The New York Times
August 1, 2002, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk
A Plan to Ship Garbage, but No Destination
BYLINE: By MICHAEL COOPER

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that the city would stop
hauling its trash out of state one truck at a time and instead adapt
dormant waterfront stations in each borough so garbage could be taken
off trucks, packed into containers and floated away by barge.
Mr. Bloomberg called his plan for disposing of the roughly 11,000
tons of residential trash generated by New Yorkers each day a
"conceptual outline," and it raised at least as many questions as it
answered. The mayor could not say how much it would cost, and he left
one of the thorniest questions unanswered: where the trash would go.
Since the Giuliani administration shut down the city's only
operating landfill, Fresh Kills in Staten Island, last year, the city
has used trucks to haul its waste to incinerators and landfills out of
state.
But Mr. Bloomberg said that his plan, which he made a priority of his
second hundred days in office, was prepared with two overarching goals
in mind: reducing the current truck traffic that clogs the city's
streets, damages its roads and pollutes its air and relies on land-based
trash-transfer stations, and giving the city more options to keep its
waste disposal costs steady in the future.
"We are not going to continue to give our kids lung diseases, no
matter what the cost is," the mayor said at City Hall as he announced
the plan. "That's the bottom line."
His plan calls for taking eight existing waterfront stations in
Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens that were once used for
sending barges of trash to Fresh Kills and rebuilding them to accept
garbage from trucks, compact it, pack it into sealed containers and load
them on barges. A ninth station would be built on Staten Island that
could be used, for a change, for outgoing trash. The barges would be
unloaded at nearby ports, and the containers placed on ships or trains. The mayor's plan differed from the one proposed two years ago by the
Giuliani administration, which called for using some of the same
waterfront stations to collect trash and place it on barges headed for
Linden, N.J., where it was to have been put into containers and shipped
by rail to out-of-state landfills. That plan was stalled in part by
ethics investigations involving the Linden site, and the city never
entered into a contract to use the property. Mr. Bloomberg said
yesterday that he was abandoning the plan for a reason separate from the
corruption issues: he wanted to get rid of the middle man.
Mr. Bloomberg said that if the city could put its garbage into
standard shipping containers itself, it could avoid being overly
dependent on any single private company or other state. Such containers,
which are roughly 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, are used for rail and
sea freight around the world. Nearby ports could compete to take the
containers off the barges and put them on either trains or ships. From
there they could be transported to landfills anywhere in the country, or
the world, that would take them.
"I don't think it's prudent for New York City to put itself at the
mercy of any outside force any more than we absolutely have to," Mr.
Bloomberg said, noting that otherwise the city would leave itself
vulnerable to strikes, higher fees, and higher taxes like one
Pennsylvania just imposed on out-of-state garbage bound for its
landfills.
By having each borough handle its own trash, the mayor hopes to avoid
inter-borough squabbles. And by focusing on existing, if dormant,
waterfront trash-transfer stations, he hopes to avoid protracted
not-in-my-backyard battles. Down the road he hopes the private companies
that cart commercial garbage will also use the city's waterfront
facilities, at cost, ending the need for the trash-transfer stations
that have proliferated in many poor neighborhoods.
But Mr. Bloomberg could not say how much, if anything, the plan would
save the strapped city in the short term. With the closing of Fresh
Kills, the cost of getting rid of the city's garbage rose to $263 a ton
last year from $179 a ton in 1997. Last year the Sanitation Department's
operating costs broke the billion-dollar mark for the first time.
"Will it reduce our costs?" Mr. Bloomberg asked, echoing a reporter's
question. "It may, slightly. But what it really does is it gives us the
flexibility down the road to prevent increases. That's the advantage of
having alternatives."
Mr. Bloomberg was also vague about the overall cost of the plan,
saying that it would cost "a few hundred million dollars" to adapt the
existing stations, roughly $35 million to build the new station on
Staten Island, and about $10 million for containers. Sanitation
officials said that a sufficient amount of money was already included in
the capital budget plan, and that they would simply have to spend it
differently.
