City Limits Magazine, June/July 1988 Issue

June/July 1988 $2.
00
C . . . . . . . . . VI. S E X T O N D~ T O B U R N
W A S T E R B lU C T I O N DS O U T H B R O N X R E C Y C L E R S
BURIED ALIVE:
New York's Garbage
Quagmire
2 CITY LIMITS June' July 1988
Ciq L i m i ~ s
Volume XIII Number 5
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City Limits (ISSN 0199-0330)
(212) 925-9820
Editor: Beverl y Cheuvront
Managing Editor: Doug Turetsky
Contt'ibuting Editors: Peter Marcuse,
Peggy Moberg, Tom Robbins, Jennifer
Stern
Production: Chip Cliffe
Photographer: Cindy Reiman
Interns: Tohias Brown, Ursala Abrams
Copyright :> 1988. All Rights Reserved.
No portion or portions of this journal may
he reprinted without the express permis-
sion of the publishers.
City Limits is indexed in the Alternative
Press Index and the Avery Index to Ar-
chitectural Periodicals.
Cover photo by Beverly Cheuvront
EDITORIAL
Trashing Recycling Efforts
A number of critical environmental problems are threatening the
future of New York City. Because these issues impact on efforts to
stabilize and revitalize communities, and because they require neighbor-
hood-based leadership in seeking solutions, City Limits is devoting a
series of reports to the urban environment.
In this issue, we examine the crisis in garbage disposal as landfill
space rapidly fills up, As we researched this subject, a number of themes
. familiar to those in low income housing development emerged. First is
the lack of long-term planning that allowed the problem to explode into
a full-scale crisis. Second is the city's emphasis on big bucks and big
business to solve the problem - which is much like turning to the real
estate industry to solve the fiscal crisis of the '70s.
And Lower East Side housing advocates, who were ambushed recently
by a surprise announcement of Sam LeFrak's project in their midst, will
understand the anger of environmentalists, whose hard-fought recycling
bill was just sideswiped by the Koch administration.
Given the severity of the garbage crisis, incineration undoubtedly will
be necessary to cope with the Mount Everest of garbage rising on Staten
Island. But the problems of incineration are well-documented, and re-
cycling remains the best solution. With that in mind, Council Members
Sheldon Leffler, Ruth Messinger and Comptroller Harrison Goldin
drafted a stringent bill requiring mandatory recycling of 25 percent of
the city's garbage in four years.
That bill, Intro. 952, was introduced last December. A series of meet-
ings with the Department of Sanitation followed, and a compromise
bill was under discussion. But in an unexpected move last month, the
Koch administration - which has a sorry record on recycling - an-
nounced its own bill and a $25 million budget (up from $10.5 million)
for recycling in the upcoming fiscal year.
It was a mayoral headline-grabber. But while the proposed budget
addition is welcomed by environmentalists who have long questioned
the administration's sincerity on recycling, the bill itself has the teeth
of a newborn babe. Among the discrepancies: the Koch bill calls for
less recycling - 20 percent in eight years - "cheats" by crediting such
items as bottles collected under the state bottle bill and materials recy-
cled by commercial firms towards the city's efforts, and does not include
citizen oversight or the requirement for more buy-back centers in low
income neighborhoods. More importantly, it offers gigantic loopholes
allowing the DOS commissioner to simply call off recycling.
Intro. 952 won't solve the garbage crisis. But it will go far in providing
an ecologically preferr.ed alternative to burning. Mayor Koch would do
well to bury his bill in Fresh Kills and work on a compromise. that
retains the substance of Intro. 952.
In the meantime, it will be up to Council Majority Leader Peter Vallone
to move Intro. 952 out of committee. Those who want to see New York
City adopt a strong mandate to recycle should urge Vallone to take
action on that bill.D
***
This special report was made possible with funding from The New
York Community 1i'ust. Editorial Advisory Board members include Paul
. Mankiewicz, Gaia Institute and the Urban Bioshelter Project; Eric Gold-
stein, National Resources Defense Council; Maarten de Kadt, INFORM;
and Nancy Wolf, Environmental Action Coalition.
.
.
INSIDE
FEATURES
Resource Recovery: Politics and Profits 12
Critics charge that the city's emphasis on resource re-
covery plants is the big-business approach to solving
the garbage crisis.
Garbage Diet: Reducing the City's Flow of Trash 16
Everyone recognizes that the city is staggering under
a mountain of trash. But little is being done to reduce
the flow.
DEPARTMENTS
From the Editor
Trashing Recycling Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Short Term Notes
Bank Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Triangle Tensions . ... . ... ................ 4
Fifth Street Fracas ....................... 5
Ten-Year Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 5
No Salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 6
AIDS Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Neighborhood Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7
City Views
The Folly of Incineration . . ................ 8
Resource Recovery: Part of the Solution. . . . . 11
Program Focus
Cash for Trash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 21
................................. 23
June/July 1988 CITY LIMITS 3
Recover/Page 12
Reduce/Page 16

.
.
4 cln LIMITS June' July 1988
SHORT TERM NOTES
BANK FUTURES
With New York State's
Community Reinvestment Act
regulations expiring on June 30
ond stote-chartered banks
seeking to expand into other
financial services, Albany
lawmakers face a number of key
decisions . .,. titanic battle is now
going on in Albany that will
define the powers of banks and
financial institutions," said State
Senator Franz Leichter at a
meeting held by the Community
Service Society. "Sodly lacking
from this battle is the consumer,"
added Leichter.
