Environmental Garbage

In yesterday's Daily Politics blog, and the Politicker as well, there's coverage of the mayor's press conference on the call for the assembly to give the green light to the opening of the Gansevoort transfer station. This locale was chosen under the mayor's "fair share" vision, one that calls on all of the boroughs to bear the garbage burden more equitably.

That's certainly a worthwhile objective, but as we have said on numerous occasions it begs the question of how to more efficiently-and fairly as well-dispose of the city's trash. The mayor has done what amounts to a classic case of misdirection; while everyone's watching the debate over "environmental justice," no one is paying attention to the fact that the city has no-that's none like in zero-realistic plan to reduce the waste that it exports.

On top of all of this, we're unable to see that this failure to reduce is costing the city's tax payers big time! Our most recent estimate is that the city is paying waste management $390 million a year for exporting the garbage in just three boroughs (not including Manhattan and Staten Island).

In addition, when we look at commercial waste, and this is important because some of the most noxious transfer stations in low income communities of color are privately owned, the mayor and the city council speaker(both were front and center at the press conference) nixed the garbage grinder pilot that could have been the first step towards eliminating the most environmentally objectionable putrescible commercial waste and the truck traffic that Assemblyman Espaillat finds so damaging.

As Daily Politics says about Adriano: "But Espaillat and his supporters have responded that this is a racial justice issue because reducing the number of garbage trucks in the outer boroughs will improve air quality and reduce asthma rates." If so, then all of these folks should be joining with Joel Rivera and Hiram Monseratte in their promotion of the garbage disposals for city food businesses. That is, if they can pull themselves away from all of this distracting poltical drama.