Fresh Kills Landfill
Wasted: New York City's Giant Garbage Problem
New York City’s 8 million residents and millions of businesses, construction projects and visitors generate as much as 36,200 tons of garbage every day.
The city’s Department of Sanitation handles nearly 13,000 tons per day of waste generated by residents, public agencies and non-profit corporations; private carting companies handle the remainder.
During the twentieth century, the City relied on a number of landfills for garbage disposal. Then, in December 2001, the city’s last garbage dump, Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, closed. In response, we adopted a 20-year plan for exporting waste.
The city’s annual bill for collecting and disposing residential trash jumped from about $658 million in 2000 and to about one and a quarter billion dollars in 2008. The cost of disposal has grown from $300 million in 2005 to about $400 million today. While some of that is inflation, most of it is due to the higher cost of transporting and landfilling garbage out of state. The City’s long-term plan is to reduce costs by recycling more, reducing waste and building a waterfront waste transfer system less dependent on trucks and able to use containers to ship garbage by barge and train further away to cheaper dumpsites.
It is hard to imagine a more environmentally damaging waste-management system than the one we have in New York. read more »
The Morning Read: October 9, 2006
The City defends how it searched through 9/11 debris at Fresh Kills.
Jeanine Pirro will run a television ad, maybe as early as tomorrow, saying she didn't break any laws.
Hillary Clinton donated more than $2 million to Democratic campaigns recently.
Bill Thompson is taking Spanish lessons, and I'm presuming it's with thoughts of 2009.
The 87-year-old Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, will have a fundraiser for his re-election next Monday.
Embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert is skipping a fundraiser at Mike Bloomberg's townhouse for upstate congressman John Sweeney.
State Republicans start to form a circular firing squad.
Richard Clarke lays out 7 steps need to get US troops out of Iraq.
Ben says Russ Feingold is the candidate of "liberal ideological purity."
The Dolan family offers $19.2 billion to take the Cablevision empire private.
When New Jersey state Democrats said a Republican plan for ethics reform was partisan, the Times editorial board responded: "Of course they were. But in a state rocked by one scandal after another, who cares?"
-- Azi PaybarahFresh Kills
Somehow, they make it look pretty.
Whether anyone who doesn't live on Staten Island will go there remains the question. read more »