Community reinvestment
activists see thebanlcs' desire ta
expand into new markets and
the upcoming renewal of CRA
rules as an oppartunity to
leverage additional manetary
and service commitments from
banks to low incame
communities. They also want to
see the state banking
department take a more
aggressive stand on CRA.
When a bank submits an
application to open a new
branch, merge with another
bank or undertake some other
action that needs approval, the
banking department is sup-
posed to take into account the
bank's record of meeting the
credit needs af low and
moderate income communities
in its market area before acting
on the application. In the past
six years, no bank has had an
application denied.
The banking department also
annually issues numerical
ratings of each bank$ CRA
performance. Then these ratings
are tied to the percentage of
assets a bank can invest in real
estate. Banks rautinely get high
ratings. In 1987, five banks that
failed to even fill out the
required CRA farms - Banco
Espanol de Credito, Bank of
Baroda, Bank of India, Empire
State Bank and Korea Exchange
Bank - did not receive a five,
the lowest rating the department
can issue.
Describing the banking de-
partment's current approach as
a "figleaf," Leichter said, "We
have to make this whole rating
system more meaningful, other-
wise CRA doesn't mean any-
thing."
Leichter has introduced a
number af bills aimed at
strengthening CRA. One bill
would link a bank's record af
branch closing mare closely to
CRA and empower the banking
department to make a determi-
nation if a branch should remain
apen. Manufacturers Hanaver
shut 19 branches from January,
1984, through January, 1987,
but perennially receives the
highest rating. Under the
propased bill, if a bank refuses
to keep the branch open, the
banking department automati-
cally would lower the CRA
rating.
Another Leichter-sponsored
bill would tighten definitions of
"qualifying community invest-
ments." QCls, which must be
made to low income
communities, were created in
1984 when state-chartered
banks were given the right to
invest in real estate. These QCI
investments must equal a
specific percentage of a bank$
tatal real estate investments,
depending on the institution$
CRA rating. The Leichter bill
would redefine QCls as loons
made only to low income
households.
A third bill would force banks
to disclose their commercial
loans, much like they already
must do with their mortgage
loons. Many activists believe
that commercial loan disclosure
will become a tool far
. increasing loons to small
businesses, especially in low
incame neighbarhoods.
Chicaga has employed such a
program successfully, and
commercial loan disclosure
legislation recently was passed
in Minnesota.
landmark banking legislation
also is taking shape in
Washington, D.C., where
lawmakers are set to repeal the
Glass-Steagall Act, which
separates commercial and
investment banking. Many of
the country's largest commercial
banks have been lobbying far
repeal of the ad so they can
enter the lucrative field of
investment banking.
Alan Fishbein, general
counsel to the Center for
Community Change, said, "We
view expanded powers as a
privilege. Only banks with good
(community reinvestment)
records should have the
privileges. II
Some Congressional
lowmakers seem to agree. As
City Limits goes to press, several
congressmen, including
Representatives Charles
Schumer, Robert Garcia and
Jaseph Kennedy II are
fashioning legislation that
tightens enforcement of federal
CRA rules and links increased
services to low income
communities with a bank$ right
to expand into new financial
markets. DDoug Turetsky
TRIANGLE
TENSIONS
A major industrial and
housing redevelopment plan for
the WilliamsburgiBedford-
Stuyvesant area is nearing
certification by the city's
Department of Planning.
Sponsored by pfizer, Inc., a
pharmaceutical company that
owns a large portion of the 17
acres in the redevelopment
area, and the Public
Development Corporation, the
plan has upset local community
leaders because many low
income residents would be
displaced.
City officials peg the number
of families to be displaced at 90,
but Assemblyman Vito lopez,
whose distrid includes the
Broadway Triangle
Development area, says the
number reaches 150. Thirty
small businesses also would be
relocated under the plan. The
Uniform land Use Review
Process committee of
Community Boord 1 recently
sent a letter to the city's planning
department outlining several
concerns, particularly the lack
of a "locally based remedy" for
relocation of the displaced
families.
Father Stephen lynch of All
Soints Parish says the
redevelopment plan "totally
ignores the existing population."
lynch says that the housing to
be built in the area is targeted
for employees at nEIOrby
Woodhull Hospital and for
business owners along local
shopping avenues.
The New York City Housing
Partnership plans to build some
150 two-family, owner-
occupied houses throughout the
redevelopment area. According
to Kothy Wyfde of the
Partnership, the homes would
sell for approximately
$135,000, with the second unit
renting for abaut $500.
"We are not going to tum our
backs on the people who live
there," says PDC spakesman lee
Silberstein. He adds that the
Urban Renewal Plan, which has
been submitted by the
Deportment of Housing
Preservation and Development,
has stringent guidelines on
relocation.
But lynch and others believe
that several existing low income
rehab projects are being
targeted for some of the
displaced families. Donald
Jacob, pfizer's diredor of state
govemment and civic affairs,
points to local rehab projects
sponsored by los Sures, St.
Nicholas Neighbarhood
Preservation Corp. and
Brooklyn Ecumenical
Cooperatives as likely sites for
the displaced families.
Gary Hattem, executive
diredor of St. Nick's, disagrees.
"We are not viewing this as
replacement housing," says
Hattem, adding, "We are not a
portner in the plan."
Wylde notes that a propased
100-unit building - not part of
the Partnership homes - also is
being considered for the
redevelopment area. She says
this new construction, probably
would be targeted for the
displaced families.
pfizer recently sent out a
Request for Qualifications to
developers for the industrial
sites. Under the urban renewal
plan, pfizer will be selling its
land to the city at "book value,
according to Jacob.