The mayor joked that he might give his sanitation chief, John J.
Doherty, "a heart attack," but said he hopes to have the plan in place
in two years.
There could be difficulties with the plan. Just three years ago the
Sanitation Department concluded that it would not be feasible to convert
five of the eight existing waterfront stations, known as marine transfer
stations, into plants where the garbage could be packed into containers.
Doing so, the report found, could slow the process of unloading garbage
trucks and "means collection vehicles would be queued up for long
periods of time to unload." Such lines could lead to neighborhood
opposition. Asked about that report, Mr. Bloomberg said that he would consider
expanding the size of the existing stations -- which was not
contemplated in the report -- so that the sites could be adapted to work
more efficiently. And he said that technological improvements since that
study was released in 1999 could make the conversion easier.
Expanding the stations, and converting them, will require
environmental impact studies, and the overall plan will require the
approval of the City Council.
Yet while some community opposition may be stirred by the return of
garbage trucks to neighborhoods that have not seen them in a while, the
broad outlines of the plan were greeted enthusiastically in several
quarters yesterday.
City Council officials happily noted its similarity to a garbage plan
that they put forward in their budget proposal this year. Michael
McMahon, the chairman of the Council's Sanitation and Solid Waste
Committee, pledged his support, which carries weight both within the
Council and in his home district in Staten Island, where garbage is the
political equivalent of Kryptonite.
Environmentalists and community groups were pleased that the truck
traffic caused by the current short-term plan would soon end, and that
it could reduce the need for commercial transfer stations. Eddie
Bautista, the lead organizer for the Organization of Waterfront
Neighborhoods, a coalition focused on solid waste issues, called it "the
biggest victory in environmental justice in the history of our city."
Mark A. Izeman, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council,
praised the mayor for moving from a truck-based approach to one that
would use more environmentally friendly transportation by rail and by
water, but also called on the administration to move to restore the
recycling of glass and plastic, which it cut this year.
One of the transfer stations that is to reopen is on East 91st Street
and the East River. Conrad Foa, a co-chairman of the environment
committee of Community Board 8, which includes the site, said that while
he was not happy that garbage was coming back, he was hopeful that
matters like odor could be contained.
"I think it's an issue of proper engineering and maintenance," he
said. "If proper money for engineering and maintenance are budgeted and
spent, then we should be able to share and do our part. Everybody
produces waste, and it shouldn't just be foisted off into a poorer
socioeconomic community."
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GRAPHIC: Photo: Reducing truck traffic, like this in Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, is one goal of the mayor's trash plan, which calls for
shipping trash out of the city by barge. (Nicole Bengiveno/The New York
Times, 1999)(pg. B6)
Chart: "Trash Disposal"
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday disclosed his concept for exporting
the citys trash.Plan synopsis: In the old system, barges left from city barge docks and
took trash to a Staten Island landfill.
Problems: Many Staten Island residents resented the city dumping its
trash on them.
Where the trash ends up: Fresh Kills, a landfill on Staten Island.
Plan synopsis: The current system has hundreds of trucks hauling trash
out of state.
Problems: Expensive; truck traffic increases air pollution and
contributes to congested bridges and tunnels.
Where the trash ends up: Mostly at landfills in Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Virginia; some is incinerated in New Jersey.
Plan synopsis: The Giuliani administration suggested sending tons of
trash on barges to Linden, N.J.
Problems: Stalled by ethics investigation; opposed by some New Jersey
residents. Where the trash ends up: From Linden, it would be sent rail
to landfills in Illinois, South Carolina and Georgia.
Plan synopsis: The Bloomberg plan calls for using docks in each borough
to haul compacted trash on barges.
Problems: Mr. Bloomberg has not said where the trash would go or if the
plan would save money.
Where the trash ends up: Barges from the old city barge docks would
carry trash to as-yet-undetermined sites.