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Commentary

LIFE AFTER FRESH KILLS?

Our Y2+2K Problem

Marilyn Gelber, Co-chair
Environmental Action Coalition

Out of sight, out of mind. You don't pay directly for it, the system is largely invisible to the average New Yorker, and media coverage is infrequent. Yet, New York has a crisis - the solution to which may require more than $300 million annually for decades to come.

We're talking garbage. Garbage Crisis One is the 11,000 tons of solid waste collected daily by the Department of Sanitation, and buried at the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island. Garbage Crisis Two is the 13,000 additional tons of commercial stuff that used to go to Fresh Kills and is now exported.

Garbage Crises One and Two merge in 2002, when Fresh Kills will close - and deservedly so: it's an open dump that fails federal standards. It is an environmental disaster for Staten Island.

But what will "post-FK life" be like for New York City? Is there a plan? That debate is underway, as the City Council prepares to review the Administration's proposed Update to the City's Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan and the accompanying environmental impact documents prepared to support the Administration's landfill closure plans.

There's good news in the proposed Update:

  • Recycling is diverting over 20% of residential waste, an incredible accomplishment just ten years since passing the City's mandatory recycling law. The Update projects 25% diversion within a few years - keeping us a leader among the nation's cities. The recent return to weekly collection of recyclables should help achieve this goal.
  • Waste generation rates - even amidst a booming economy - are flat, meaning that waste prevention measures are beginning to take hold.
  • Laws threatening to restrict the City's ability to export nonrecyclable garbage have not been passed by Congress or neighboring states, keeping the City's options open without artificially inflating export prices. The nation's largest waste management companies are willing to take every ounce we generate - at a price - to federally-approved disposal facilities.
But there's not-so-good news in the proposed Update:
  • The annual cost to export residential garbage to out-of-city landfills will reach an estimated $300 million or more.
  • Super-sized waste-transfer facilities are planned for waterfront areas of the City, based on contracts to be awarded by the Department of Sanitation. Much remains to be decided about those facilities, although they have already provoked deep anxieties among their potential neighbors. Updated regulations governing their siting and operations are needed, as are decisions about how they will be integrated with the existing City-owned marine transfer system, or whether that existing system can be upgraded to avoid the new facilities. Even the City's interim arrangements for lessening the load at Fresh Kills has serious impacts: instead of barges, thousands of new truck trips on overcrowded streets and highways, and millions of dollars in export fees.

Because the Update does not provide a clear picture, communities are becoming increasingly nervous. Information is inadequate. An unhealthy movement has even started over making each borough self-sufficient in managing the garbage it generates, rather than seeing this as a city-wide challenge.

All of these issues led a Times editorial to say that "Dealing with the waste stream in the 21st century is probably New York's most important unsolved environmental problem. [The Giuliani administration must] begin the laborious task of building public consensus on a contentious issue."

Apartment buildings may be key. The City targets more than 40% of residential waste as recyclable, but most apartment buildings fall short. As things stand now, building managers and co-op/condo boards decide recycling success or failure by the way they explain and enforce recycling rules and practices. Future improvements may rely on technical fixes, like a state-of-the-art system that allows existing trash chutes also to be used for collecting recyclables by adding a set of containers on a rotating, computer-controlled carousel at the bottom.

Other steps can help. Kitchen sink food waste disposers - their relatively new legal status is cited in the Update as a positive development - can reduce the most expensive and difficult portion of garbage to collect, export and bury. Disposers pulverize and liquefy food waste into particles that travel through the sewer system, are captured by the City's wastewater treatment facilities and end up as land fertilizer. Indeed, more than 100 municipalities - including major urban centers - require food waste disposers, even in commercial establishments, so as to divert food waste from landfills. Widespread use of "garbage grinders" could reduce the City's solid waste burden by as much as 5%, with minimal impact on our wastewater treatment system.

One way or the other, New Yorkers can't remain indifferent to waste disposal. The imminent closing of Fresh Kills sounds the warning bell. It's time to renew individual and collective commitment to recycling and waste prevention. And it's time to start some overall long-range planning. Decisions made in the coming year will determine the City's policies and practices for decades to come.

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Marilyn Gelber is co-chair of the Environmental Action Coalition.

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