Sanitation commissioner says new plan could sweep trash problem out of SE Queens
/
By Victoria Merlino
Southeast Queens communities may soon see some respite from the flood of private garbage trucks residents say are clogging their streets, lowering their air quality and filling their neighborhoods with a foul odor.
Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia emphasized the benefits of commercial waste zones at a Crain’s New York Business event on Tuesday, a plan devised by DSNY and the City Council to bring into line the over 90 largely unregulated companies that cart the 3 million tons of trash per year from restaurants, corporations and other businesses around the city. This industry runs separately from the public DSNY, which handles residential garbage.
“I want it to be successful because the back stop is going to be the department. And I don’t want to take over the private carting industry,” Garcia said of the plan.
She argued that overlapping routes — some neighborhoods are served by over 50 carters, and some drivers are expected to make more than 1,000 stops per route — and subsequent shortcuts drivers take to meet those goals cause a safety issue, as well as a sustainability problem. Trucks driving these long routes expend more gas and release more exhaust fumes.
Many private trucks dump their stinky cargo at transfer stations in Southeast Queens, the South Bronx and Northern Brooklyn, with these areas seeing significant uptick in private trucks moving trash through them in recent years, as previously reported by the Eagle.
The plan moving through City Council, sponsored by Ridgewood Councilmember Antonio Reynoso, would restrict the carters into 20 specific zones where only a few carters operate in each zone. Reynoso’s initial plan set each zone to have one carter, while DSNY promoted a plan with three to five per zone.
Reynoso and DSNY settled on around three per zone last week, according to POLITICO.
“We heard loud and clear from businesses that they needed to know that they had control over choice,” Garcia told the crowd at the Crain’s event.
Garcia said that though it was difficult to make predictions as to how many carters would lose jobs because of the plan, the projected increase in recycling jobs would mean “basically it is a wash.”
“We have designed the plan to make sure that the smaller carters that are in the market today can be competitive,” Garcia said, noting that if an employer owned, a smaller number of trucks, they would still be able to be competitive.
As for the transfer stations, DSNY would be looking into the distance between carters’ service areas and transfer stations, as well as if they are using more sustainable ways of transporting garbage. Alternative options to trucks, such as barges and rail travel, would serve to decrease air pollution and take some private trucks out of clogged neighborhoods, according to a report from advocacy group Transform Don’t Trash NYC.
She said she was hopeful for the City Council to pass the bill this month, though she didn’t know for sure.
“I think that Rikers is on the agenda right now,” Garcia said. “I don’t know why they didn’t want to do garbage first,” she said, elicting chuckles from the audience.
