New York City Outsourcing Incineration

- by Dara Hunt

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions on stop­ping a Cov­an­ta con­tract to incin­er­ate DC waste in an Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice community. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have not suc­ceed­ed in stop­ping New York City’s plan, and a 20-year con­tract with Cov­an­ta Ener­gy to trans­port and burn 800,000 tons per year, or more, of New York City’s putresci­ble waste in poor­ly fil­tered Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tors in Chester, PA, and Nia­gara Falls, NY.

This dis­pos­al strat­e­gy is part of New York City’s 20-Year, 2006 Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Plan (SWMP). The SWMP didn’t set aggres­sive waste reduc­tion goals for New York City or estab­lish con­crete plans to reform the City’s inad­e­quate­ly reg­u­lat­ed pri­vate waste indus­try.  A mod­est, 25 per­cent recy­cling tar­get set in the SWMP has nev­er been achieved – the City’s recy­cling rates remain at abysmal lev­els: 15–16 per­cent for City col­lect­ed waste and around 24 per­cent for pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed waste. Instead, the SWMP focused on build­ing large and expen­sive, sin­gle-pur­pose waste trans­port facil­i­ties and long-term con­tracts to move waste to dis­tant dis­pos­al sites. 

Many of us believe the plan’s focus on invest­ment in new build­ings and 20+ year waste trans­fer and dis­pos­al con­tracts takes the City in the wrong direc­tion – teth­er­ing us to the lag­ging, high waste vol­ume sta­tus quo. New York City needs to imple­ment price incen­tives to cre­ate bet­ter waste behav­ior. We need aggres­sive goals and pro­grams to help res­i­dents, busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment agen­cies reduce or divert much more waste. And the City needs to clean up pri­vate waste indus­try vehi­cles and oper­a­tions through bet­ter reg­u­la­tion and oversight. 

Pledge 2 Pro­tect, Res­i­dents for Sane Trash Solu­tions and oth­er groups have addi­tion­al con­cerns about the City’s plan to build one spe­cif­ic trans­port facil­i­ty — a marine trans­fer sta­tion (MTS) for putresci­ble waste — in a high­ly pop­u­lat­ed and flood-prone res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood in Man­hat­tan, at East 91^st Street. The MTS will be locat­ed less than 400 feet from a pub­lic hous­ing com­plex that flood­ed dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy in 2012. 

Accord­ing to New York City’s con­sult­ing engi­neer, Gree­ley and Hansen, this MTS will be in FEMA flood zone A and its crit­i­cal first floor will be 5.6 feet below the flood ele­va­tion rec­om­mend­ed by FEMA and required by New York City code. Despite this dan­ger­ous loca­tion and ele­va­tion, the City has no plans to raise the MTS or make any struc­tur­al changes to mit­i­gate flood risk. Sea lev­el along New York’s coast­line is ris­ing at almost twice the glob­al rate. Increas­ing­ly intense and unpre­dictable storms are fore­cast for the Northeast. 

More than 22,000 peo­ple live with­in one quar­ter mile of the East 91^st Street MTS. The neigh­bor­hood — part of Yorkville (often mis­char­ac­ter­ized by oppo­nents by pre­sent­ing stats that include more afflu­ent areas of upper Man­hat­tan) — bor­ders East Harlem and is one of the most dense­ly res­i­den­tial areas in the City’s five bor­oughs. Dur­ing Sandy, the com­mu­ni­ty was flood­ed as much as four blocks inland. This area will flood again and res­i­dents fear that putresci­ble waste and MTS debris will con­t­a­m­i­nate flood water the next time around. 

One of the major goals of the SWMP’s MTS plan was to relieve neigh­bor­hoods that are tru­ly over­bur­dened by too many pri­vate waste trucks and trans­fer sta­tions. When we learned that the East 91^st Street MTS will do very lit­tle if any­thing to improve con­di­tions in over­bur­dened neigh­bor­hoods we were even more con­cerned about the costs and health and safe­ty impacts of the plan. The log­ic of the SWMP MTS plan is that waste from one New York City bor­ough should not be trans­port­ed to or through oth­er bor­oughs — increas­ing traf­fic, air pol­lu­tion, noise, etc. Thus, a major rea­son to open a trans­fer sta­tion in Man­hat­tan is to reduce traf­fic and waste vol­ume in oth­er parts of the City. The prob­lem is, the East 91^st Street MTS won’t do that to any mea­sur­able extent. 

Putresci­ble waste from 4 of 12 Man­hat­tan dis­tricts will be deliv­ered to the MTS (waste from the oth­er 8 dis­tricts will con­tin­ue to be trans­port­ed and dis­posed of as it has been). The vast major­i­ty of waste des­tined for the MTS – more than three quar­ters of it — has NEVER gone to or through any oth­er bor­ough in New York City. Most of this putresci­ble waste is col­lect­ed by the City and it goes direct­ly to New Jer­sey – and from there most now goes on to land­fill. Over half of the waste col­lect­ed by pri­vate carters that MAY come to the MTS (if the carters decide to use the incon­ve­nient­ly locat­ed facil­i­ty) also goes direct­ly to New Jer­sey and not through any oth­er bor­ough of the City.  No one argues that the cur­rent sys­tem is ide­al and should not be improved – but the MTS will NOT achieve the goal of reduc­ing waste activ­i­ty in over­bur­dened New York City communities. 

