Working Group and chair of the board's Parks, Recreation, Cultural Affairs and Waterfront Committee, blames the buses for clogging traffic, blocking truck and pedestrian business and worsening already high air pollution levels.
"The residents pay for that cost while the bus company keeps the profits," he said.
As residents and merchants complain, the city has few tools to regulate the buses and keep them from clogging the already congested area.
Down through lower Canal and Allen Streets, passengers assemble on sidewalks on nearly every block. It was not always this way. The phenomenon of Chinatown buses goes back only to 2001, when according to its website, Fung Wah began a van shuttle service for restaurant and other low-wage Chinatown workers in Manhattan and Queens. Over the years, the company added service to Providence and Boston, employing large coach-style diesel buses to meet the growing demand.
As budget travelers from all over the East Coast caught on to the low cost and convenience afforded by the buses, other companies sprang up. Bus routes now range as far south as Atlanta and as far north as Portland, Maine. The main hub continues to be Manhattan's Chinatown. But many say the business has expanded faster than Chinatown's capacity to handle.
A recent visit to the corner of Allen and Hester streets found 60-passenger interstate buses taking up four metered parking spots while loading and unloading for periods of 15 minutes and more. Others pulled into Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus stops or stopped to unload in an active traffic lane, creating congestion on the narrow, crowded roads.
Every time a bus idles or circles the block it burns diesel fuel that releases dust, smoke and fine particles into the air. The federal Environmental Protection Agency classifies these particles -- known as PM2.5 -- as harmful pollutants because they are small enough to inhale directly into the human lungs, causing respiratory problems and long-term side effects.
The federal agency found that particulate pollution has long been the leading factor in air pollution in New York City, with smog, or ground-level ozone, a distant second. In 2008, fine particulate matter was the main pollutant in Manhattan on 251 of the 336 days when air quality was tracked, according to the EPA Air Quality Index.
In Chinatown, the site of heavy truck and bus traffic moving over three bridges, some of those particles likely come from diesel emissions. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Chinatown has one of the highest rates of fine particulate matter concentration in the five boroughs.
Asthma, often linked to particulate pollution, is a major health problem in Chinatown. According to the 2007 Community Health Survey conducted by the city, 6.4 percent of respondents in lower Manhattan reported having asthma attack or episode during the year, the second highest rate in Manhattan (after Central Harlem).
These numbers don't surprise Mae Lee, the executive director of the Chinatown Progressive Association, a non-profit agency providing free services and promoting health justice for immigrants. Residents are so concerned, she said, that the association is now gearing up to conduct its second community-wide asthma survey. The first survey, made in 2002, found that one in five households reported a family member with asthma symptoms.
Jennifer Long, a volunteer spearheading the new survey, hopes it will help draw attention to traffic congestion on Chinatown streets. "There will be a section on idling buses" she said, "and in this survey, there will be a link to diesel pollution."
The effects of diesel exhaust on human health are multi-faceted, said Stephen Markowitz, an epidemiologist and professor of occupational medicine at Queens College's Department of Earth and Environmental Science. "Diesel exhaust … does cause cancer, and in the shorter term it is associated with asthma and other respiratory diseases," he said. Moving buses, he continued, pose less of a threat to human health than idling buses, because idling buses "produce higher concentrations" of fine diesel particulates. "It's preposterous that buses should be sitting there idling." he said.
Requiring ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and particle filters on engines -- restrictions already in place in New York City for some vehicles -- might help alleviate the worst effects of diesel pollution.
A 2005 report by the non-profit law and science group Clean Air Task Force found that these technologies can reduce toxic diesel particles released into the atmosphere "by up to 90 percent." But the group said existing federal clean diesel regulations only extend to engines manufactured after 2007. This leaves out diesel vehicles already on the road, which includes interstate Chinatown buses.
All interstate buses larger than 10,000 pounds and carrying more than nine passengers are required to obtain operating permits from the federal government. But national Clean Air guidelines are enforced by individual states.
Joe Ionnati of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation said that the city and state have passed laws regulating diesel engines, but that the laws do not apply to the private interstate buses.
Ionnati said the ambiguous status of interstate buses also creates problems for state emissions enforcement. All heavy-duty diesel trucks and buses registered in New York must submit to yearly emissions and safety tests. But many Chinatown buses, subcontracted from various carriers, are not registered in New York.
Ionnati said the best enforcement tool city environmental officers have is the power to do out on-the-spot roadside emissions inspections that carry a fine of $700 or more per offense. "If it’s 8,500 pounds in weight and it's diesel, it can be pulled over." Ionnati said. "If you had a truck or a bus coming from Canada and it's smoking, it can be pulled over." He was not sure, though, how widely these inspections have been used in New York City.
The city and state environmental conservation department used roadside inspections to target heavy trucks and buses in East Harlem during a crackdown on visible exhaust in 2007.
But both Long and Lee of the Chinatown Progressive Association said these tactics would encounter obstacles in crowded Chinatown. "You have to make the public want it," said Lee, "especially since these buses are extremely popular." More enforcement would have to go hand in hand with what she termed "a solution that's culturally acceptable to the community."
To limit pollution, the city does bar engines from idling for more than three minutes. Leo Lee, a manager at Apex/Universe Bus, said his buses are routinely targeted by police for illegal idling while unloading passengers at the company's 13 Allen Street terminal, even though the company provides an indoor waiting room for riders. "If any police go by they give us a ticket," Lee said. "If the driver doesn't speak English, you get an extra ticket."
Rising demand and tough competition force operators to load customers where they can. On a recent day, Fung Wah's front curb on Canal Street was lined with steel police barriers as a result of police department efforts to keep Manhattan Bridge traffic routes clear. Undaunted, the Fung Wah buses simply pulled around the corner to the Bowery and loaded customers at the first available space past the barriers.
Some businesses around the stops complain about buses and crowds of riders that block their storefronts.
"Business is very slow and people cannot park sometimes because of the buses," said an attendant at a wall and floor-covering store who asked to remain unnamed.
Many residents and businesses would like to see the city regulate more closely where buses can load and unload. But with so many buses using the same small area of Chinatown -- up to 291 arrivals and departures a day, according to 2009 study conducted by the Department of City Planning -- there simply is not enough curb space to meet the demand.
At the same time, there is a maze of conflicting regulations. City law dictates that operators who use spaces not specifically designated for bus loading are breaking the law and can be ticketed. A signed and designated bus layover stop did exist until recently at 88 East Broadway, but the police department put up barricades and closed it down.
In 2007, the mayor's Community Affairs Unit attempted to find new spaces to relocate the buses, the study said, but "none of the recommended sites have proven to be feasible." Private bus companies may use city bus stops to quickly unload passengers, but it is "illegal to wait, layover or park in a bus stop," and many Chinatown bus operators have abused their privilege, the study notes.
The planning department concluded that unless a permanent solution can be found, bus operators will be forced to continue negotiating on a daily basis with the local police to find temporary curbside space to load and unload.
Lee said that his company has repeatedly applied to the city Department of Transportation for a permanent loading space and received no response. "We're trying to make it convenient for the people of Chinatown to get places. I just don't understand why we don’t get a space to load customers." he said.
Managers for Fung Wah and Lucky Star, two of the most established bus companies in Chinatown, told the same story: repeated requests for loading space and no answer from the city.
Transportation department spokeswoman Suchi Sanagavarapu said the department "can allocate a permit right now" on an individual company basis. But there is no overall system in place to determine who gets permits, and with so many companies applying, no way to make everyone happy.
That is why, said Colleen Chattergoon, another transportation department spokeswoman. the department "has been deferring to the community boards and referring all requests to them."
Similar problems tie the community board's hands, said Community Board 3 transportation and safety chair David Crane. Without criteria for determining which companies deserve a piece of Chinatown’s limited curb space, he said, the board's now simply denies all requests.
Lucky Star desk agent Ken Huang said he doubts the city will ever be able to find a solution." There are a lot of bus companies in Chinatown and I don't think they can give everyone a space," he said. Further he does not see signs that the city is trying. "I don't think they really approve of us," Huang said.
The city, though, does seem to be getting more involved. In response to rising resident complaints, several city agencies, including the city transportation department, are conducting studies to find solutions to the problems created by congestion and unregulated curbside loading.
In its study, the Department of City Planning recommended the transportation department auction off curb space. At a Community Board 3's transportation and safety committee meeting in March, Crane called such a plan "doable" and told the board that it would "solve a lot of problems." Now, Crane said, some bus companies change their corporate names in order to avoid burdensome federal safety. This, Crane said, wouldn’t happen if companies were tied to a city-enforced permit.
A new permitting scheme would need to clear several hurdles, though, including approval the state legislature in Albany.
Meanwhile, some bus companies continue to petition for their own spaces. At the March community board meeting, Double Happiness Travel appealed for two passenger pick-up and drop-off locations on Pike Street. The board rejected the request unanimously.
