The Errol of His Ways

Errol Louis weighs in this morning against the City Council’s plan to vote down the mayor’s SWMP, particularly the reopening of a waste transfer station at 91st Street in Manhattan. We love Errol’s work but think that his critique of Speaker Miller is off base on this issue. In his column he says that the Council, “ought to be ashamed.”

We disagree. What is shameful is the mayor’s total failure to address waste reduction and his inability to devise a plan for commercial waste which, when added to the residential tonnage, exacerbates the city’s overall garbage export problem.

As we have already posted, the issue of siting is a red herring. We agree with Louis that the current garbage disposal methodology poses an unacceptable public health threat to the low income neighborhoods that host most of the city’s waste transfer stations. The solution, however, does not lie with creating “public health threat equity” but with reducing the hauling and storage of putrescible waste everywhere in the city.

Now, with Bloomberg’s plan in shreds it is incumbent on the City Council to come up with a better plan, one that puts waste reduction in as its centerpiece.