| Issue 296 | December 4, 2000 |
The
Solid Waste Management Plan of New York City was approved by the City Council
by a vote of 49-1 with one abstention last Wednesday. (The dissenting vote
came from South Bronx Council Member Pedro Espada). The plan calls for
each of the city's five boroughs to handle its own garbage and to move
all of the garbage out of the city either by barge and rail. The
lynch-pin of this strategy is an enclosed barge unloading facility to be
built by Browning Ferris Industries in Linden, NJ that would receive up
to 10,000 tons of New York City's garbage and load it in sealed containers
to be transported in one train per day along the Chemical Coast Line to
landfills in the South and Midwest. Last Thursday, the Union County Freeholder
Board voted unanimously (7-0) in favor of an amendment to the county's
solid waste plan to allow the Linden plan to proceed.
If both plans are implemented, NYC's residential trash would make only one truck trip - from curbside to a marine transfer station or rail transfer station in the Bronx. A large step forward from last year's plan to haul garbage to truck transfer stations and placed on long-haul trucks bound for the landfills (MTR #220).
However, the Union County Freeholder decision is not the last step in the process for the proposed $50 million barge-unloading facility. Permits are still required from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and there is considerable organized opposition to the plan in Middlesex County where residents and officials with the safety and quality of life impacts of long trains traveling their communities carrying waste.
The Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods in NYC, one of the main organizations working to improve the trash plan, fears that if the Linden facility is not built, then the plan to use the marine transfer station could be scrapped and trucks would again become the mode of choice for waste transfer. Further they have criticized NYC's plan for not taking the opportunity to address the truck-based transport of the commercial waste stream.
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