"There’s no way for us to do this fairly," Crane told the company's Teddy Gonzales. "You're the fourth company in a year to petition for these spaces." When Gonzales expressed frustration, District Manager Susan Stetzer urged him to keep lobbying city and state officials to take action on the planning department's recommendations.
State Sen. Daniel Squadron, whose district includes part of Chinatown, has started to looking into drafting a law, said community liaison Rosemary Diaz, but with plenty of other issues taking up Albany’s time right now, the process may go forward slowly. Diaz said more bus regulation is needed. "They're contributing to an area with one of the highest asthma rates in the city," she said.
This article was written under a partnership between Gotham Gazette and the Baruch College's Department of Journalism and Writing Professions.
The Bloomberg administration's garbage plan has been sitting on a shelf awaiting full implementation for four years, and some critics think it's on the verge of spoiling.
After extensive political wrangling, the administration and the City Council in 2006 agreed on a solid waste management plan, which shuffled the location of solid waste stations and relied on trains and barges for moving trash instead of diesel-spewing trucks. Though it was hailed as a major step forward for environmental justice at the time, four years later many of the plan's fundamental 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 education funds. The city hasn't even come close to meeting its recycling goals, which were supposed to be accomplished in 2007. And now 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 management 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 argue we should throw out the city's original solid waste plan altogether.
Following the closure of Fresh Kills in 2001, the city piled tons of dirty diapers, day-old take out and spoiled vegetables on to diesel trucks. Those trucks traveled to transfer stations in a handful of impoverished city neighborhoods and then sputtered to out of state landfills. The city's waste management plan was supposed to provide relief for those neighborhoods — particularly the South Bronx and central Brooklyn — which were saddled with most, if not all, of the city's garbage burden.
The plan put transfer stations for both refuse and recyclable materials in more affluent neighborhoods, including the West Village and the Upper East Side.
But since the plan's approval, two of the seven proposed city-owned stations have received the necessary state permits and are under construction, according to the Department of Sanitation. Only one is fully operational. According to the original plan, four of these proposed transfer stations should have been completed by 2010. Now, several won't be done until at least 2013.
The state's permit process gets some of the blame for the delays. In addition, lengthy court and political battles have stalled transfer stations in affluent areas of Manhattan. As a result, the vast majority of the city's trash is still being trucked around the five boroughs and is still festering in low-income neighborhoods.
"The process has been slow, but not as a result, in this instance, of delays at the city," said Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There was hope that it wouldn’t take a full decade to really advance the barge and rail transportation ... It does seem now to be heading in the right direction."
But not everywhere, according to environmentalists. One area slated for a transfer station is still trash collection-free. In the Upper East Side, the Gracie Point 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 community and its environment — 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 health department.
"We're not saying choose minority residential neighborhoods," said Ard. "It doesn't belong in any residential neighborhood."
Ard expects a decision 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.
"We're going to keep at this until we have no more courts available to us and no more legislatures," said Ard. "Why? Because it's wrong."
A spokesperson from the Department of Sanitation said the city carefully considered the public health and welfare when selecting transfer station sites, and the city has proved that the station is reasonable and necessary at 91st Street.
Other parts of the city's solid waste plan have moved forward. Twenty-year contracts have been either negotiated or are in effect with Waste Management 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 Jersey for a long-term contract to take the vast majority of Manhattan's refuse to a waste-to-energy plant in New Jersey.
At the time of the solid waste management plan's approval, the administration argued long-term contracts would save the city money, and it would get the city's trash off of dirty diesel trucks. Almost 90 percent of city trash, the mayor promised, would be sent by rail or barge instead.
According to the Department of Sanitation, the cost of exporting the city's 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 increase from 14 percent in 2006, according to the solid waste plan.
None of the city's waste is currently exported by barge, according to the Department of Sanitation, because those transfer stations have not been completed.
Politics may have held up parts of the city's garbage plan, but ordinary New Yorkers bear some of the responsibility for the city's failure to meet its recycling goals.
By 2007, according to the solid waste management plan, the city was supposed reach a 25 percent recycling rate for residences and a total rate citywide of 35 percent. According to the Mayor's Office of Operations, only 15.9 percent of trash was diverted from the residential waste stream for recycling so far this fiscal 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 find 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 Reduction, Reuse and Recycling, of the city's dismal recycling rate. "We only have two tools at our disposal: One is public education and one is enforcement. Clearly a lot of elected officials are not in favor of enforcement, including the City Council."
The problem is worse in some communities more than others. Public housing facilities have 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 curb was set aside for recycling. Ten other neighborhoods, including Brownsville, Bedford Stuyvesant, Harlem and Hunts Point, put between 10 and 5 percent of their trash out for recycling in the same time period, according to the mayor's management report. Those neighborhoods also typically have the lowest median incomes in the city.
At the start of the Bloomberg administration, the city recycled more than 330,000 tons of metal, glass and plastic. In fiscal year 2009, about 231,000 tons were recycled — a decrease of 30 percent.
Officials in the Bloomberg administration and at the City Council are now turning to more regulation to boost the volume 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 support among the council, would add rigid plastics, like yogurt cups and take-out containers, to the city's recycling program. Another bill would establish textile-recycling drop off locations throughout the city, and another proposal would start hazardous waste collections for toxic household products. The council is also exploring forcing the city to study the feasibility of a widespread composting program.
The Department of Sanitation has expressed support for the vast majority of the ideas.
While advocates champion the proposals, some say there is still a long haul ahead.
Now that the administration has decided to incorporate its solid waste management into PlaNYC 2030, advocates say the city should rethink the entire waste cycle: from the packaging of products to the 500-mile journey to a landfill down south.
"The revision of PlaNYC and the fact that solid waste is being brought into that plan now provides the opportunity to look 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.
Start with a carrot: use the city's buying power to curtail the amount of packaging of certain products, said environmental advocates. Concentrate on recycling construction materials, others add. (During his address in Times Square on Earth Day the mayor said the city would look into waste reduction.)
Other refuse experts are willing to use a stick instead.
"We need to work through the system step by step," said Benjamin Miller, an author and former director of policy planning for the Department of Sanitation. "We should prevent as much waste as we can. The single most effective system to do that is to charge people for the waste they send out."
Once the city's waste has been reduced, advocates say the administration should consider its far larger challenge: exporting trash.
A majority of Manhattan's trash goes to an incinerator in Newark, but the rest of our refuse is sent to quickly filling landfills out of state — in the far reaches of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina. Set aside the environmental hazard of landfills for now, advocates say. Consider this: As these garbage pits fill up, it costs more for New York City to reserve space for its trash — hence the 20 percent increase over inflation in the cost of exporting refuse.
A solution, Miller argues, would be for the city to explore another waste to energy facility in the metropolitan area. Once extremely controversial, this technology, some environmental advocates say, has caught up with the industry, and now incinerators that burn trash and convert it to usable energy are much cleaner than they used to be. The idea is not palatable to all of the city's environmentalists, like Goldstein. And it too would come with a hefty price tag.
Clean solid waste management may be a foreign 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 end of the day," said Darrell. "We're a city of between 8 and 9 million people. We generate a lot of trash."
The American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report released last week concludes that, while New York's air quality has improved, the city once again failed to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's health-based standard for fine particulate matter (or "soot") pollution.
Particulate pollution is a one-stop shop for many health impacts. Studies show that it is linked with increased asthma emergencies, bronchitis, lower birth weights, heart disease and tens of thousands of premature deaths every year across the nation. And, it poses a particular threat to children, the elderly and anybody with heart or lung ailments. Millions of New Yorkers live in communities with some of the highest asthma levels in the nation.
Unlike many other regions, in New York, heating oil from buildings is one of the largest sources of local soot pollution. And most of this heating-related soot pollution comes from the roughly 1 percent of the buildings that still use residual fuel oil, alternatively known as No. 4 or No. 6 oil. These grades of heating oil typically contain about 175 times as much sulfur as the diesel fuel used in the city's trucks and buses, along with metals like nickel that worsen heart disease and other ailments.
Heating oil contributes 14 percent of all local particulate soot -- more than all of the city’s cars, trucks and buses, according to The Bottom of the Barrel, the Environmental Defense Fund's December 2009 report about the heating oil problem in New York City. The report found that the roughly 9,000 buildings that still burn residual fuel oil contribute 86 percent of the city's heating oil-related soot pollution and are major contributors to airborne nickel levels that are nine times higher than the average levels of other U.S. cities.
Unlike the diesel pollution that plagues low-income communities and communities of color that house bus depots, marine terminals, and busy truck corridors, the heating oil problem is not confined to the city's poorest communities. The plume of black smoke from some of the city’s most recognizable addresses, including the Dakota and the San Remo on Central Park West, is a telltale sign of No. 6 being burned in the basement.
Citywide, roughly 5,500 large boilers burn approximately 227 million gallons of No. 6 oil annually. An additional 3,500 large boilers burn about 84 million gallons of cleaner No. 4 oil, which is typically a 50/50 mix of No. 2 and No. 6 oils. In contrast, city buildings burn about 700 million gallon of the cleanest No. 2 oil each year.