"pfizer is trying to put
together something that
maintains the fabric of the
community. We're not trying to
sweep the neighborhood with
an industrial park. In a lot of
ways that would have been
easier," says Jacob.
Community leaders agree
that both housing and industrial
redevelopment can be good for
the neighborhood. But lynch
says, 'We should work
together." ODoug Turetsky
FIFTH STREET
FRACAS
The staff of an international
development organization with
consultant status to the United
. Nations has become embroiled
in eviction proceedings at a
building it's renovating-
allegedly for homeless
people - on the lower East
Side.
The Order: Ecumenical,
which bought the building at
629 East Fifth Street, is the
full-time staff for the Institute of
Cultural Affairs, a 33-year-old
jnternational development
organization with affiliates
throughouttheworld and ties to
the U.N. The renovation
financing includes $400,000
from the state's Housing Trust
Fund.
The Order purchased the
building in October, 1987, as
th'e city was vesting the property
for back taxes. When the city
began the in rem process, 12
squatterfomilies moved into the
building, joining the 12 legal
tenant households. Initially, The
Order insisted that the city clear
th.e building of squatters before
selling it for $690,000, but the
city refused, saying the building
would be auctioned instead.
After completing the
purchase, The Order
immediately began housing
court proceedings to evict the
squatters. "If they don't want to
house these homeless families,
who the hell do they want to
house?" asks Michelle Schrieber,
a legal services attorney
representing several of the
squatters.
For The Order, it's partly a
numbers problem. The Order
wanted the building to house its
own members as well as the
TEN-YEAR
ADDITIONS
East 5th Street sao,a"e,.
Millie Lapez vaws will not move her and her
In proposing to renovate
every abandoned, city-owned
building and rehab all occupied
apartments owned by the city,
Mayor Edward Koch upped the
ante in his 10-Year Housing Plan.
To do this, the mayor wants to
add $900 million more from the
city's capital budget to the
original $4.2 billion, 10-year
commitment.
children from their apartment.
existing low income fomilies.
Bob White, who manages the
building, says the groups
intention was to do their bit for
the housing crisis "within the
confines .of this building."
George Walters, an Order
member, adds, 'We thought we
were going to help the
homeless."
Members of The Order still
live on East Fourth Street in an
SRO with no kitchen or
bathrooms, which is owned by
the Archdiocese of New York.
For about five years they lived
rent-free, but when asked for
rent, The Order started looking
for its own building. The East
Fifth Street building had enough
units without legal tenants to
house The Order.
The legal tenants in the
building have incomes low
enough to meet Housing Trust
Fund restrictions. The state
money will be used to rehab
their apartments, which must be
rented to families with no more
than 80 percent of the area's
median income.
Walters says several of the
squatters have vandalized the
building, including breaking the
elevator three times. "It was a
very clean building when we
first went to look at it," says
Walters.
Several of the squatters
disagree, claiming they have
helped improve building
conditions. "The apartments we
took over were shooting
galleries," says Maria Perez,
one ofthe squatters. At the time
of the city's vesting, the building
had 290 housing code
violations and a downstairs
apartment had been
firebombed.
While the squatters received
their eviction notices last
Christmas Eve, the tenants with
leases got to live rent-free for
several months. White says this
was done as a good-foith effort
while The Order spent about
$80,000 on renovations. The
number of violations is now
down to 20. Even the squatters
agree conditions have
improved in recent months.
But Schrieber says, "The more
work they (The Order) do in the
building, the more they think
they can threaten my clients."
Because two legal tenants have
moved, The Order has offered
two squatter families leases, but
it wants three years of back rent
that had not been paid to the
previous owner.
'We've bent over backwards
to accommodate them (the
squatters)," says Walters. In late
March, the squatters were
offered $1,000 each to move
within 15 days, with the amount
declining to $250 to leave
within 60 days. Schrieber terms
the offer "absurd."
Walters acknowledges that
tensions between The Order
and local activists have grown
in recent months with the
impending evictions. Although
the group stresses grassroots
participation in its international
development activities, lower
East Side activists like Chino
Garcia of Charas says The
Order doesn't participate in
local coalitions. According to
the Institute's own promotional
literature, the renovation of East
Fifth Street building is one of the
groups primary activities in
New York.
Schrieber and The Order are
set for another housing court
appearance as City Limits. goes
to press. Walters says, ''This thing
has escalated into a mess."
ODoug Turetsky
But while increasing the
money the city will commit, the
mayor also raised the definitions
of low and moderate incomes.
The city now defines low income
as a fomily earning up to
$19,200 (formerly $15,000),
and moderate income from
$19,200 to $32,000 (formerly
$15,000 to $25,000). City
officials say these new,
substantially higher definitions
are based on recent federal
calculations that peg the city's
median income at $32,400.
Bonnie Brower of the
Housing Justice Campaign
disputes these new income
definitions, noting that the
soon-to-be-released, city-
commissioned Housing in New
York study reports that the
median renter income is still just
$16,611. "He (the moyor) can
create moderate income
housing and call it low income
and he has stretched middle into
the highest income brackets of
the city," says Brower.
Funding for the updated plan
draws more heavily on capital
budget funds than the previous
plan. It also includes $300
million from a proposed Bank
for Regional Development and
a Fund for Regional
Development. The Port
Authority of New York and New
Jersey, initially targeted to form
the bank, has resisted
involvement, says Mark Elliot,
assistant director of the city's
Office of Management and
Budget.
