East Side Neighbors Balk At Plan For Garage For 180 Garbage Trucks

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A fight has erupted over trucks on the East Side, as the city Department of Sanitation plans for a new garage for 180 of its trucks.

As CBS2's Jessica Schneider reported, people living near East 25th Street and First Avenue in Kips Bay do not want it in their neighborhood.

Lisa Denby has lived on the East Side in the 20s for 28 years. She said the neighborhood is already crowded and polluted enough without a mammoth garbage truck garage moving in.

"Building a 477,000 square-foot sanitation garage right here seems like the worst place," Denby said.

The city has been going through a public comment period in its quest to build the garage.

But people who live in the area point to the constant congestion, and the city's own research that their East Side neighborhood has the worst air quality levels in Manhattan.

The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found an average concentration of asthma-contributing particulates of 13.2 for the Gramercy-Murray Hill area, which includes the proposed garage site. Chelsea followed with 12.41, the Upper East Side with 11.1, and Lower Manhattan with 11.06.

They want the planning to stop.

"It just feels like we're not being heard by the Department of Sanitation," Denby said. "It feels like they're not taking us seriously."

The Department of Sanitation wants the garage to open at the Brookdale Nursing School site on East 25th Street.

"We're storing our trucks in the public streets on the West Side of Manhattan for District 6," said Steven Brautigam of the Department of Sanitation. "They have to come all the way across town to service their area and then go back to be parked on the streets."

People in the area do not dispute that there should be a garage on the East Side. They just want it in a different place.

"There's too much congestion here already, and bringing in this many more vehicles is just going to be a disaster," said Janet Handal of the Waterside Plaza Tenants Association.

The plan for the East 25th Street garage is not a done deal. The city will make a final decision by the end of the year.