Luckily, heating oil pollution is a solvable problem. In his State of the City address in January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signaled that solving it would be a top priority for the year. Ever since, the city, environmental stakeholders and heating oil industry leaders have been working to design a plan. Any comprehensive solution will require Albany and City Hall steps.
While some aspects still must be worked out, the broad outlines of the solution are clear.
First, the state needs to cap the sulfur level of No. 2 heating oil at the same level as the clean, ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel now used in all trucks and buses. Just as removing sulfur was the first step toward reducing diesel pollution from trucks and buses, reducing sulfur levels in heating oil is a necessary first step toward solving the heating oil pollution problem.
Putting this sulfur cap on No. 2 heating oil would eliminate more than 1,000 tons of particulate soot pollution each year and would be comparable to shutting down two and a half coal plants in New York state. The Assembly has passed a version of a bill to do this, but the Senate has refused to move forward on a similar bill, proposed by Sen. Bill Perkins, which would require that cap go into effect in 2012.
Industry groups are split on the bill -- the Oil Heat Association of New York and the Empire State Petroleum Association, for example, strongly support the cleanup of this fuel. With cleaner, cheaper natural gas acquiring an increased share of the heating market, the oil industry needs a cleaner form of heating oil to keep its environmentally aware customers. On the other hand, the New York State Business Council opposes the measure, claiming that it will raise heating oil prices in the middle of a recession.
Proponents of the bill argue that cleaner heating oil would save money in the long run. In fact, the heating oil industry calculates that ultra-low sulfur heating oil would save consumers up to 6 percent on their heating bills, thanks to increased boiler efficiency, reduced maintenance needs and reduced fuel use. These savings more than offset any price increase from switching to the cleaner fuel. (During 2008 and 2009, ultra-low sulfur diesel cost an average of 1.74 percent more than No. 2 heating oil in New York state.)
The city could take additional steps to reduce heating oil pollution.
For example, the Department of Environmental Protection could adopt regulations that eliminate the use of No. 6 oil altogether. This would eliminate more than 500 tons of particulate soot in the city in the first year, as buildings with older burners switched to the No. 4 oil and more than 800 tons if the Perkins bill becomes law. Such a step could be accomplished quickly because it would not require any major capital investments, although buildings would have to do some extra maintenance to get ready, such as testing their burners to ensure that they wouldn’t leak when they switch to a lighter grade of oil.
Taking this step would buy time to finish a citywide conversion to dual-fuel burners that can use either natural gas or No. 2 oil. This conversion is critical to the long-term resolution of the heating oil pollution problem and to putting the city's buildings on an environmentally sustainable path for heating.
The conversion to dual-fuel systems that burn either No. 2 oil or natural gas is likely to be the trickiest component of any comprehensive city plan to solve the heating oil problem. Today’s existing equipment can last for decades so many building owners have been reluctant to replace boilers and burners that still work.
As the city and state move toward finalizing their plans to clean up the pollution from heating oil, a number of issues will need to be resolved. These include questions about the timetable for the phase-in of dual-fuel systems and phase-out of older equipment, whether buildings that already have dual-fuel systems will be able to use No. 4 oil as a backup fuel, and what incentives the city and state should offer to help buildings convert their equipment and fuels. Policy makers will also have to determine how to monitor and enforce a program that covers all of the roughly 800,000 buildings in the city.
The bottom line is that heating oil pollution poses a serious problem in New York City, but the outlines of a long-term solution are becoming clear. With the right steps in Albany and City Hall, the plume of black smoke rising from many of the city’s largest buildings, within a few years, could become a thing of the past.
Rich Kassel is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he focuses on urban air pollution and transportation issues. He also chairs the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a regional transportation advocacy organization; is on the board of the New York League of Conservation Votes and blogs on a variety of environmental issues on the NRDC Switchboard.
Earth Day -- April 22 -- will mark the third anniversary of PlaNYC2030, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's self-proclaimed "long-term sustainability plan." While the city has taken many steps toward the plan's goal of "a greener greater New York," particularly in energy conservation, one gaping hole remains in the plan.
PlaNYC2030 left out any role for the city's hundreds of neighborhoods, 59 community boards, and the countless civic, community and environmental groups that care about the future of the city. It was a top-down plan, conceived at City Hall with minimal input, and it was never approved as an official plan. In the long term this will only undermine the ability to sustain the plan itself, and both implement and improve it.
The plan now stands at a critical juncture, Rohit Aggarwala, director of the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, recently announced his resignation, and the city's budget situation and the overall economic situation have delayed and even derailed some of its initiatives. With Aggarwala's departure and the convening of a commission to review the City Charter, now is the time to fill the gap that excluded neighborhoods. An updated PlaNYC2030 could then be reviewed and voted on by community boards, borough presidents, the City Planning Commission, and City Council, as required in the City Charter.
The problem started in 2007, and it started at the top. You would think that such a daunting task as planning for a city of 8 million people and projecting our priorities over a period of more than two decades would be really difficult and take a long time. Yet it was all done in the time it takes to approve the average rezoning, about seven months.
The mayor's consultants, who completed the plan in record time, never went through any of the steps, outlined in the City Charter, the city’s constitution, that plans must take in order to be approved.
Under Section 197-a of the City Charter, plans should be reviewed and voted on by the affected community boards, borough presidents, the City Planning Commission and the City Council. At each step there must be a public hearing. None of this happened.
One can surely argue that this could be a long and tedious process because the 197-a plan approval process does not have a time limit like the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which is used for zoning and other major city actions and generally takes some seven months. However, the delays in approving plans in the past have largely been the result of action (and inaction) by the city’s planning department, an agency the mayor controls. In the two decades since the 1989 charter revision made it easier to submit plans under Section 197-a, only a handful have been approved and almost all of them were initiated not by the city but by community boards, despite a lack of funding and technical support.
Since PlaNYC was never officially approved, it remains an initiative of the mayor, owned and operated by City Hall. Generally, the Department of City Planning is responsible for planning and engaging other branches of government.
The department, however, played a minor role in preparing the 2030 plan, and long-term plans of any kind have been notably absent from City Planning’s portfolio. Instead, the agency touts as one of its top achievements the 100 rezonings it approved in the last eight years.
While the rezonings have opened up opportunities for new development -- also a major goal of PlaNYC2030 -- and protected many other areas, they hardly pass muster as "plans." Rezoning for new development is often done without planning for new schools, transit and other services, nor does it entail measures to deal with existing service deficits or the myriad problems that face communities. In some neighborhoods that have undergone massive rezoning, such as Williamsburg, residents are now up in arms because new high-rise luxury development has overtaxed the capacity of local schools and transit.
While City Planning often echoes PlaNYC's call for "transit-oriented development" by promoting higher density development around subway stops, it does not insure that transit capacity will grow to meet increased needs. Trains and buses are even more overcrowded than they were before the rezoning, and with more service cutbacks planned, the situation promises to get worse. If that's planning it's surely not good planning.
Fortunately the 2030 plan looks more like a long-term plan for the city than the 100 piecemeal rezonings, even if they both favor growth over community improvements. But it's still the mayor's plan and not the city's plan and could easily change or disappear under the next mayor. Even though the City Council approved the creation of a permanent office of long-term sustainability, there is no guarantee it will always be adequately funded.
If we look at how the plan came about, we begin to see the problem. PlaNYC was the product of a small group in the Mayor's Office of Operations.
The bulk of the work was done by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, under contract with the city's Economic Development Corp.
The EDC itself is a non-profit wholly owned by the city. It functions as the mayor's proxy in negotiating deals with developers and undergoes minimal oversight. The McKinsey report was not made public -– I received a copy by filing a Freedom of Information request. It appears to have been the core of the PlaNYC, apparently embellished after consultation with specific agencies that have offered their ideas, such as the million trees, and public plaza initiatives. All of the proposals fit into the plan’s giant spreadsheet, a perfect instrument for CEOs and the budget office but not something that most New Yorkers have a chance to work with.
Once the mayor’s office came up with goals and selected projects to put in the long-term plan, the administration held consultations throughout the city and solicited feedback. Despite this, there was no public involvement in making the final decisions about priorities and programs. I must confess that I sat through some of these meetings and focus groups and felt ashamed that the many committed and bright community representatives in the room were treated like subjects in a marketing experiment and not partners in an important civic discussion.
Even if PlaNYC was bottled up in the city's executive offices, it still could have turned out to be a great plan. But because the process was rushed and top-down, many opportunities were missed.
For example, the plan could have penetrated much deeper into the problems of sustainability as they affect all New Yorkers where they live and work. In the end, after weeding through the 127 projects in the plan's matrix, it seems energy efficiency received the highest priority. A review of 2009 mayoral press releases about the 2030 plan by Brian Paul, a fellow at the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development, found that two thirds deal with energy efficiency, climate change and efficient transportation.