Funding for the plan also
counts on $800 million
generated by Battery Park
City - $400 million more than
before. Elliot says this additional
$400 million commitment fram
the Battery Park City Authority,
6 CITY LIMITS Junel July 1988
which is based on project
revenues, has not been finalized
yet. "I'm not going to say it's
etched in stone, but we're pretty
confident of it," says Elliot.
Another $700 million from a
proposed city Housing Trust
Fund, part of the original $4.2
billion revenue base, has been
dropped from the revised plan
because of the state legislature's
failure to adopt a recording tax
on co-op mortgages. DDoug
Turetsky
NO SALVATION
The Salvation Armys efforts
to evict three women from its Ten
Eyck-Troughton Memorial
Residence has underscored the '
growing problem of evictions
from nonprofit residences.
Tenants whose landlords are
nonprofit agencies have few
protections under state law,
according to Mary McCune, a
community organizer with the
East Side SRO Legal Services
Project who is working with the
Salvation Army's tenants. She
says an increasing number of
evictions by non profits has
raised concern among
who have formed a
coalition to seek legislative
changes.
Recent incidents include the
Salvation Armys attempt to oust
three women from their East
39th Street residence, including
a 55-year-old woman who has
lived at the Ten Eyck for about
20 years. Her eviction attempt
came after she became active
in a tenants association, and
McCune fears this signals more
evictions in the future.
Rent arrears and failure to
participate in the facility's
program triggered the evictions,
according to Lt. Col. Paul Kelly,
divison commanderforthe New
York City Salvation Army.
"When they (residents) come to
the Ten Eyck, they are agreeing
to a program. It is not a shelter,
it is not an SRO-it is a
program," he says.
Kelly says the 336-room Ten
Eyck is designed for working
women seeking a safe
environment. Rents ranging
from $115 to $121 per week
Organizing at the Salvation Army:
The Salvation Army began evicting women ot its Ten Eyck-Troushton Resi-
dence after they began organizing a tenant's union, led by Renee Prespare,
who is pictured here.
include two meals daily, maid
service and an obligation to
participate in social and
devotional programs, he
explains.
The trio facing eviction have
refused to pay rent and to meet
with a social worker to try to
wark out payments, he charged.
In addition, Kelly says, they are
disruptive. ''We feel very
strongly about having a
Christian environment. We are
not into soap box speeches or
political agitation to convert the
residence to an SRO. All we
Vlant is for them to pay rent up
to their ability and to
participate."
"The biggest reason for the
evictions is non-payment of rent.
They have outstanding debts in
the several thousands," says
Craig Evans, the public affairs
director. He denied reports that
the city's welfare department
offered to cover rent arrears. "If
someone offered to pay their
back rent, of course be
welcome to stay," Evans says.
But advocates and the
women themselves paint a very
different picture of the situation
at the Ten Eyck Residence.
Problems began last year
when a new administrator,
Major Ronald Foreman, took
over, McCune reports. "It
started with small things that
were upsetting to the women,"
then exploded when some of
them joined Met Council and
began organizing a tenants
group. "This created a real
brouhaha, and Foreman
accused tenants of disturbing
others by leafletting."
One of the evictees is Peggy
Gilmartin, 55, who is on public
assistance. Since her income
does not fully cover the rent, in
the past Gilmartin was given
grants. In tum, she assisted the
Salvation Army with fundraising.
"They don't say so much about
the money - they use the term
"troublemaker" and "disruptive,"
explains Gilmartin, who
conceeds that she is in arrears.
Her eviction, she believes, was
filed "because we started to
organize."
Sheila Washington also is
being evicted. She came to the
residence more than four years
ago after a stressful divorce,
tried to freelance, and is now
seeking full-time work. "She is
just getting back on her feet
now," says McCune. Although
Washington wants to pay her
rent arrears, McCune notes that
Housing Court Judge Howard
Malatzky reportedly refused to
adjourn her hearing so she
could attend a job interview.
Because the case is still before
him, the judge would not
comment on the adjournment
request.
McCune also notes that the
Salvation Army hired a social
worker for the Ten Eyck only
after the evictions were filed
and that the trio was not
permitted to meet with her,
contrary to Kelly's allegation
that they refused help. She also
says that the city's welfare
department offered to cover
Washington's back rent, but the
Salvation Army rejected the
offer.
Although Kelly says the Army
will offer shelter space to
anyone evicted from the Ten
Eyck, tenants are skeptical. "I
literally have no place to go,"
says Gilmartin. "You think about
the Salvation Army - they're
supposed to help
people."DBeverly
Cheuvront
AIDS HOUSING
The AIDS Resource Center,
which recently sponsored the
nation's first conference on
homeless people with AIDS, is
organizing a coalition of groups
seeking to develop housing for
the growing number of people
with the disease.
The Supportive Housing Task
Force will bring together
interested AIDS advocates,
housing activists and low
income housing developers to
share information and to
collaborate on projects.
The April 27 conference
included experts throughout the
country, metropolitan area
AIDS and housing
organizations, and public
officials, who discussed housing
models and funding for PWAs.
The AIDS Resource Center,
which operates Bailey House
and a scattered site apartment
program, provides virtually the
only such housing programs in
New York City. ''When we meet
again next year," ARC Executive
Director Douglas Dornan told
participants, "I hope we'll be
hearing of a lot more (housing
providers) than ARC"
Absent from the conference
were representatives from the
city's Department of Housing
Preservation and Development.
