New York, NY – Mayor Bloomberg is trying to dump the city’s garbage problem on neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, advocates charge.
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Bloomberg pledged in a landmark garbage plan five years ago to open new waste transfer stations – including three in Manhattan and one in southern Brooklyn – to ease the pain on neighborhoods that are packed with the plants.
But Hizzoner’s budget pulls funding for those stations – pushing them off at least five years and, advocates fear, killing them altogether.
That would leave Greenpoint, East Williamsburg and Hunts Point holding the garbage bag. More than 60% of the city’s trash now goes to plants in the South Bronx and along Newtown Creek.
Manhattan puts out 40% of the city’s trash, but doesn’t have any transfer stations.
Residents complain that so many stations in one place means foul smells, pollution-spewing trucks clogging the streets, and dust and debris blowing around.
There are 19 stations near the creek.
The plan isn’t just to trash Manhattan neighborhoods instead – since the new, upgraded facilities would keep their garbage covered and use barges instead of trucks.
Bloomberg said he had to cut the funds because of the city’s cash crunch – but he is reconsidering.
He said the city is looking for ways to restore some of the funding.
Manhattan is the hub of the city’s financial and commercial activities and has some of the highest-end apartments and shops in the world. It would be a shanda to put trash collection sites in Manhattan when there are so many sites in less affluent areas where the impact would be less significant on neighboring business when measured in dollar terms. You cannot compare the adverse affect on a Madison Ave. botique selling Hermes handbags with a local market selling cheap childrenen’s clothing on 13th Avenue.
I understand that the Brooklyn residents don’t like this. But who cars not this mayer in his 3rd term.