Brooklyn Residents Claim City Targeting Their Neighborhood for Garbage Stations

Mayor Bloomberg is trying to dump the city’s garbage problem on neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, advocates charge.

Bloomberg pledged in a landmark garbage plan five years ago to open new waste transfer stations – including three in Manhattan and one in southern Brooklyn – to ease the pain on neighborhoods that are packed with the plants.

But Hizzoner’s budget pulls funding for those stations – pushing them off at least five years and, advocates fear, killing them altogether.

That would leave Greenpoint, East Williamsburg and Hunts Point holding the garbage bag. More than 60% of the city’s trash now goes to plants in the South Bronx and along Newtown Creek.

“This . . . tale of two cities needs to end,” said Kelly Terry-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point Community Development Corp. in Hunts Point, where there are 15 waste transfer stations. “We were moving in the right direction. Let’s not backtrack.”

Manhattan puts out 40% of the city’s trash, but doesn’t have any transfer stations.

Residents complain that so many stations in one place means foul smells, pollution-spewing trucks clogging the streets, and dust and debris blowing around.

“They are nasty operations,” said Michael Heimbinder of the Newtown Creek Alliance. “When you go past these places, especially during the summer, they reek.”

There are 19 stations near the creek.

But he added the plan isn’t just to trash Manhattan neighborhoods instead – since the new, upgraded facilities would keep their garbage covered and use barges instead of trucks.

Bloomberg said he had to cut the funds because of the city’s cash crunch – but he is reconsidering.

“The administration remains fully committed to [the 2006 plan’s] principles of borough equity, using rail and barge to transfer solid waste, [and] relieving the burden of waste receiving from certain communities,” said mayoral spokesman Jason Post.

He said the city is looking for ways to restore some of the funding.

“We’re urging the mayor to listen to his better angels on this one,” said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. “There is perhaps no starker example of environmental injustice.”