HPD officials have said in the
past that the city's housing
agency should not take
responsibility for creating
housing for PWAs. HPD also did
not join an interagency task
force that produced a recently
released five-year plan for
coping with the AIDS
crisis.D
The Bronx
The city filed suit against two
Riverdale realtors for steering black
apartment-seekers away from that
neighborhood. Following an investi-
gation by the Commission on Human
Rights, the Corporation Counsel
brought discrimination charges
against Kahan & Kahan Realty Ltd.
and Susan E. Goldy Inc. Kahan Realty
lost a similar suit in 1979 when a
black school administrator charged
the firm refused to show him apart-
ments in Riverdale ...
Some 42 buildings along the Cross
Bronx Expressway that have become
symbols of the borough's blight and
abandonment will be renovated in
the next phase of the Community
Management Program. The $96 mil-
lion renovation will create 1,368 units
for homeless, low and moderate in-
come families . Since 1983 the build-
ings have sported window decals af-
fecting an "occupied look."
Brooklyn
Legal services lawyers have filed
lawsuits against the Brooklyn Arms
Hotel in downtown' Brooklyn and the
Bullshipper Hotel in Clinton Hill for
attempting to evict homeless families
without going to housing court. The
tenants involved in the actions had
resided in the welfare hotels for more
than 30 days. Frank Chris Jackson, a
former Brooklyn Arms employee who
was named in the suit for his role in
the attempted eviction, is running for
district leader in the 57th Assembly
District. ..
Manhattan
Several borough housing activists
have formed the Committee Against
Harassing Lawsuits and are now com-
piling information on suits filed by
landlords and developers against ten-
ant activists. Committee members be-
lieve these suits, which are often
dropped or dismissed by judges, are
filed to drain money and time from
organizing efforts. The committee
can be contacted by wrIting care of J.
Gibbs, Center for Constitutional
Rights, 666 Broadway, 10012 ...
BASTA, a coalition of Lower East
Side community, 'business and religi-
ous groups, has filed a class-action
suit against the city charging that its
shelter policies are destroying the
community. The BASTA suit claims
the city's decision to change the
Third Street Shelter into a central pro-
cessing facility that draws some 2,000
homeless men daily into the area was
illegal.
Queens
For the past decade, residents of
Dutch Kills have tried to convince the
Department of City Planning to
change much of the local zoning from
manufacturing to residential - a
move the planning department has
steadfastly resisted. But city planners
have recently been aiding Hartz
Mountain head and Village Voice
owner Leonard Stern with his plans
for a luxury condo project at a man-
ufacturing site just a few blocks away
in Long Island City. Stern wants to
build a $75 million, 900-unit condo
development along the waterfront
overlooking Manhattan. D
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CITY VIEWS
The Folly of Incineration
BY BARRY COMMONER
THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE'S
closing is an unpleasant reminder of
a common New York affliction: long-
term neglect of the city's infrastruc-
ture leading to disaster. The trash dis-
posal problem is an equally serious
example of this civic disorder. For
. years the city neglected to reduce the
flow of trash to the one major remain-
ing repository - the Fresh Kills, Sta-
ten Island, landfill - despite know-
ing it will fill up and shut down in
about 10 years.
When the Koch administration
finally acted, it only made matters
worse. In December, 1984, the Board
of Estimate approved a Department
of Sanitation plan to build five, and
eventually eight, incinerators, each
taking four to five years to design and
build, at a total construction cost of
some $3 billion. To meet the 10-year
deadline, the city must start building
at least four incinerators now and
four more five years later. There is
little chance the deadline will be met:
The first proposed incinerator at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard still lacks a con-
struction permit, the next four are far
less advanced, and the remaining
three are not even discussed. Unless
the plan is changed, the city is
headed for a monumental trash crisis.
The Navy Yard incinerator has met
with intense opposition, chiefly be-
cause of its expected environmental
impact. These issues remained unre-
solved at the time of the Board of Es-
timate decision, as shown by the six-
to-five vote and the overwhelming op-
position votes by three local commu-
nity boards and the Brooklyn
Borough Board. Moreover, new evi-
dence completely undermines the
city's arguments for the program.
Problem "Solved"
The initial motivation for the in-
cinerator program is the lack of
landfill space . and environmental
hazards created by escaping material.
DOS claims incinerators will solve
these problems. But only about 70
percent (by weight) of the trash fuel-
ing the incinerator is actually burned.
The remaining 30 percent must be
disposed of in Fresh Kills, making the
landfill's environmental impact
much worse.
Competiti"e .
Recycling is economically competitive with incineration, making it difficult for
two systems to co-exist, says Barry Commoner.
Recently, the New York State De-
partment of Environmental Conserva-
tion found that incinerator ash con-
tains enough toxic lead and cadmium
to fit the EPA classification of "hazard-
ous waste." Accordingly, it should be
disposed of in a special hazardous
waste landfill at a huge cost. DEC has
proposed an ingenious solution: The
ash would be linguistically de-
toxified and designated not as hazard-
ous waste, but "special waste" capa-
ble of being disposed of in a separa.te .
area of an ordinary landfill - at a
much reduced cost. But changing its
name won't reduce the ash's toxicity.
Would Staten Island's borough presi-
dent have voted for the project if he
knew it would turn Fresh Kills into
a de facto hazardous waste landfill?
