Once again, only the New York State Assembly stands in the way of NYC’s plan to reduce waste truck traffic. Last week, the New York State Senate voted to amend the Hudson River Park Act to allow a marine transfer station at the Gansevoort Peninsula in Manhattan. The transfer station is a key component of NYC’s Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP), which reduces truck miles traveled through the construction and reopening of truck-to-barge and truck-to-rail transfer stations in each borough (see MTR # 536). The Gansevoort transfer station would take in Manhattan recyclables so they could be barged to a processing center.

The SWMP was adopted by the City Council in 2006 because it would reduce truck traffic (by 3.5 million miles annually within NYC, with even larger reductions outside of the city) and require each borough to handle its own garbage and recyclables. Previously, most of the city’s solid waste was trucked, often over long distances, to transfer stations in the South Bronx and Williamsburg. Some parts of the SWMP have already been implemented, but until a Manhattan recycling transfer station is opened, significant amounts of Manhattan recyclables will continue to be trucked to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.

Last year Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver blocked a vote on the transfer station because of opposition from West Side Assemblymembers Richard Gottfried, Deborah Glick, and Linda Rosenthal over the Gansevoort site. A bill to allow the station (A09005) has been reintroduced in the Assembly, and is sitting in the same committee it died in last year. The New York Post recently called on Silver to schedule a vote, calling the SWMP “vital to New Yorkers at large – particularly to minority communities outside Manhattan.”