This is not to say energy or efficiency shouldn’t be top priorities, only that they are closely related in a holistic way to the way we live in our neighborhoods. Without the engagement of neighborhoods, businesses and residents, progress on this front will be slow. The mayor's failed effort at congestion pricing provides dramatic evidence of this. And then there are serious issues of social equity, barely touched upon the 2030 plan.
The problem of sustaining and implementing the plan goes back again to the problem of the planning process. McKinsey’s background in management consulting led it to emphasize issues of efficiency -– particularly with energy. This is clearly the most elaborate element in the long-term plan and, not surprisingly, the area in which the greatest progress seems to have been made in the last three years. The city has purchased hybrid vehicles and passed rules encouraging owners to make their buildings more energy efficient, among other efforts.
But many of the gains, like reducing the wasteful use of city-owned vehicles and reducing traffic in Midtown, could have been done without a plan. At the same time, much less has been done to encourage grassroots efforts in energy efficiency and the use of alternative energy sources. PlaNYC does not include any community-based plans and initiatives to address problems of environmental quality and public health, housing, transportation, and open space. In fact, the 100 community-based plans in the city, most of them ignored and never adopted by the city’s planners, were not even taken into account for PlaNYC.
New Yorkers are most familiar with the neighborhoods where they live and work. In this sense they are specialists, and neighborhood leaders and activists are usually a great source of knowledge. Surely they can be parochial and narrow-minded, but so too can people in government agencies. PlaNYC did not look at the city from the perspective of its hundreds of neighborhoods or incorporate the vast experiences and histories of its neighborhoods. Only after the giant spreadsheet was made were the citywide programs and projects broken down, but mostly for reporting purposes.
The city’s 59 community boards, now struggling to salvage their limited role in decision making, are still invisible in the 2030 plan, barely mentioned in the scores of spreadsheets, maps and colorful images that herald the coming of the green city. They can post comments but play no role in setting priorities or initiating change. They are not consulted until after the fact, yet they are often criticized for only reacting. Civic and advocacy groups, including many that started fighting for a greener and greater future decades ago, and advocated sustainability long before the term was uttered in City Hall, are similarly sidelined.
This is a unique and important time. A fresh approach to long-term sustainability planning at the top could lead to a true partnership between neighborhoods and City Hall. The New York City Charter already provides the framework, and that can be strengthened to insure that all planning is open, transparent and accessible to all, and that the plan belongs to everyone. And that, in turn, will help assure that the plan survives to guide New York to a truly sustainable future.
Tom Angotti is director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning & Development and author of "New York For Sale" (MIT Press, 2008).
Imagine it is 2013 in New York City. Many things in your life haven't changed since 2010 but one thing certainly has: You won’t need to buy gas in order to drive. Instead, while you recharge your battery after a long day at work, your new electric car could be recharging as well.
Late this year, a new wave of electric vehicles will begin to arrive on the U.S. market. The Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf will lead the way, with other manufacturers including Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Tesla planning to introduce their electric cars sometime between 2011 and 2012.
Last week, the Obama administration announced new fuel economy standards for automobiles that provide some incentives for electric cars.
The policy, intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption, is geared to a nation where most people rely on cars for transportation. But do electric cars make sense in New York City, where streets are snarled with traffic and many people park on the streets rather than in their own driveways? Would these vehicles truly help to lower carbon emissions? Should the city encourage their use?
The Bloomberg administration sees electric cars as part of its overall move to create a more environmentally sustainable New York. Others, however, think the city should focus more on getting people out of cars altogether.
Potential demand for electric cars in New York City is strong enough that consumers will likely buy up all available supply for the next several years, according to a PlaNYC study, released in January, that explored potential demand and environmental benefits for electric vehicles in the city.
Consumers here and elsewhere soon will be able to choose between two types of electric vehicles: the plug-in hybrid and the all-electric car. Plug-in hybrids run on an electrical charge for about 40 miles before switching to gas power. The new plug-in-hybrids, like the upcoming Chevy Volt, contain the same technology as the hybrids on the market today but have larger battery packs and get about twice the fuel economy of a conventional hybrid.
All-electric cars, like the upcoming Nissan Leaf, have a range of about 100 miles and are powered by electric motors instead of the gas-powered internal combustion engine found in most current cars. They rely on a battery charged from a standard 120 volt or 240 volt outlet and do not produce carbon emissions while running but require frequent charging.
PlaNYC2030, New York's "comprehensive sustainability plan" to reduce the city's overall greenhouse gas emissions includes electric cars as part of its strategy. In 2008, transportation accounted for 22 percent of all city carbon emissions. Passenger vehicles and light trucks were responsible for 74 percent of these transportation emissions that, as part of the overall PlaNYC effort, "would be reduced by 44 percent by 2030."
To accomplish this, the plan calls for improving public transit, getting cars off the road and making sure the vehicles that remain are more fuel-efficient. According to a previous PlaNYC study, car trips produce five times more carbon emissions than a trip on mass transit. Electric cars, though, could "provide a significant reduction in fuel usage, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and local air pollution compared to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles,” according to the electric vehicle study.
Significant reductions in carbon emissions, though, would require a large-scale shift to these new cars. If by 2015, 2.5 percent of all cars in New York City are electric, which the PlaNYC study suggests is possible, the city's carbon emissions would be reduced by approximately 170,000 metric tons per year from 2008 levels. That represents only 1.43 percent of the city's 11.8 million metric tons of transportation emissions in 2008. The city's overall emissions that year totaled 53.3 million metric tons, according to a previous PlaNYC study.
On the national level, the Obama administration has set the goalof 1 million plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads by 2015 and has provided $2.4 billion in stimulus grants to the industry. The federal government also offers buyers a tax credit of up to $7,500 per electric vehicle.
Although electric vehicles might help to ease carbon emissions, congestion and deaths and injuries from vehicles will still persist, said Transportation Alternative's communications director Wiley Norvell. "If we're looking at what's going to solve all of these problems, we have some silver bullets out there: movement to transit, walking, and biking. Electric vehicles aren't a silver bullet," he said.
Instead, he said, the city needs to look at alternatives to cars. "Our streets have been all car, all the time and for us, the New York of the future is not slightly more efficient cars all the time, it's a better balance with more cycling, more on street space dedicated to moving public transportation, and making our walking environments safe," Norvell said.
According to Norvell, millions of Americans are reevaluating their decision to own and drive cars, creating an opportunity for changes in transportation. "If we come out of this window with a handful of half-measures I think a lot of us will see it as a missed opportunity," he said. "We can see a role for more efficient vehicles in a New York City with vastly diminished automobile use."
Robert Paaswell, director emeritus of the University Transportation Research Center and interim president of City College sees a place for electric cars, but his main concern is mass transit. To boost that, he would increase taxes on gasoline and put tolls on expressways and the East River bridges. "Nobody is willing to go after it but gasoline should be taxed another dollar a gallon," he said."
The PlaNYC study, conducted by McKinsey & Company, surveyed New Yorkers about their driving behavior and their attitudes toward electric cars. It found that 21 percent of city residents are considered potential early adopters, people looking to buy an electric vehicle as soon as they become available for purchase. Partly due to limited supply of electric cars, it found, these early buyers "will likely outstrip the available supply of electric vehicles to the New York market for at least the next five years."
Electric car owners must have a parking space with access to an electrical outlet charge their cars. The early adopters indicated they would for a charging station even without tax incentives and do not see the need for a large public charging network throughout the city.
The Nissan Leaf will have a price of $32,780, and the Chevrolet Volt is expected to cost around $40,000, both without the $7,500 federal tax credit.
The New York study anticipates that by 2015, electric vehicle prices should decline because of reduced battery costs, that there will be a sufficient supply of electric vehicles to purchase, and that consumers will take advantage of the existing federal tax credit of $7,500 for new electric cars. The number of electric cars bought, according to the study, "may be significantly less if these assumptions do not materialize."
Paaswell believes there is a "huge market" for electric vehicles that needs to be supported and developed with incentives such as preferred parking spots. While the first buyers will be "environmental people or people who want to be cool," eventually, Paaswell said, the eventual market "will be the everyday user who buys cars for price competitive reasons for their families or for their businesses."
"As the demand goes up, the technology is going to change rapidly," Paaswell said. "The example I always like to give is when cell phones came out, they were these suitcases people carried around, and now you carry a mini-thing in your pocket. The technology will take care of itself when the demand is there and the monetary reward is there."
But Paaswell also believes that electric cars won't take off unless new taxes make conventional vehicles more expensive and the city takes steps to encourage other electric vehicles, such as trucks. "If the city requires all delivery vehicles to be electric and begins to put in charging stations, that will make it easier for people to buy cars," he said.
Car manufacturers and the PlaNYC study count on consumers paying a higher price for an electric car to save money on fuel in the long run. "If gas prices increase, the savings from using electric cars will be higher," the report said.