Safety Issues
Residents oppose incinerators
chiefly because they produce highly
toxic chemicals known as dioxins
and toxic metals. There is ongoing
controversy about the actual health
risk. In August, 1983, the DOS com-
missioner asserted that "unsorted
garbage can be burned without pro-
ducing dioxin." DOS soon acknow-
ledged dioxin as a hazard, but an "ac-
ceptable" one. This was based on a
preliminary version of the Brooklyn
Navy Yard environmental impact
statement concluding that the cancer
risk from dioxin emissions would be
too low for concern.
At the Center for the Biology of Nat-
ural Systems, we used DOS's. own
data in our analysis that showed that
because the city's risk asses$ment
failed to include several key factors,
it was about 200 times too low. We
computed the maximum lifetime
cancer risk at 29 per million, well
above the one per million risk that is
regarded as the basis for remedial ac-
tion. The Board of Estimate ordered
a special review - the Hart Report -
which adopted a similar approach
and concluded that the risk is six per
million. .
Sanitarir)ll's final EIS on the Navy
Yard incinerator adopted an astonish-
ing approach to the dioxin cancer
risk: It was ignored. The final EIS sim-
ply eliminated the .risk calculation
entirely.
The ploy failed. When the final EIS
was submitted to the state for a permit
to construct the incinerator, DEC re-
quired Wheelabrator Corporation,
the builder, (then Signal Evironmen-
tal Corp.) to produce a new dioxin
cancer risk assessment. A commer-
cial consultant hired by Wheela-
brat or produced a cartoonist's ver-
lteqcling in Brooklyn:
, ....... ift recyc'ing ."ou'd be encourogH in I_-ri.e neig"horltood. 'i. "'I.
'roo.".. area .erved by Rina'di Recycling Co., larry Commoner 'CI)'S.
sion of the Environmental Impact
Statement. To show how dioxin-con-
taminated dust particles from the
Navy Yard would reach people, the
Wheelabrator consultants and
lawyers created a ludicrous inven-
tion: a pastoral city, where the dust
would fall not on pavement, but on
soil, where gardeners tilling the soil
would mix it with dirt. Thus diluted,
the dioxin concentration would be so
greatly reduced that, adding a final
detail to their bucolic cartoon, the
greatest source of human exposure to
it would come from eating fish caught
in Prospect Lake.
Based on such absurdities, the
Wheelabrator risk assessment came
up with a dioxin cancer risk of 0.78
per million - conveniently just
below the one per million standard.
By simply correcting the nonsense
about dioxin mixing with non-exis-
tent soil, the risk increases to 12 per
million - once more unacceptable.
DOS and Wheelabrator have argued
that only animal data have been used
to extrapolate human risk to low
levels of dioxin. But new human data
about low-level exposure contradict
that argument. The U.S. Air Force is-
sued a report earlier this year show-
ing the risk of cancer to be twice as
high among veterans exposed to it in
Agent Orange in Vietnam than among
an unexposed group. Children of the
exposed veterans experienced an 8.7
percent occurrence of birth defects,
compared to 6.5 percent for the con-
f!ol groul? These statistics indicate
that low levels of dioxin can create
significant human health risks.
Once again, events since the 1984
Board of Estimate vote have under-
mined the DOS's optimistic view of
the health risks generated by the
proposed incinerators.
Improved Emission Controls
DOS claims that new, improved
emission control devices (scrubber/
baghouse systems) introduced since
the original design of the Brooklyn
incinerator will reduce dioxin expo-
sure well below the level of concern.
However, these devices do not change
the total amount of dioxin the in-
cinerator produces, but only shift it
from stack emissions to the remain-
ing ash. Deposited, as planned, in the
Fresh Kills landfill, the ash will be
subject to leaching and wind-borne
dissemination. Simply stated, the
new emission control system just re-
locates some of the dioxin hazard
from the area downwind of the Brook-
lyn Navy Yard to Staten Island.
Whenever forced to acknowledge
there are hazards in incinerator oper-
ation, DOS falls back on a final de-
fense: Incinerators are the best re-
placement for landfill.
The New York State Waste Manage-
ment Plan developed by DEC in
March, 1987, contradicts this asser-
tion. Its priorities for dealing with
urban trash starts with reduced trash
production and recycling 40 percent
of the trash stream. Incineration
ranks third and landfills last. In con-
trast, DOS has chosen to build five
incinerators as the city's first priority,
and claims that at some unstated fu-
ture time it will recycle about 20 per-
cent of the trash.
DOS claims burning the city's trash
is the only immediately practical al-
ternative. Until this year there might
have been some justification for its
view. As recently as 1986, a survey of
recycling programs showed they dis-
posed of only an average of seven per-
cent of the trash stream.
But a recent test by CBNS and the
town of East Hampton, Long Island,
upped the recycling ante. Over a 10-
week period, 100 volunteer families
separated their trash into three con-
tainers of recyclable materials (food
garbage, paper and cardboard, and
cans and bottles) and a fourth con-
tainer of non-recyclables (chiefly
plastic). Then it was collected and
weighed. The food garbage and yard
waste was made into compost, and
the other recyclables were processed
at a materials recovery facility that
produces and markets paper prod-
ucts, crushed glass, aluminum and
tin cans. About 85 percent (by weight)
of East Hampton's household trash
stream was recovered as marketable
materials, and the Intensive Recycl-
ing System was shown to be an effec-
tive alternative to incineration.
