Upper East Side Residents Continue Fight Against Proposed Garbage Transfer Station
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Residents of the Upper East Side have been fighting idea of a trash facility along the East River for years.
But the fight goes on over the controversial East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station, with cost and superstorm Sandy-related issues among new logs on the fire in a public hearing downtown on the proposed $3 billion project.
The city has long maintained that marine transfer stations are the best solution.
Upper East Side Residents Continue Fight Against Proposed Garbage Transfer Station
But opponents contend construction and operation costs are "mushrooming."
Waterfront damage from Sandy backs up the position of opponents, who've said for years that the East 91st Street location is a bad idea, WCBS 880's Paul Murnane reported.
"There's 30 percent more children here than all of the other MTSs combined," Kelly Nimmo-Guenther with the group Pledge 2 Protect told Murnane. "They're in more industrial areas. And our message is we need to be saving and preserving these industrialized areas and not sell them off to high-end developers."
Nimmo-Guenther added the fight is not over. She said trash has been barged from the spot before, which brought in trucks and rats.
One resident said the decision to build the trash station would be "despicable."
An administration spokesman said the East 91st Street facility is part of comprehensive citywide trash plan that has withstood court challenges and will reduce the use of trucks to transport garbage borough to borough.
The spokesman added that the design of the transfer station takes climate change and other environmental hazards into account.
The city has long eyed the site for the transfer station and is pushing the project more now with the closure of the Fresh Kills landfill. Officials have also said the planned facility would give each borough some of the trash collection burden.
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