Electricity prices go up as well -- Con Ed announced another increase last month -- but not as rapidly as gas prices, according to the report. As a result, it concludes, "The day-to-day cost of driving an electric vehicle in New York, including electricity and maintenance, will be 40 percent to 70 percent less than a gasoline vehicle costs to operate" meaning that "electric vehicles offer the potential to save drivers significant sums of money over time."
The study does not see the need for the city to create a public network for charging electric cars. "The market will be saturated with early adopters so in the long term, that's something to be looked at but in the short term, the study found it wouldn't be necessary," said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The report did, however, recommend other possible steps for the city and stakeholders to take to encourage electric vehicle adoption. These include discounts on garage parking spaces with charging infrastructure, a free unlimited MetroCard for one year, and street trees being planted in the name of the first 5,000 New Yorkers who buy an electric vehicle.
As part of its sustainability strategy, the Bloomberg administration has purchased some hybrid police cars. In 2007, the administration announced a plan to replace the city's 13,000 taxis with conventional hybrid cars by 2012. That, however, has been blocked by the courts.
The study also considered how much strain electrical vehicles might put on the city’s electrical grid. It concluded that if the number of electric vehicles reaches about 50,000 vehicles by 2015," it would not have an impact on the grid," according to Post.
If the number of vehicles exceeded 200,000, the city could reduce their effect by allowing charging stations to work only when demand for power is low, such as overnight. This is known as smart charging.
Power plants that produce the electricity for the cars have their own emissions, though the exact amount varies widely. The Obama administration recognized that power plants produce carbon dioxide emissions when it decided to not treat all electric cars as emission free. Under its plan, a manufacturer would receive a credit for 0 grams of carbon dioxide emission only for the first 200,000 electric vehicles it produces by 2016.
In New York, the report found that, if electric vehicles became widespread, emissions at local power plants might increase but emissions from gasoline consumption would be lower, "resulting in a net benefit of lower overall emissions."
How much lower, though depends to a great extent on how that electricity is generated, according to Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow with the Regional Plan Association. "Since the electricity is going to have to come from somewhere, you want it to come from clean energy sources whether it be wind or solar and those sorts of things. If the power plants are going to be fueled by coal we're going to be worse off than if we fuel them by gas," said Zupan. "It's a conundrum because ultimately there aren't too many clean energy sources."
Dumping in any New York City waterway is about to cost more than environmental quality.
It's going to cost money.
The City Council unanimously approved legislation Wednesday that creates a civil penalty dumping in the city's rivers, creeks or canals. Anyone found guilty of dumping in a city waterway could receive a fine between $1,500 and $10,000 for a first violation. Dumping in the city's waters already carries a criminal penalty.
In addition, the council approved legislation to streamline the process of getting green technology in buildings and a bill to formalize the replacement of trees on pubic property.
Whether it’s tossing trash along the bank of the East River or abandoning your boat in Jamaica Bay, the city can not now invoke a civil penalty for dumping in waterways. The only civil penalty for waterfront dumping up until now, said Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is if someone throws something into a waterway from a car.
The bill (Intro 54) the council approved Wednesday would make the city's regulations more consistent, said Quinn.
"What we have in the city of New York is a set of waterfront pollution regulations that are unfortunately inconsistent, full of loopholes and not fully enforceable," said Quinn.
In addition to expanding the city's dumping fines, the legislation would give the departments of sanitation and environmental protection the power to enforce the law. Before this bill, the Department of Small Business Services was the only agency that could enforce waterfront penalties.
The council also approved legislation (Intro 77) that establishes an "interagency green team" within the Department of Buildings to assist residents, contractors and developers navigating the city's permitting and regulatory process for green technology projects. The team was first announced in Quinn's State of the City address last month and is charged with streamlining the city's regulations for green building.
It will include representatives from the buildings, environmental protection, transportation, design and construction and health and mental hygiene departments as well as the City Planning Commission.
The bill, which was approved unanimously, also sets up an innovation review board to review projects that employ new technologies and recommend when these technologies should be used by the city.
Both boards hope to elevate New York City's standing in emerging technology market sectors.
The council also approved legislation (Intro 4 ) that creates a process for removing and replacing trees on public property.
Under the current law, property owners can be fined $100,000 if they remove a tree on public property to, say, make room for a driveway.
Under the legislation, which was approved unanimously, a person who wants to remove a tree from public property would have to get a permit and pay a replacement tree fee based national standards. If the person replace the tree, the Department of Parks and Recreation will reimburse the fee.
Teens living above an East Village woman laughed at her when she asked them to stop running and jumping all night while her family tried to sleep. An actor in Harlem lived peacefully in his apartment for 10 years until a new renovation left him hearing every tread, scrape and footfall, interrupting his sleep. And a senior citizen with a heart condition in the Upper West Side was called senile and visited by mental health professionals after she repeatedly complained about a next-door neighbor who plays her stereo all night long.
Over 65,000 people complained to the city's 311 line about noisy neighbors in fiscal year 2009, making it the number one noise complaint in the city. This is four times as many as the next most common complaint, street noise, and ten times the number of complaints about noise from a club or bar. And yet, although the city’s vaunted noise code addresses the latter two issues, it offers no provisions to deal with noisy neighbors. Sleep-deprived, frustrated and feeling helpless, those afflicted by loud, uncooperative neighbors often find they have almost nowhere to turn.
"Cities from all over the country quote our noise code," said Arline Bronzaft, an environmental psychologist and chair of the Noise Committee at the Council on the Environment of New York City, "but New York City is in the dark ages when it comes to neighbor noise."
New York City’s updated noise code, which went into effect in 2007, addresses many nuisances outside the home — car stereos and alarms, clubs and bars, barking dogs and construction noise — and calls for enforcement by the city's Department of Environmental Protection or the police department. But the internal din of urban dwellings continues, eroding the quality of life.
Most New Yorkers live in apartment buildings, old and new, that act like finely tuned instruments transmitting the sound of every footfall, toilet flush, dropped object and vibrating appliance — not to mention loud arguments, children playing, pets, musical instruments and, yes, sex noise. Add to that the rumble of modern entertainment systems, manufactured and advertised to maximize bass frequencies that can penetrate nearly any building material. Modern work life exacerbates the tension over noise, as many New Yorkers work at night and sleep in the day or work from home -- and so need quiet during noisy daytime hours.
Studies have found noise to be more than a nuisance. In its Guidelines for Community Noise, the World Health Organization writes, "Noise pollution continues to grow" and "involves direct, as well as cumulative, adverse health effects."
The organization identifies broad categories of negative health effects from unwanted noise including interference with speech and learning, sleep disturbances, cardiovascular and physiological effects, mental health effects, effects on performance and productivity at school and work, and effects on residential behavior and annoyance.
"People say you should just get used to it," said Richard Tur, a New York City resident and founder of NoiseOFF.org. "What’s been lost is that noise pollution is a public health issue."
On a volunteer basis Bronzaft counsels people with neighbor noise problems. Most have approached raucous neighbors who have been unresponsive or downright hostile.
"The country's founders passed a bill of rights," said Bronzaft, "but not a bill of responsibilities."
Calls to 311 are referred to the police for non-emergency response, but the police cannot do much, since there are no specific laws about making a racket in one's own apartment. Officers often arrive on the scene hours after the disturbance, and the most they usually can do is ask the offender to turn the volume down -- and the person can turn it back up when the police leave.
People find themselves rearranging their lives to avoid noise. The actor in Harlem, who asked not to be named because he is taking his landlord to housing court, has curtailed his social life to get to bed earlier. Lu works from home and now breaks up her workday with naps.
Lu said her youngest daughter would wake up crying about monsters upstairs and had a hard time waking up for school.
"I shouldn’t have to schedule my things around the noise and make my sleeping time accommodate the noise," said Lu. "There should be some kind of agency you can go complain to about this kind of noise. We don’t know where we should go."
Under current law, Lu and others like her have few alternatives. But those involved with the issue see a number of avenues the city could pursue to quiet noisy neighbors.
Bronzaft thinks the onus is on landlords to provide a noise-free living environment under a lease’s warranty of habitability. If a tenant gets to the point of suing, she said, the complaint should be against the landlord and not the other tenant. She also thinks that the city or state government should require that the warranty of habitability in leases specifically promises a residence free from noise.
New York City Councilmember Daniel Garodnick agrees that explicit provisions dealing with noisy neighbors in standard leases would be a useful tool but questions whether the impetus for such a change should come from the city.
"It happens to be in the best interests of landlords and tenants to explicitly set out rights and privileges of every apartment at the outset," said Garodnick. "That route could be done independently of government.”
But in the absence of neighbor noise laws, landlords have fewer tools to try to quiet things down.
"[Noise] is one of the most difficult complaints for a landlord to deal with," said Elizabeth Crane, a landlord with nearly 1,000 tenants, mostly in the Bronx.
