Chapter 10
The Prospects for Community Planning in Waste Management
In the course of reporting this article, I met scores of individuals who have become mini-experts at recycling, waste reduction, composting, garbage truck routes and transport, and many other aspects of waste management. Some of these individuals work professionally in the field, but many are simply community advocates who have independently educated themselves on the issues. Furthermore, all of these individuals had a fine-grained understanding of how waste and recycling management work at the neighborhood level, and a number of them also could ground this understanding in a broad, city-wide context.
In contrast, the official experts I spoke with at DOS, DEC, and DEP often had a highly technical understanding of the city's current waste management practices, but little concrete understanding of more up-to-date alternatives, some of which have already been tested and proven by private companies and nonprofit organizations right here in New York City.
To prepare the modification to the SWMP that the city administration's contracts require, DOS hired a number of private consultants to do their work for them. Many of these consultants have implemented advanced alternative methods of recycling, composting, and waste reduction in work they have done for other municipalities. Yet when some of these consultants brought up some of these alternatives, DOS said it wasn't interested.
The only way the city can reinvent its waste management system for the 21st century is to undertake a serious open planning effort that brings the neighborhood-based experts together with the department and agency experts to craft new plans and new approaches. The city needs to move beyond secretive and short-sighted decisionmaking. Sadly, the city administration's "planning" has been a waste of time, leaving us back at square one and requiring that the plans be revised from the ground up. This time, the process will need to involve community groups, individual experts, agency representatives, and elected officials from the beginning -- and involve them as equal stakeholders in the city's future. If B.A.R.G.E is successful in saving the city from an ill-conceived thirty-year plan, it will be in a position to bring all these stakeholders and experts together.
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