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Taking
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About
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INTRODUCTION Fresh Kills on Staten Island is New
York City's only remaining landfill and the largest in the
world. Its sheer magnitude has been something of a wonder,
with international visitors and news reporters endlessly
making the pilgrimage to the site. However, the news about
Fresh Kills has almost never been good. In fact, Fresh
Kills has been an environmental disaster. For over 50
years, the massive dumping into tidal wetlands has left over
100 million tons of garbage rotting in place, generating
harmful leachate into soil and water and producing hazardous
air emissions. On May 29, 1996, Mayor Rudolph
Guiliani, Governor George Pataki, and Staten Island Borough
President Guy Molinari stunned many with the announcement
that Fresh Kills would close by December 31, 2001. The
closure announcement was greeted with cheers on Staten
Island and simultaneously with concern in other communities
within and far from New York City. The obvious question
was, what would New York City do with all that garbage? Among the communities in New York City
with very serious concerns were the South Bronx,
Greenpoint/Williamsburg, and Red Hook, waterfront
neighborhoods already processing a lot of the City's
commercial garbage. Residential garbage is collected by the
NYC Dept. of Sanitation (DOS) and ends up at Fresh Kills.
But commercial garbage is removed by private haulers, who
take it to private waste transfer stations concentrated in a
few waterfront neighborhoods, and ultimately to private
landfills outside the City. These private waste facilities
are concentrated primarily in communities of color, where
city policies and zoning allow industry to reside with
families and children. The waste industry moved into these
neighborhoods as other industry has moved out, leaving
vacant industrial land. This trend got a big push in the
late 1980s when the City increased the tipping fees for
dumping commercial waste at Fresh Kills from $18 to
approximately $40 a ton, in an effort to preserve landfill
space. Large numbers of illegal transfer stations opened up
overnight, so that garbage could be processed and packaged
for export. Organized crime involvement contributed to
difficulties in getting these facilities properly reviewed
and permitted. Odor, congestion, and vermin problems
proliferated. Community organizations in
Greenpoint/Williamsburg, the South Bronx and Red Hook who
fought these improper and illegal operations were
immediately alarmed about what the closure of Fresh Kills
would mean for them. Would facilities in their communities
now be processing residential waste too? The impending closure of Fresh Kills
also caused alarm in far away neighborhoods in Pennsylvania,
Virginia and elsewhere which for some time have been hosting
landfills and incinerators receiving commercial waste from
New York City. Would their burden increase? The closing of Fresh Kills presents
New York City with both an opportunity and a danger. There
is a fork in the road that reveals two paths. One path,
which is sustainable, maximizes waste prevention and
recycling and leads us toward sustainable consumption, the
reuse of valuable resources, economic development, jobs, and
a host of opportunities and benefits for the communities
currently most affected by all the negatives associated with
solid waste. The other path, clearly unsustainable, relies
primarily on contracting with private firms to export NYC
garbage. This path promotes waste and will drain financial
resources from the City, resources that could be used for
schools, health care and parks. It will subject the City to
waste industry price increases and make it vulnerable to
actions by other states or Congress limiting waste export.
And it puts inequitable burdens for processing garbage on
certain waterfront communities, which are largely
communities of color. Elsewhere in the United States, when
sustainability in the solid waste arena has been nurtured
and cared for, it has, like a well-raised child, prospered
and succeeded. The public has embraced it whole-heartedly,
perhaps because in the context of solid waste,
sustainability translates so easily into concrete actions
like recycling or making smarter purchasing decisions. In
recent years, federal government policy has consistently
supported a hierarchy for solid waste management that
promotes sustainability. That policy gives top preference
to waste prevention, or not creating waste in the first
place. Waste reflects inefficient use of resources and
energy; the less waste we produce in providing goods and
services to people, the more efficient we are. Recycling is
on the second rung of the solid waste hierarchy. Recycling
not only includes reprocessing of cans and bottles, but also
includes composting, the recycling of organic materials,
such as food and yard wastes. These policies, although
still inadequate, have been having an impact. The 25%
national recycling goal set in 1989 was surpassed and
amended to 35% in the span of just seven years, in 1996. At
the bottom of the hierarchy are landfilling and
incineration. Nationally, landfilling has declined
as a waste management method from a high of 81% in 1980 to
55% in 1997. Incineration is handling 17% of the waste
stream. Recycling is now claiming a total of 28% of the
waste stream having grown exponentially from almost 7% in
1970. Composting is just beginning to grab significant
quantities of the waste stream as municipal programs are
realizing there are significant recycling gains to be made
by recycling food and yard waste. (EPA, Characterization of
Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1998 Update,
1999) For the first time EPA has quantified waste NOT
entering the waste stream, waste that is prevented or
reduced at the source. For 1996 waste reduction prevented
23.2 million tons of waste or 6.4 years worth of NYC's
residential waste. The nation's total waste stream would
have been 11% higher were it not for these efforts. (EPA,
National Source Reduction Characterization Report for
Municipal Solid Waste in the US, Nov., 1999) The continuing success stories from
states and municipalities across the country--of increased
waste diversion, new business engaged in manufacturing using
secondary materials and the associated economic benefits and
job creation-are good news for the environment. However
they are not good news for waste companies that have
invested heavily in waste disposal--in landfills and
incinerators. Will NYC government act to pursue
society's overall interest in sustainability? The task then
is to fully expose what the choices in a democratic system
should be. The City has a choice about whether and to what
degree to privatize its solid waste system. However, this
choice has never been presented to New Yorkers; instead,
privatization and export have been presented as an
unavoidable fact. Key questions for the City are: Should
we develop our own landfill capacity? Should we own our own
transfer station capacity? What services should we contract
privately for? Is it less expensive to operate our own
facilities or to contract out? How can we optimize the
expenditure of public funds for solid waste management to
simultaneously achieve environmental, social and economic
goals for the City of New York? This report will present a plan for a
waste system that is sustainable and highlight some pitfalls
in the Administration's current plans. Our alternate waste
plan builds on a considerable body of work completed over
many years by dozens of public officials, major
environmental organizations, technical experts and hundreds
of volunteers who have devoted countless hours to developing
a sound and sustainable solid waste system for the City of
New York. Our recommendations are realistic and
fully doable. If implemented, they will help close Fresh
Kills on time without dumping on other communities and
outraging other states and Congress. They will set the City
on a sustainable course that involves citizens in solutions
that preserve neighborhoods and keep them as wholesome
places to live. |