Crane says she gets noise complaints all the time and always addresses them because she does not want to lose good tenants to noise. She starts out with gentle letters but it can end up in a court action costing her thousands of dollars in legal fees and lost rent.
"Your right to make noise stops at my ears," said Bronzaft. The problem, she said, is that "you can't legislate decency."
Many cities try. Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston and Detroit all have laws against high volume neighbors. Usually the laws give some decibel threshold, and set fines for offenders. In London, England an individual fine for making too much noise can go up to 5,000 pounds.
"The issue with decibel measurement," said Tur of NoiseOFF, "is that the real question is what effect is the noise having on a person's life. If you can't enjoy your apartment or sleep at night, it's hard to put a number on that."
Tur wants New York City’s noise code to address neighbor noise and provide enforcement power to police.
"If it can be proved a neighbor is causing noise," said Tur, "police should have enforcement by way of police summonses or fines. I think that's reasonable."
Louis Hagler, a retired physician who has written extensively on the health effects of noise, goes further. "If [a neighbor's noise] comes into my residence," said Hagler, "it’s a criminal assault and should be treated that way."
Garodnick said he is interested in exploring whether neighbor noise should be included in a law passed by the city. But he cautioned that violations can be difficult to substantiate.
"You still need a ticket writing authority to be there to experience it," he said.
And what about those unintentional everyday living sounds that drive New York City apartment dwellers crazy?
"I can’t tell people to take off their shoes or not to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or not to move a chair," said landlord Elizabeth Crane.
How a building is constructed has a lot to do with how it conducts sound. Sound transmission class (STC) is a method for measuring how much sound a barrier, such as a wall, blocks. STC ratings have to do with the types of construction techniques and materials used in buildings. In a survey of residents of row houses and apartments, the National Research Council of Canada found that annoyance over neighbor noise dropped when walls had an STC of 50 or above and stopped completely at 60.
New York City's updated building code requires a minimum STC for airborne sound of 50 in dwelling units, but it only applies to new construction. Research by Quiet Solution, a company that manufactures soundproofing materials, has found that dampening the sound of a medium-size home theater requires an STC of 60.
"The building code could be another route to addressing these issues, and that would most certainly be within the city’s jurisdiction," said Garodnick.
Short of such changes, the solution to all-out neighbor wars over noise can be quite simple — laying carpet, wearing headphones, moving the TV or, in one of Bronzaft’s cases, painting a line on a radio's volume knob — if the parties are able to talk to one another.
"A noise dispute is really an interpersonal issue," said Melissa Appleton of the Manhattan Mediation Center at Safe Horizon.
Noise disputes account for some of the center’s most common cases. Residents can call 311 for a referral to their mediation services. If the other party won’t participate, Safe Horizon will work with complainants to help them communicate with their neighbor.
"If people were more aware of mediation before conflicts escalated," said Appleton, "it might effectively change the number of lingering and protracted noise disputes in the city."
But some residents say they might have to take more draconian steps and move. The senior citizen on the Upper West Side does not want to leave the home where she feels safe and knows people. But she believes she has tried everything else she can think of to deal with the noise.
"No one has helped me," she said. "Not a soul."
On a freezing Saturday in January, six troops of Boy Scouts camped out in cabins next to a silvery lake forming a skin of ice, surrounded by dense stands of bare trees as far as the eye could see. The boys, who had come from New York City and the surrounding suburbs to learn how to make a fire and use an ax while building lifelong values and friendships, might have been in a forest in the Catskills. The actual location: Staten Island.
They were spending the weekend at 143-acre Pouch Camp, the largest parcel within the Staten Island Greenbelt and one of the only privately owned ones. All together, the greenbelt preserves 2,800 contiguous acres of parks, natural areas and golf courses under city and state ownership in a teardrop-shaped swath of green at the island’s center. The camp is beloved by generations of Boy Scouts throughout the metropolitan region whose childhoods revolved around weekends and summers there, as well as by Staten Islanders who grew up exploring the adjacent woods, fishing in its Lake Ohrbach, and attending dances and parties at its picturesque lodge.
But now, the financially troubled Greater New York Councils, Boy Scouts of America, the owner of the camp, has announced it is considering putting the land up for sale. If funds can’t be found to save the camp, luxury housing could replace lean-tos, eliminating scout camping programs within New York City and diminishing the Greenbelt forever.
For a number of years, the Greater New York Councils has been in discussions about selling a conservation easement (essentially the development rights) on the property to the city, state or an environmental group. Such a sale would preserve the landscape while allowing the scouts to retain ownership and continue its camping program. Press reports put the most recent asking price for an easement at $30 million. Talks appeared to stall, though, and just before Thanksgiving, the Boy Scout organization said that it was exploring the sale of all or part of the property.
Although land use issues are often contentious in Staten Island, politicians from both sides of the aisle, local scout volunteers, and environmental and civic groups have been working together to find a way to save the land and the camp program in the most difficult economic climate in decades. .
The Pouch Camp situation is a perfect example of why state legislatures, including New York's, have created dedicated accounts to provide a steady stream of funding for conservation and other environmental needs, advocates say. Although spending on conservation is minuscule compared to other areas, it is often perceived as expendable and so is among the first things cut by governments looking to save money.
In New York state, the Environmental Protection Fund, financed largely by a portion of the receipts from the real estate transfer tax, was created so there would be a stable source of money to preserve land and fund other environmental projects. In recent years, the state has used money from this source (and a now-depleted bond act) to preserve open space in Staten Island and elsewhere in the city. Pouch Camp is listed on the state’s Open Space Conservation Plan as a priority for preservation in New York City .
State legislation passed in 2007 called for increasing the fund to $300 million by 2010, and last year’s budget allocated $222 million, with $60 million for land conservation. But governors and legislators find it difficult to resist raiding the fund to balance the budget and have "borrowed" $500 million in recent years. Now, the state is facing an $8.2 billion deficit, and the governor wants to sweep more money from the fund for unrelated purposes; slash allocations from the fund by a third -- one of the largest cuts to any major program; and place a moratorium on all land conservation purchases.
Over the years, the city has preserved much of the greenbelt as parkland, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg has staked his legacy on greening the city, setting aside capital dollars for parks under PlaNYC2030. In a recent letter to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, New Yorkers for Parks, the citywide parks advocacy group, asked the parks department to incorporate the camp property into its system. But the city has its own fiscal difficulties and has reduced capital budgets by 30 percent. Benepe told the New York Times that it was highly unlikely that the parks department would be able to buy the property.
The Greenbelt is a link to Staten Island’s not-so-distant rural past, before the tsunami of development unleashed by the opening of the Verrazano Bridge in 1964. Efforts to create the linear park began in the 1960s, with the purchase of what is now High Rock Park and a years-long battle by civic and conservation groups to prevent Robert Moses from blasting a highway through the borough’s hilly wooded center.
There are now seven city parks in the Greenbelt, as well as parcels the state owns or protects through conservation easements. Thirty-five miles of hiking trails meander through its woods, meadows and wetlands. One of the largest natural areas in New York City, it supports a diversity of native flora and fauna, including 50 species of nesting birds as well as 150 species of birds that migrate through the city along the Atlantic flyway in the spring and fall.
Within the greenbelt, Pouch Camp is considered the crown jewel. While it is not open to the public (although fishing permits are issued and hikers can request permission to walk through), trails through the greenbelt run along its edge, overlooking the camp's native hardwood forest and understory dotted with glacial kettle ponds, streams and swamps. "In the spring, it is beautiful because of all the different wildflowers,” said Dominick D’Urso, who leads the annual 10-mile greenbelt hike for Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, the borough’s 30-year-old land conservation organization.
"It's the heart and soul and lungs of the greenbelt," said Kathleen Vorwick, president of the Greenbelt Conservancy, a nonprofit that partners with the parks department in operating and supporting the park. Just a ferry and bus ride from Manhattan, that part of the greenbelt is "the last remaining area of that size in New York City where people can be totally away from noise and light pollution," she said.
"It’s someplace that’s very, very special. You have to see it to believe it exists in New York City," said Staten Island Borough President James P. Molinaro.
Most of Pouch Camp is not suitable for housing, with its steep slopes, lake and numerous streams and wetlands. But building on even part of the property would fragment the native forest and put luxury housing in the wildest part of the greenbelt.
Development would fray the ecological fabric of parkland well beyond the camp's borders. Slicing the forest into smaller pieces and increasing the amount of "edge" would make the entire greenbelt less habitable for native animals that need larger areas of interior forest to survive. Construction, roads and houses, along with lawns and gardens, would give invasive species a foothold and affect the larger watershed: .Heavy rains and snowmelt would wash soil, pesticides and other pollutants into Lake Ohrbach, which floods into streams and wetlands in High Rock Park below and on down through Richmondtown and into Richmond Creek.
"The concept of this 2,800-acre greenbelt, mostly in a natural state, would just be destroyed. It would be cut into little boxes," said Vorwick. "There's a very small piece of God's creation here on central Staten Island, and it would be destroyed if any portion of Pouch Camp were to be developed."
