Yesterday morning, Mayor Bloomberg and other officials announcing the start of a new garbage era in Brooklyn: The city will export thousands of tons of trash from North Brooklyn by rail instead of by road. Mayor Bloomberg pointed out removing trash by rail will eliminated 40 long haul tractor trailer trips each day (or 13,000 each year), “That’s not only going to help reduce congestion on the borough’s streets and highways, it also will reduce the City’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve the air we breathe - especially in communities that have long been unjustly saddled with handling other people’s waste.”
According to the city, the Varick Avenue transfer station will receive 950 tons of trash from Brooklyn Community Boards 1, 3, 4, and 5 six days a week. Then the trash will be loaded into rail containers, sealed, and moved onto cars that will be connected to trains. Interestingly, due to the way the tracks are, the trash will actually travel upstate first before being disposed of in Virginia.
The Bloomberg administration's waste management approach is that each borough should be responsible for getting rid of its trash, instead of shipping garbage to poorer neighborhoods. While Manhattan communities haven't been thrilled—the Ganzevoort waste transfer station was only approved last year while the Upper East Side waste transfer station is still being fought—it's a plan that's been hailed by outer-borough lawmakers (Council member Charles Barron had accused those UES station opponents of "environmental racism"). Council member Diana Reyna said the trash train is welcome, "For too long Community Board 1 has been burdened with a disproportionate amount of the city’s waste and has suffered with truck traffic, deplorable street conditions and high noise and air pollution."
