US – New York City Mayor‘s trash plan would shift waste from trucks to barges

New York City Mayor Bloomberg has received high marks from officials and activists for his 20-year garbage plan to get trucks off the roads, strengthen recycling and make each borough responsible for its own waste.



The NY publication Queens Chronicle reports that although the executive summary of the plan was short on details and backtracked a bit from the mayor‘‘s original goal of opening eight marine transfer stations, waste experts lauded his commitment to opening four marine transfer stations and, for the first time, dealing with the impact that commercial waste transfer stations have on local communities.



Since the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island closed in 2001, the city has been getting rid of its trash via a truck-based system in which most of the 50,000 tons of commercial and residential trash generated daily is driven out of state and deposited at dumps and incinerators.



The mayor‘‘s plan, which requires the approval of the City Council and the Department of Environmental Conservation, could be operational by late 2007 once the College Point stations and others in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Bronx are retrofitted.



The most visionary but vaguest part of Bloomberg‘‘s plan deals with commercial waste, which is handled by private carting companies. He plans to open a marine transfer station exclusively for private carters at 59th Street in Manhattan, which generates the vast majority of the city‘‘s commercial waste. Right now, much of Manhattan‘‘s commercial waste is trucked to clusters of private transfer stations in the South Bronx, Williamsburg-Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Jamaica. Bloomberg alluded to a plan to help these neighbourhoods by capping the capacity of transfer stations in high-impact areas, improving conditions at and around existing transfer stations and encouraging private haulers to use barge and rail for exporting waste by using excess capacity at marine transfer stations