Marine Transfer Station

"I am pleased to report that thanks to your work and more importantly the great recyclers in your community, the amount of refuse processed at the MTS will be lower than anticipated during the planning process," Garcia said in a letter.

City Councilman Ben Kallos said the reduction of truck traffic on the Upper East Side is a positive sign that the city may scrap the plan entirely.

"We've spent four years fighting the Marine Transfer Station and pushing for a smarter way to handle our city's waste, which is already paying off with a 25% reduction in trucks and trash," Kallos said in a statement. "We must continue our fight to stop the Marine Transfer Station from opening, if it opens see it closed, and spend every moment reducing waste through diversion, such as reusing, composting and recycling."

A kinder, gentler, cleaner dump

BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN

PUBLISHED MAR 6, 2018 AT 4:28 PM (UPDATED MAR 6, 2018)

The garbage depot on the East River, one of the most reviled projects on the UES, may not be quite as dreadful as feared — but just-revealed sanitation truck routes will stress out plenty of neighbors

Photos

•  
   

  Twilight falls on the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station on Sunday, March 4th. Loathed by locals since it was proposed nearly 15 years ago, the MTS will now process far less trash than originally projected -- and the number of garbage trucks rumbling across the East Side will also plummet. Photo: Douglas Feiden

“Simply put, less trash means fewer trucks.”

Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia

The mountains of trash that will be hauled to the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station when it opens in 2019 have been dramatically reduced, new data from the city's Department of Sanitation shows.

Municipal garbage trucks will still thunder across the Upper East Side as they travel to and from the MTS — but the size of the planned fleet will be sharply scaled back, according to DOS projections.

In a January 25 letter sent to East Side elected officials, Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia summed up the bottom line: “This is not the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station of years ago,” she wrote.

The missive, provided to Straus News by East Side City Council Member Ben Kallos, who has long battled to kill the project, is perhaps the only good news the MTS has generated since it was first proposed in 2004.

“Thanks to your work — and more importantly, the great recyclers in your community — the amount of refuse processed at the MTS will be lower than anticipated during the planning process,” Garcia wrote.

Flash back to 2003, when then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg initiated the planning for a facility that would process all residential waste from Community Boards 5, 6, 8 and 11 — an area bounded by 14th Street on the south and 135th Street on the north, Eighth Avenue to the west and the East River to the east.

“Over the next few years, however, as the remaining stations begin to operate, the city’s per-ton waste export costs will likely continue to be higher than the existing short-term contracts they replace.”

The IBO findings distressed one city official.

“New York City is just throwing money in the trash by building marine transfer stations,” said City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan).

But Sanitation Department spokesman Vito Turso said the waste transfer stations and other city investments in rail and barge-based waste export “take trucks off the road, improving air quality and slashing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Councilman Ben Kallos said he has written a letter to DSNY Commissioner Kathryn Garcia requesting more information about the plan.

“The big concern that many constituents have is whether or not commercial carters as part of a franchising system would be required to dump in the neighborhoods that they pick up, or whether they might use this marine transfer station to force all the private carters who have franchises for Manhattan to dump on the Upper East Side,” Kallos said.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Councilman Ben Kallos, who both showed up to the vigil, spoke against the marine transfer station, saying it would only worsen the situation.

"People in the community pass on, but it should not happen because of bad public policy," Brewer said about the marine transfer station.

"The tragedy of all of this is that it won't be one private garbage truck, but hundreds an hour, driving through the side streets of the neighborhood, where they don't belong," Kallos added. "How many more deaths will it take? We need to make sure Jodi McGrath is the last person this happens to."

UPPER EAST SIDE — A local community board is making a last-ditch attempt to control the impacts of a planned marine transfer station on East 91st Street and York Avenue — after years of opposition from residents failed to stop construction from starting altogether.

The Marine Transfer Station Task Force was created as an attempt to halt the project, which seems to being going full steam ahead despite much objection from the community, according to Community Board 8 chairman Jim Clynes.

"We're going to see hundreds of trucks coming into residential neighborhoods," he said. "We're looking at knowing [pollution levels] on an hour to hour, day to day basis because there are 35,000 children playing in a park near this garbage dump."

Building state-of-the-art marine transfer stations, with the extra step of cranes putting containers onto barges, has become very expensive. The total construction cost for these stations is approaching $1 billion.

"The day the Solid Waste Management Plan was passed in 2006 it was already obsolete," says Council Member Ben Kallos, who represents the neighborhoods around the 91st Street MTS.

He has joined a long line of local politicians that have taken up the cause. In a March 25 preliminary budget hearing at City Hall, he grilled DSNY Commissioner Kathryn Garcia over rising construction costs.

Nonetheless, City Councilman Ben Kallos is urging constituents to voice their concerns during the comment period.

"With a public comment period for the permits up for review, our community has an opportunity to make our voices heard," he said in a statement. "I urge the DEC to fulfill its mandate to protect our neighborhoods and our environment by stopping the permits for the irresponsible and ill-conceived Marine Transfer Station."