A waster transfer station on the Upper East Side has been a controversial topic for the past 10 years, even since Mayor Bloomberg proposed to put a new trash facility on East 91st Street and the East River. Even though it's under construction, the Independent Budget Office says it'd actually be much less expensive if we just kept shipping trash to New Jersey and Yonkers!

In a letter (PDF) to Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, the IBO wrote, "The present value of the twenty-year cost of exporting under interim contracts to transfer station is $253.2 million compared with $632.5 million for construction and operating the East 91st Street MTS. We estimate that in 2016, the first year of operations at the new facility, the cost per ton_including capital costs—would be $278 for the East 91st MTS and $93 for the interim plan."