Chapter 3
Here Comes the Trash
Waste Transfer Stations Blossom in a Few Neighborhoods
Meanwhile, residents in Brooklyn and the Bronx were battling the unplanned results of a DOS strategy aimed at keeping Fresh Kills from filling up too soon. Through the 1980s, many of the city's commercial haulers were depositing their garbage in Fresh Kills for a small "tipping fee." At the end of their collection routes, their trucks would simply drive to Staten Island -- a cheaper alternative to driving long distances out of state. In 1988, DOS raised its tipping fees to discourage the commercial haulers from using Fresh Kills. They succeeded.
Chris Boyd, an environmental policy assistant to Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, explains that "almost overnight, dozens of waste transfer stations appeared [in low-income communities] in Brooklyn and the Bronx." Queens was also afflicted to a lesser extent.
"You have to understand," says Leslie Lowe of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, "the people in these neighborhoods were already seeing a plague of illegal dumping [that began] in the 70s." Now, it was being augmented by officially sanctioned garbage lots.
At a waste transfer station, private haulers deposit garbage in an open pile, where it waits to be loaded on larger trucks or rail cars for long-distance shipping. Some of the major adverse impacts of waste transfer stations come from the noise, dust, and odors resulting from trucks carrying waste into a transfer facility, resultant truck traffic on nearby roads, noise, dust, and odors from waste compactors, and flies and rodents. As a result, many states, including New York, place authority for regulating waste facilities in their environmental laws.
But regulation in New York City has been limited and lethargic, with no one taking the responsibility for enforcing the laws. Most of the waste transfer stations were operating illegally. The didn't have all the proper permits or equipment. They were handling more garbage than their permits allowed. Required inspections provide a record of this fact, yet no violations were issued.
A DEP source who asked not to be named complained that almost all the private waste transfer stations and recycling facilities in the city lack the basic water-treatment equipment required under state law, but that there is no mechanism for shutting them down. As a result, when it rains, a variety of toxic pollutants including heavy metals wash into the storm sewers and then into nearby rivers, creeks, and canals. In cases where the water enters the sewer system, it flows into municipal water treatment facilities that are themselves illegal and only operate under federal and state consent orders until they are rebuilt with more modern equipment.
Despite such problems, even activists who are fighting waste transfer stations admit a single facility isn't so terrible. Problems mount when several transfer stations concentrate in one neighborhood, which is exactly what has happened.
Chapter 4 -- The Zoning Magnet:
City Planning Fails to Plan
back to top
