New York, NY —
Traffic is the bane of many a New Yorkers' existence. We're either stuck in it, dodging it, or listening to it, like Carlotta Giglio does every single day.
GIGLIO: I used to keep very pretty little suncatchers in my windows. I don't do it anymore. You know why? All day long, they go, ts, ts ts ts. Because of the vibrations. I don't like to be reminded that my house is shaking so much, so I took everything out of the windows.
Giglio has lived on Metropolitan Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for 57 years. Metropolitan Avenue is a main thoroughfare for trucks of all stripes but the ones that really bother Giglio and her neighbors are the big 18-wheeled trucks, taking trash or demolition debris to and from one of the private waste transfer stations in Greenpoint-Williamsburg.
GIGLIO: My girlfriend across the street, who has that bay window, she kept calling me, "Carlotta, I think somebody keeps throwing pebbles at my window." I said, "No Lorraine, it's not pebbles, it's from the trucks." And many times I find garbage that falls off the trucks in my gate.
Greenpoint-Williamsburg is one of a handful of outer-borough neighborhoods -- predominantly working class, predominantly black and Latino -- that play host to waste transfer stations. These are the privately-owned places where city sanitation trucks and commercial garbage collectors dump all their loads -- 50,000 tons, every day -- so that this trash can be placed in long-haul trucks and driven to distant landfills.
Two years ago, in its solid waste management plan, the city agreed to end the inequities of this system. It made a commitment to borough self-sufficiency, with plans to open waste transfer stations in all five boroughs, including Manhattan. It promised to reduce exhaust-spewing trucks, by requiring those facilities to send out garbage by barge or train. It banned new waste processing sites in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, and the overburdened communities of Jamaica, Queens, and the South Bronx. And it vowed to reduce the amount of trash moving through those neighborhoods. Environmental advocates cheered. City Councilwoman Diana Reyna is still holding her applause.
REYNA: It's frustrating to see that this has been claimed as a victory. In my eyes, it's nowhere near a victorious moment.
Reyna represents Greenpoint-Williamsburg. She says the city is way behind in its effort to secure promises from private garbage haulers to reduce their garbage capacity by 6,000 tons a day. Those agreements were due by April, 2007, and are supposed to kick in as the new, city-owned waste transfer stations open up several years from now. Every garbage company gets a permit from the state that allows it to take more garbage than it actually plans to handle. That "wiggle room" is allowed for emergencies, like hurricanes, that would produce a glut of garbage. Reyna says the figures she's seen just reduces the "wiggle room," and not the actual amount of trash flowing into her community.
REYNA: It cannot stop at the unused level. It has to go beyond the unused level, into the USED capacity, to then start seeing a difference. Because those are the trucks that are hauling waste in and out, every day.
Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler defends the administration's approach.
SKYLER: Reducing their capacity has a real impact. And if it didn't have a real impact, we wouldn't be having the time we're having, trying to achieve it. It would have just been, "Okay, fine, no big deal."
The National Solid Waste Management Association, which represents private waste haulers, would only say its members provide jobs and conduct a vital service, and that they're working with the city to reduce the effects of their operations. Deputy Mayor Skyler, meanwhile, says the city won't have to dump residential garbage at those private transfer stations, once it opens four of its own trash barge sites in 2013.
SKYLER: The practical effect of taking nearly 12,000 tons, almost, of residential waste and not taking it to these stations will essentially be relieving these communities of that traffic, congestion, pollution, etc.
When these MTS's open, city garbage trucks will no longer trundle through Greenpoint-Williamsburg to drop off their loads at private waste transfer facilities. But commercial garbage haulers, servicing the city's businesses, will still be making those same runs. The bulk of the city's garbage -- 38,000 tons a day -- is commercial waste, primarily from Manhattan. That trash will still be headed for the outer boroughs, before going to landfills.
There's no plan to divert that stuff to the city's new marine waste transfer stations. Forcing private garbage haulers to do so would run into all sorts of legal trouble. Offering them incentives could defeat the city's goal of stabilizing its garbage export costs. It's a problem that will have to be addressed in the next solid waste plan. Carlotta Giglio knows that could be years away.
GIGLIO: I hope I'm alive to see reduction, but I don't think it's gonna happen in my lifetime, I really don't. I'm really sad about it. Because my whole neighborhood is being destroyed.
See photos of garbage transfer facilities in Greenpoint-Williamsburg and the South Bronx.