The system tested in East Hampton
can be operating within about a
year - as compared with the four to
five years usually required to build a
trash-burning incinerator. A CBNS
study of the feasibility of applying
the system to Buffalo, New York, indi-
cates that it is economically competi-
tive with incineration when the in-
cinerator tipping fee is above $52 per
ton, a figure well below what the city
will pay the operator of the Navy Yard
plant.
The Compatibility Question
Recently, even the most belligerent
supporters of incineration have
changed their position that it is the
"only alternative" to landfilling. New
Jersey mandates 25 percent recycling.
A bill for mandatory recycling of 25
percent of the trash stream is now
before the New York City Council. The
Koch administration has responded
with a plan for about 20 percent re-
cycling, but without changing its in-
cineration construction program. It is
generally argued that some level of
recycling is a good thing because it
reduces the amount of trash that must
be incinerated - and therefore the re-
sultant health hazards.
On its face, recycling appears to be
an uncontroversial "motherhood"
issue, and everyone - incinerator
companies, city officials committed
to building incinerators, and environ-
mental organizations that support in-
cineration with "adequate controls"--
is for it.
But this indulgent view of the rela-
tion between incineration and recycl-
ing is contradictory. About 75 percent
of the trash stream consists of compo-
nents that are both burnable and re-
cyclable: paper/cardboard; food gar-
bage; yard waste. About 12 to 15 per-
cent is recyclable but not burnable,
and another 10 to 12 percent is burn-
able but not recyclable. This means
that burning trash prevents most of it
from being recycled - and vice
versa.
Each proposed New York City in-
cinerator involves more than a $200
million investment. To be economi-
cally feasible, the incinerator must be
amortized over a 20- to 3D-year
lifetime and operate at a minimum of
85 percent of capacity. For example,
an incinerator with a capacity of
3,000 tons daily must be fed at least
2,550 tons of trash per day for 20 to
30 years or lose money. Since 75 per-
cent of this trash could have been re-
cycled, this means that building the
incincerator guarantees that for dec-
ades about 1,912 tons of trash per day
that could be recycled will be burned
instead. Building an incinerator
blocks recycling.
This explains why incineration
and intensive recycling are inherent-
ly incompatible and raises a serious
question about both the DOS and City
Council proposals to recycle 20 or 25
percent of the trash. Consider the
practical implications. Since limited
recycling programs do not solve the
total trash problem, incinerators
will be needed to burn the remaining
75 or 80 percent, guaranteeing that
for their 20- to 3D-year lifetimes re-
cycling will be held down to 20 or
25 percent. Although these programs
appear to foster recycling, in reality
they do the reverse by placing a limit
on recycling.
The relation between incineration
and recycling means municipal offi-
cials must take a clear-cut stand and
decide between these incompatible
ways of dealing with trash.
Viewed against these facts, how can
the city create a new, sensible trash
disposal program? As an immediate
first step, intensive recycling should
be established in neighborhoods with
a relatively uniform low-rise housing
stock (one- to four-family residences),
where householders customarily
bring trash to the curbside for collec-
tion. This includes most of Staten Is-
land and much of Brooklyn and
Queens. Householders would be re-
quired to separate trash into four con-
tainers that would be collected by
DOS trucks and taken to processing
facilities.
Setting up this system is not as easy
as writing a contract with an in-
cinerator operator, and it places
much heavier responsibilities on city
agencies. Experience shows that
people will respond to the extra work
involved in separating trash, but they
need to be told why and how. Inten-
sive public education is an essential
part of recycling.
In addition, the city will face a
more complex trash collection prob-
lem, requiring more equipment and
sanitation workers. Nevertheless, all
the components of an intensive re-
cycling system exist, and a reasona-
bly competent municipal department
should be capable of putting the sys-
tem in place in about a year - much
less than the time it takes to build an
incinerator.
When the Board of Estimate ap-
proved the DOS incinerator plan,
most opposition came from neigh-
borhods near the proposed Brooklyn
Navy Yard plant. We now know the
decision was a mistake that will be
tragically compounded if inciner-
ators become citywide. We now know
that intensive recycling is the sensi-
ble solution to the trash problem. The
time has come to act on what we
know. D
Barry Commoner is director of the
Center for the Biology of Natural Sys-
tems at Queens College, which has
studied the environmental hazards
of incinerators and developed an al-
ternative intensive recycling system.
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June' July 1988 CITY LIMITS . 11
CITY VIEWS
Resource Recovery: Part of the
Solution
BY BRENDAN SEXTON
IN 1962, ELVIS WAS KING, JACK
Kennedy was President and Robert
Moses was the Power Broker. Moses
planned and built more of the city's
infrastructure than any individual or
dozen individuals in history. He dis-
placed hundreds of thousands of city
residents from their homes - more
than fire, flood or any other set of nat-
ural or human agencies combined.
And his steamroller tactics (arguably)
did more to create community
boards, ULURP (the city's Uniform
Land Use Review Procedure) and
every other public-participation ac-
ronym and institution than any other
cause.
But even Moses wasn't able to do
much about New York City's waste-
disposal problem, which was already
of major proportions during the 30
years he spent working on it. Moses
tried to develop a citywide network
of incinerators, but succeeded only
in building a fraction of those he had
proposed. Moses's real waste dis-
posallegacy is the Fresh Kills landfill
on Staten Island, 3,000 acres of marsh
and salt meadow when it opened in
1948. Moses promised Staten Island
residents the city would stop dump-
ing raw garbage there by 1951.