To many Staten Islanders, especially people involved in scouting, closing the camp would be the biggest loss of all. The camp is heavily used -- both for summer camps and weekend activities year round -- by many of the 52,000 Boy Scouts in the metropolitan region as well as troops from other parts of the country who stay there while they explore New York City. There is also a summer YMCA day camp on the grounds.
"My fondest scouting memories from my childhood are all based around Camp Pouch," said Jim Falcone, the cubmaster at Pack 36 on Staten Island, whose father was also scoutmaster. "It gives kids a real sense of adventure to be out there. I was born and raised in Bensonhurst. My dad took us camping there and I didn’t even realize that it was just a stone's throw over the bridge. It's where my kids slept outside in a tent the first time. Every one of my sons caught their first fish in Lake Ohrbach."
People involved in scouting on Staten Island say the sale of the camp would betray the Boy Scout's 100-year tradition of building skills, character and values in young men through camping, nature study and outdoor adventure and its goal of teaching youths to be good stewards of the environment. "Selling the camp goes against Boy Scout values," said Dominic R. DeRubbio, an Eagle Scout and public safety consultant who helped organize a rally attended by 1,500 people on a chilly December evening and a petition drive that has collected more than 10,000 signatures so far.
The proposed sale has increased scrutiny of the expenses of the Greater New York Councils, which has its offices in the Empire State Building. It has also renewed criticism of the Boy Scouts of America's corporate-style management and high salaries for a nonprofit.
Assemblymembers Michael Cusick and Louis Tobacco held a press conference in early February suggesting that the organization lower costs by moving its headquarters to Staten Island. According to the Staten Island Advance, financial filings show that in 2008 the organization paid $2 million for occupancy costs, much of it in rent.
"We have made drastic reductions, reduced staff by 40 percent, reduced office space by 60 percent, driving down operating costs dramatically," said William Kelly, spokesman for the Greater New York Councils. "We are looking at all of the assets to figure out the best way to remain relevant to scouts in New York City." He noted that the organization operates three camping facilities, including one upstate and one in Alpine, N.J., across the George Washington Bridge from the city, with Pouch being the smallest.
Elsewhere in the country, Boy Scout councils have been criticized for logging or selling off forested camps to developers in disregard for the environment, according to a scathing investigative report last year by Hearst newspapers. The Boy Scouts of America, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month, responded with a public letter saying, in part, "local executive boards have the duty to use all council assets in the best interests of scouting -- which might include the sale of properties," to support its mission of preparing young people "to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes."
In terms of Pouch Camp, Kelly said that the Greater New York Councils has brought in the international commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle to figure out "the best way to use that property in the best interest of New York City kids."
"We want to have a conservation easement that preserves the ownership to the Greater New York Councils, with the primary purpose being scouting programs," he said. "If an easement isn't going to be worked out, other options include a full or partial sale."
Discussions of public ownership of Pouch Camp go back as far as 1985, as documents posted on the Save William H. Pouch Scout Camp website show.
Most recently, the Greater New York Councils had been in discussions with The Trust for Public Land, the national land conservation organization that helps negotiate land preservation deals with the ultimate goal of transferring the property to public ownership. In New York City, the organization has helped protect nearly 620 acres of open space, including Staten Island's Mt. Loretto in 2000.
Leslie Wright, director of the New York State program at The Trust for Public Land, said the group would "like to do everything we can that's reasonable to preserve" Pouch Camp. "It’s a beautiful piece of property. It has a huge natural resource value, both in terms of itself and how it links up with other protected properties," Wright said.
The Staten Island Advance reported on two proposals to save the camp -- a complicated land swap involving the adjacent Richmond County Country Club or using mitigation funding from the proposed expansion of the New York Container Terminal into Arlington Marsh on the North Shore -- but both face a number of objections.
Borough President Molinaro said, "We are researching every possibility of saving it in every possible way you can think of." He continued, "Every elected official on Staten Island, regardless of political philosophy or affiliation, is working together and knows it is a necessity to save Pouch Camp, and I am confident that we will save it."
In the meantime, environmental groups are lobbying to keep state funding for the environment, parks and land conservation. They argue that investing in the environment pays dividends in clean water and air, quality of life, public health and economic benefits and jobs in tourism, recreation, and natural resource management.
"Americans, and New Yorkers, understand that economic growth and conservation are mutually reinforcing goals," said Paul Hartman, director of government relations for The Nature Conservancy in New York, in testimony before a joint legislative hearing on Gov. David Paterson’s proposed budget. He cited recent polling by The Nature Conservancy showing that voters strongly support public investment in protecting natural areas, support that has held steady despite the economic downturn.
Advocates for conservation funding point out that the recession offers a rare opportunity to acquire lands important for watershed protection, wildlife and recreation. "Halting land purchases that protect public health and drinking water when prices are at their lowest and there are willing sellers is, at best, unwise," wrote Assemblymember Steve Englebright of Long Island, chair of the Assembly Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts and Sports Development, in a letter published in the Albany Times Union.
"Parks even in New York City have always been the low man on the totem pole, I guess because people perceive them as discretionary," said Vorwick. “But to a lot of people they aren’t discretionary -- they are the only outlet you have for recreation. To spend millions of dollars fighting childhood obesity and then cut your parks budget makes no sense."
Staten Islanders have fought long and hard to preserve the swath of green in the middle of the island. In the current economic crisis, can the city or state can find a way to save the last, most crucial piece?
"If you lose it, you’re not getting this back, especially in New York City," Molinaro warned. "It’s irreplaceable."
Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues.
In 2008, New York City enacted a pioneering electronics waste law, becoming the first city in the nation to do so. But the law never went into effect and now the city government and manufacturers are locked in a contentious legal battle over whether producers should take a lion's share of responsibility for collecting discarded electronics.
Before the law could go into effect last July, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Information Technology Industry Council and ITAC Systems, Inc. filed a lawsuit to block it. The New York City Law Department and the National Resources Defense Counci are defending the law.
Oral arguments have been postponed three times since the fall as the two sides try to negotiate a settlement. The case is being heard by Judge William H. Pauley of Federal Court for the Southern District of New York.
"The stakes are high on this," said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator for the Electronics Take Back Coalition. "If the plaintiffs prevail on this, it can call into question legislation on a whole range of products where states are holding manufacturers responsible." For the city -- where only 10 percent of discarded electronics are recycled -- a plaintiffs' victory would add to the growing list of environmental reforms that failed, stalled, or were drastically revised. Manufacturers fear that, if they lose, they will have to comply with a law that they say imposes unreasonable burdens and enormous costs.
The proposed law requires manufacturers to plan for and pay the full cost of collecting discarded electronics. Manufacturers must submit an e-waste plan detailing "convenient" methods by which consumers can return items. Manufacturers can be penalized $1,000 for each day the plan is past due, while city residents can be fined $100 for each improperly disposed item. The law covers computers, televisions, computer printers, and i-Pods, but not cell phones or household appliances.
The most controversial provision of the city's plan requires that manufacturers collect items over 15 pounds directly from consumers' residences. Items under 15 pounds can be mailed or dropped off at a collection point. The direct collection requirement -- which no state has -- was not part of the City Council legislation but a regulation from the Department of Sanitation, which governs how the law is administered.
Other highly contested elements of the law include an orphan waste rule, which requires manufacturers to take back certain electronics made by producers that no longer exist, and a performance standard, which sets minimums on how much must be collected.
The plaintiffs point out that Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed the performance standards component of the e-waste plan, which City Council passed in a separate bill in 2008. But the mayor did sign the bill containing all other aspect of the e-waste recycling plan, and the council later overrode the mayor's veto of the performance standard.
This law was prompted by an exponential growth in electronic waste and a growing awareness of its dangers.
Junked electronics are the fastest growing kind of waste in the U.S. Americans, who own over 2 billion pieces of high-tech electronics, discard over 3 million tons of them each year according to a 2007 report by the Environmental Protection Agency. Public Advocate Bill De Blasio, a longstanding proponent of the bill during his tenure in City Council, has written that the city spends over $6.4 million a year to export the nearly 30,000 tons of e-waste that travel through its waste stream.
Electronics contain lead, cadmium, mercury, all of which are dangerous when released into the environment, according to the city's brief. Such toxins can leach into groundwater from improperly contained landfills or be released into the air when crushed by compactors or burned in incinerators.
Plaintiffs say the law is unconstitutional, alleging, among other claims, that it would impede interstate commerce and violate the equal protection clause and due process.
But their essential problem with the law is cost. They claim that the city has "devised a program this is in order of magnitude more costly than any other E-waste program in the world."
"The city’s program costs six to eight times more than any other state program, and these excessive costs will be passed back to consumers in the form of higher prices," said Parker Brugge, vice president of environmental affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association. Brugge said that the association estimates the proposed law would cost manufacturers about $200 million annually.