Anoth­er trou­bling effect of the MTS plan is that truck routes to bring waste to East 91^st will spread diesel emis­sions into many addi­tion­al heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed neigh­bor­hoods through­out New York City and beyond.

Under the MTS plan, putresci­ble waste that is now trucked to New Jer­sey will be trans­port­ed from as far as low­er and Mid­town Man­hat­tan up and across town through the most grid­locked and pop­u­lat­ed areas of the City – and into increas­ing­ly res­i­den­tial neighborhoods. 

Once garbage trucks reach the MTS to tip, they will queue on a ramp that will bisect a soc­cer field used by schools from many City neigh­bor­hoods and a public/private sports and fit­ness facil­i­ty (Asphalt Green) that pro­vides free or sub­si­dized pro­grams for thou­sands of New York City kids.

After the trucks tip waste at the MTS it will be con­tainer­ized and loaded on barges. These barges will run up and down the East Riv­er from East 91^st Street to the Stat­en Island Con­tain­er Ter­mi­nal and back. The barges will be pow­ered by tug boats. Even the best avail­able (Tier 3‑compliant) tugs emit 8 times more diesel par­tic­u­late mat­ter (and oth­er diesel pol­lu­tants) than trucks that are 2007 EPA High­way Diesel Rule-compliant. 

The long barge route from the MTS to Stat­en Island will pass water­front neigh­bor­hoods in Queens, Brook­lyn, Man­hat­tan, Roo­sevelt Island and Stat­en Island – spread­ing diesel emis­sions along the way. Once the barges and tugs reach the Stat­en Island Con­tain­er Ter­mi­nal, the con­tain­ers will be unloaded and reloaded on freight trains. 

For those not famil­iar with New York City, this waste has already been on a long and almost cir­cu­lar jour­ney. Waste will be trucked from as far South as 14^th Street and as far West as 8^th Avenue all the way up and across town to East 91^st  Street through the most con­gest­ed parts of Mid­town and upper Man­hat­tan. Then, after being loaded in con­tain­ers, it will trav­el all the way back down­town on the East Riv­er – past the South­ern tip of Man­hat­tan and on to Stat­en Island. 

Once loaded on trains, the waste will trav­el more than 400 miles to Nia­gara Falls, NY and more than 125 miles to Chester, PA. But get­ting waste to the Chester Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tor isn’t a straight shot – waste con­tain­ers must be unloaded in Wilm­ing­ton, DE, and loaded on diesel trucks for the last leg of the trip to Chester. 

Accord­ing to New York City’s Inde­pen­dent Bud­get Office, this MTS will triple the cost of pro­cess­ing waste. It’s very hard to see how this plan improves New York City’s dis­mal waste man­age­ment system.

There are a num­ber of strate­gies that would improve con­di­tions for New York City neigh­bor­hoods and the envi­ron­ment. Reduc­tion of total waste gen­er­at­ed is essen­tial, but oth­er mea­sures are need­ed to improve waste man­age­ment prac­tices in the near term, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the City’s pri­vate waste indus­try. For exam­ple, pri­vate waste trucks must be forced to meet Local Law 145 emis­sions con­trol stan­dards, and exces­sive­ly over­lap­ping and pol­lut­ing pri­vate carter truck routes need to be ratio­nal­ized. The pri­vate waste indus­try needs bet­ter reg­u­la­tion over­all. The Trans­form Don’t Trash NYC coali­tion has pro­vid­ed valu­able research and pro­pos­als to improve New York City’s pri­vate waste indus­try. New York City res­i­dents need to pro­vide sup­port for these pro­pos­als and oth­ers – to help cre­ate the polit­i­cal will to adopt impor­tant waste man­age­ment reforms.

Ear­li­er this year, New York City launched the OneNYC plan which, among oth­er ini­tia­tives, estab­lish­es a broad goal to send zero waste to land­fill by 2023. This goal sets the stage for progress, but many ques­tions remain. Detailed action plans to increase waste reduc­tion and diver­sion rates have not been pre­sent­ed. More trou­bling, the plan does not spec­i­fy what waste dis­pos­al approach­es and tech­nolo­gies will be con­sid­ered by the City to keep waste out of landfills.

Sev­er­al years ago, New York City decid­ed that incin­er­a­tion is too dirty to be used with­in its five bor­oughs. While imple­ment­ing the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Plan, how­ev­er, elect­ed offi­cials and the Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion (DSNY) had no prob­lem decid­ing to send near­ly a mil­lion tons of putresci­ble waste each year to be burned in aging and poor­ly fil­tered Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tors hun­dreds of miles from the City.

We need to ensure that New York City achieves its new waste reduc­tion goal – and does so in a way that pro­tects not just res­i­dents of the City’s five bor­oughs, but dis­tant com­mu­ni­ties as well — and the environment.