Trash Report: City Requires Disposal Help

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The New York Sun

The city needs to increase the number of companies that help it dispose of its waste and to develop an integrated recycling and garbage prevention program if it hopes to control the escalating costs of dealing with trash, according to a comptroller’s office report to be released today.


The 35-page report, obtained by The New York Sun, comes just as Mayor Bloomberg is expected to unveil his own 20-year plan for managing what New Yorkers throw out. That long-awaited plan, some details of which were first reported in the Sun last week, is also to be released today.


“The rising costs of exporting waste from New York City and the questionable reliability of the current network of disposal facilities present significant risks to both the public and private sectors,” the city comptroller, William Thompson Jr., said in his report, saying the cost of hauling and burying the city’s trash has risen nearly 50% in the past three years.


The mayor’s plan is an effort to stem those kinds of cost increases. Mr. Bloomberg has unveiled the plan in parts. He announced last month, for example, that the city entered into a long-term contract with recycling company Hugo Neu to handle glass, plastic, metal, and paper waste.


The sanitation commissioner, John Doherty, told the Sun last week that the Hugo Neu contract was a template for what the city ought to do more broadly to rein in costs. The mayor is expected to announce today, for example, the city’s intention to enter into 20-year incineration contracts with a New Jersey company.


The mayor’s plan also includes, among other things, proposals to allow private firms to deliver commercial waste to city processing plants; outline a network of marine transfer stations for trash; set new recycling goals, and focus on long-term contracts with operators of out-of-state landfills.


The comptroller’s report suggests that anything less than a drastic overhaul of the current system will leave the city vulnerable to rocketing garbage costs, now that the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island is closed and landfills across the Northeast are reaching capacity.


The concern, which Mr. Doherty addressed in his interview with the Sun, is that Pennsylvania – one of the three out-of-state destinations for city garbage – will hit its landfill capacity soon, and then the city will be held hostage and will have to pay top dollar to any other state that might have room for our trash. Pennsylvania is already tightening its requirements for imported waste, Mr. Doherty said.


That could leave New York City with millions of tons of waste with nowhere to go. On an average day in 2002, the city generated more than 15.5 million tons of waste and exported more than 8 million tons of it to landfills and incinerators outside New York City, according to comptroller’s figures.


The comptroller suggests that the city also work on reducing the amount of waste it produces. In the report, experts in his office said, “In the long run, the most cost competitive waste management solution will likely be a fully-integrated recycling and waste prevention program in which New York City takes an active role in creating viable markets for recycled products.”


The comptroller suggests that the city also work on reducing the amount of waste it produces and on taking “an active role in creating viable markets for recycled products.”


In laying out recommendations for the city’s waste program, Mr. Thompson said the city should:


* Pursue the development of publicly controlled disposal capacity in case the current landfills suddenly aren’t available;


* Consider purchasing access to existing landfills in upstate New York;


* Consider landfills in other parts of the country beyond Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, where it ships garbage now;


* Integrate its public- and private-sector waste instead of keeping it artificially separated as it does now;


* Look at other ways to transport waste, in addition to by rail and by boat;


* Increase the competition for its waste and diversity disposal options so that there are more than two or three companies bidding on garbage removal;


* Stop focusing on “burn and dump” as its waste management options, begin to develop local markets for the city’s recycled materials, and encourage New Yorkers to cut back on the trash they create.


The plan Mr. Bloomberg unveils today is likely to address many of those issues. The motivation is to help stabilize the costs of the city’s waste management over the longer term, Mr. Doherty said last week, adding that costs are unlikely to go down.


The New York Sun

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