Direct collection alone, according to the Consumer Electronics Association and other plaintiffs, "will cost manufacturers approximately $121, and potentially more, per pick-up from a city residence." James Slaughter, attorney for the plaintiffs, said direct collection is particularly expensive because whenever a customer calls to dispose an electronic item, "we have to come get it."
But the city and the Natural Resources Defense Council dispute the plaintiffs' cost estimates. Kate Sinding, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the plaintiffs' estimates are based on the most inconvenient ways of complying with the law. She said that in reality, "competition and the drive for efficiency would lead manufacturers to find the least costly option for compliance."
In support of this position, Jay Shepherd, a policy advisor from Washington State Department of Ecology, filed written testimony indicating that companies in his state have pooled resources and worked together to come up with cost effective ways of complying the state's e-waste laws.
The city and NRDC also indicate that direct collection is not the expensive, come and get it kind of rule the plaintiffs make it to be. And on the law's face, this is true. The regulation states that for items over 15 pounds, "convenient collection from a resident shall mean direct collection from a resident's home." Slaughter said this implies an on-demand pickup, but Sinding said the regulation is flexible, allowing companies to come out to collect every few weeks or so. The plaintiffs "interpret the direct collection requirement as being an on demand pickup requirement, but there is absolutely nothing in the regulations, or the law, that would compel anything like that," Sinding said.
The city also indicates that direct collection is "narrowly tailored" to New York City, where many residents do not own cars. Without cars, people would have to lug heavy items on mass transit.
Jennifer Carela, a Chelsea resident who hauls her out-of-use electronics on the subway to city-run collection programs, likes the proposed law for its convenience to city residents. "I've used the electronic drop off sites but it's always a production to plan your schedule around them, and I don't think most people care enough to lug their keyboards, CPUs, and TVs downtown to have them disposed of properly," she said.
The manufacturers also complain that the law shifts all responsibility to them, and that is what makes it particularly unfair. In California, consumers pay a fee at the time of sale. "There needs to be a shared responsibility among various stakeholders," Brugge said.
However, the city argues in its brief that one rationale for increasing manufacturer responsibility is that "requiring manufacturers to internalize the costs of recycling covered electronic equipment gives those manufacturers an incentive to reduce or remove toxic materials from products at the time that the products are first manufactured." Eighteen of the nineteen states with e-waste laws have enacted legislation that shifts burdens toward the producer, and such laws have come to be known as producer responsibility laws.
Elizabeth Grossman, whose 2006 book High Tech Trash chronicled how severely production and disposal of electronics affect the environment, said, "If you require a company to take physical and fiscal responsibility of their obsolete products, they've got a whole lot more incentive to make them easier to recycle and last longer."
Nili Belkin, a Park Slope resident, would like to see that happen. She recently got rid of her computer printer merely because the small roller that feeds through paper would have cost her nearly as much as a new printer. She hopes the law will encourage longer lasting, less disposable products.
For now, only 19 states regulate e-waste. The number is likely to grow, according to experts.
The industry has said this matter should not be left to cities and states.
"We believe that electronics recycling is a national issue that requires a federal solution" said Brugge. "It is not feasible for manufacturers to comply with a unique recycling scheme for every municipality in the country."
Kyle noted, though, that what she considers a sound, comprehensive, proposal at the federal level never got off the ground, leaving states to take things in their own hands.
"This is really a fight about state's rights and city's rights," said Kyle.
This story was done through a partnership between The Huffington Post's Eyes and Ears citizen journalism program and Gotham Gazette. Gotham Gazette reporter Courtney Gross wrote the piece using stories from New Yorkers gathered through The Huffington Post and Gotham Gazette. Sign up here to join Huffington Post's citizen journalism team covering New York to be part of more of these stories.
Neat freaks, beware of Brownsville, steer clear of Morrisania and forget about Chinatown.
These are some of the neighborhoods that received the worst ratings for street or sidewalk cleanliness, according to data from the Bloomberg administration's Office of Operations.
To avoid litter-strewn streets stick to Bayside, Queens or the South Shore of Staten Island.
To some of you, these characterizations may come as no surprise.
Gotham Gazette and The Huffington Post asked you to send in photos and tales of nasty neighborhood trash. Many of you said Bushwick, the Bronx and areas of Upper Manhattan were centers of grit and grime.
A review of cleanliness scorecards for the last year and a half corroborated some of your claims. We found poorer neighborhoods afflicted with other environmental challenges were on the lower rung of neighborhood neatness. More affluent areas of the city were more likely to be trash free.
And you've noticed.
"I live in Spanish Harlem and I am always shocked at the difference in the streets there and those of the Upper East Side. Every morning I get coffee at Starbucks in the UES and see sanitation workers cleaning the streets daily. I only see them about once a week in my neighborhood," wrote one reader, who goes by tiffanykapri. The reader punctuated her message with an unhappy face.
About 93 percent of the streets in East Harlem were considered "acceptably clean" between July 2008 and December 2009. On the Upper East Side, more than 98 percent were.
This tale of trash festers all over the city.
There is the inescapable dog droppings ("It seems that no one cleans up after their dogs," one reader complained).
Or the constant search for a trashcan: "I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn and it is DIRTY! Despite numerous calls to 311 from all my friends and me to have trash cans placed in our neighborhood, we still only have one, which only just appeared about six months ago after years of begging for trash cans," another reader lamented.
One Mott Haven resident, who goes by missyfoosy, complained streets in the South Bronx have more than trash troubles:
"I lived right on Bruckner Blvd, considered the first block when you enter the Bronx from Manhattan. On the waterfront is the NYC Waste Transfer station that just renewed its lease for 99 years; to the north is I-87, which wafts truck exhaust and car fumes right into the neighborhood. Rodent infestations in the abandoned buildings make it impossible to walk the sidewalks at night; they are overrun. There is never enough trash bins nor the collection of that trash."
The community boards in the South Bronx have some of the dirtiest sidewalks in the city, according to data, collected monthly, from the mayor's Office of Operations. The only ones worse are in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville in Brooklyn.
Bayside, the South Shore of Staten Island and the Upper East Side boasted the cleanest sidewalks.
Street neatness has a similar story. The Bronx's Melrose and Morrisania and Brooklyn's Borough Park scored the nastiest ratings. (For a look at your community board, check out our breakdown.) Again, the South Shore of Staten Island was kept the cleanest.
Community leaders have plenty of explanations as to why their neighborhood may fall on the gritty or gleaming side of the city.
"People are passionate about their communities and people take pride in their community," said Jerry Iannece, the chair of Bayside's community board. "You see them sweeping their streets."
In other, more pungent neighborhoods, leaders say their litter problem could be ameliorated if they had more public garbage cans and if the sanitation department swung by more often. But, said Brooklyn's Community Board 16 District Manager Viola D. Greene-Walker, the problem goes beyond that.
"People, for whatever their reason, would rather instead of disposing their litter in their buildings as they are leaving, just take it outside and put it in front of the building on the sidewalk," said Greene-Walker, whose district includes Brownsville. "'Somebody is going to take care of it.' (It's) that attitude."
The city's Department of Sanitation says it treats every neighborhood equally.
"The Department of Sanitation makes every effort to keep New York City clean for all New Yorkers," sanitation department Spokesperson Kathy Dawkins said in an e-mailed statement.
Gotham Gazette requested statistics from the Department of Sanitation on the number of litter baskets per community district as well as the frequency of pick up. The department did not provide the information by the time of publication.
Despite the disparity, New York has seen much worse. Since 1975 the city has been scoring the cleanliness of its streets, and in 1980, 53 percent of them were considered "acceptably clean" citywide -- an all time low.
Last fiscal year, according to the Bloomberg administration, 95.8 percent of streets were deemed "acceptably clean" -- the highest ever.
Even in Bushwick, which one reader called the "neglected underside of Brooklyn," community leaders say there has been a vast improvement.
"If you would have seen it the way it was when it was literally all lots," said Willie Morales, the community associate for Community Board 4 in Bushwick. "Compared to now, it is immaculate."
But that may not be the case for long.
This fiscal year, which started in July and goes to June, the Department of Sanitation has seen successive budget cuts and reconfigured trash routes to make better use of its time and money.
Since those cuts were enacted in July, almost 30 percent of community boards saw a decrease in their street cleanliness ratings.
"Current economic conditions had an impact on the city’s adopted budget," said Dawkins in a statement. "Litter basket collection is a priority and in spite of a painful $80 million budget reduction in fiscal year 2010, we will devote all available resources to servicing baskets in high-density, heavily trafficked areas as often as possible."
This year the department could face an even sharper ax. Cuts to the city in Governor David Paterson's proposed state budget threaten the city's recycling program and its regular refuse pickup. If the governor's plan goes through, the mayor has warned the city would do away with all street cleaning and all public litter baskets.
Those actions would put every community's cleanliness ratings down into the dumps.