In 1962, Moses opened an in-
cinerator in southwest Brooklyn. It
was the last new disposal facility to
be built in New York City. Since then,
the city has slid inexorably toward
an utterly predictable and seemingly
inevitable crisis: the exhaustion of all
of the city's available landfill capac-
ity. When Moses left city office in
1966, there were 11 municipal in-
cinerators and 11 landfills. Today,
there are two landfills (a small one
on the Rockaway Peninsula in
Queens and Fresh Kills) . Fresh Kills
now receives more than 90 percent
of the waste disposed in New York
City. At that rate, it will be filled to
peaks 500 feet high in another dozen
years.
But some towns in America, and
many cities in Europe and Japan, have
dealt more successfully with their
waste-disposal problems. They have
developed recycling programs to col-
lect reusable waste from residential
and commercial sources. And hun-
Brooklyn Navy Yard resource recovery plant:
Construction IS expected to begin next year on tlte city's first re.ource reco"ery plant.
dreds of resource recovery facilities mittees organized by each of the
have been in operation for decades, borough presidents have been meet-
safely and efficiently reducing waste ing regularly to review these plans-in-
volume and producing usable energy. progress. These projects are still a
couple of years away from final ap-
proval by the Board of Estimate and
the environmental regulatory agen-
cies. Before then, each will be subject
to intensive public review. Based on
the example of the public review pro-
cess for the Navy Yard project (see
City Limits, November, 1987), this
public review is likely to significantly
modify and improve these proposals
so that these facilities will be built
and operated in a ~ a y that will
maximize environmental safeguards
and minimize local nuisance . .
Benign Solutions
The New York City Department of
Sanitation is developing recycling
programs and resource recovery
plans designed to minimize our de-
pendence on landfill. Pilot programs
in each borough collect newspapers
at curbside and in apartment build-
ings. Last month, these programs
began to collect glass and metals as
well. In Fiscal Year 1989 we will be
expanding these programs. At the
same time, the mayor has introduced
legislation that would make it man-
datory for citizens throughout the
city to separate their garbage into re-
cyclable and nonrecyclable materials
for separate collection. If passed, this
law will create the largest recycling
program in the country. (Anyone in-
terested in these or other department
recycling programs can call 212-566-
5606 for additional information).
We are also in the process of de-
veloping resource recovery plants.
The first of our proposed projects, a
3,000-ton-per-day facility for the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, should receive
all required permits by this fall, and
we expect to start construction in late
1988 or early 1989. We are preparing
preliminary environmental impact
statements for projects in the other
four boroughs. Volunteer citizen com-
The waste disposal crisis that ho-
vered on the planning horizon in
1962 now looms ominously in the
foreground. The responsible solu-
tion - the only solution - for safe
and reliable disposal of the 27,000
tons of waste generated every day in
this city, depends on the combined
use of recycling and resource recov-
ery.
This is no longer the era of the
Power Broker. We now . have commu-
nity boards, ULURP, citizen advisory
committees and vastly' tightened en-
vironmental regulations. Without
. citizen support, this splution won't
happen. 0
Brendan Sexton is commissioner of
New York City's Department of Sani-
tation.
12 CITY LIMITS June/July 1988
FEATURE
Resource Recovery:
Politics and Profits
BY JENNIFER STERN
E
arly next year a towering smoke-
stack is expected to begin ris-
ing over the East River, part of
the massive garbage-burning in-
cinerator to be built in the Brooklyn
Navy Yard. Along with at least four
more plants planned for the other
boroughs, there is no better monu-
ment to the city's record of sorry man-
agement of waste disposal - and the
triumph of politics and big business
over sound environmental planning.
It is a record that for the past 20
years has looked to high-tech, capital-
intensive solutions to the problem of
heart of a multi-billion dollar busi-
ness.
When Alfred DelBello was West-
chester County's chief executive, he
signed a contract with Wheelabrator
Environmental Systems (then known
as Wheelabrator Technologies) to
build a $180 million resource recov-
ery plant in Peekskill. DelBello soon
became the state's lieutenant gover-
nor and advocated for increased use
of incineration plants. In 1985 he quit
his state job to join a company that
merged with Wheelabrator, which
also won the contract for the $355
million Navy Yard plant. DelBello be-
/ Resource recovery plants are the high-
tech, big-business approach to the
garbage crisis. Critics charge it's also the
politcally expedient answer.
dwindling landfill space. Although
New York City has a recycling pro-
gram, it currently handles a mere 0.2
percent of the city's garbage. With its
relatively tiny budget of $10.5 million
in Fiscal Year 1988, the recycling
program has been little more than a
sap to deflect criticism of those favor-
ing a more balanced approach to the
city's garbage problem.
The December, 1984, Board of Esti-
mate vote in favor of resource recov-
ery was a nod to the big business ap-
proach to the city's garbage crisis.
Much like the way city officials
turned to the financial and real estate
sectors to build the city out of the
fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, capital-
intensive resource recovery plants
were deemed the solution to the gar-
bage crisis. This decision also placed
~ e v e r a l former public officials at the
came Wheelabrator's vice president
for marketing, earning more than
$274,000 last year according to a
Newsday report. He recently left the
company. .
Former Koch press secretary Will-
iam Rauch, who also co-authored
Politics and Mayor! with Koch, left
City Hall to work for Wheelabrator's
parent company, the Henley Group,
Inc. Rauch worked for approximately
one year as a company spokesperson
in California, according to a Henley
official.
Norman Steisel, who was the city's
sanitation commissioner from 1979
to 1986, was a leading advocate for
the construction of resource recovery
plants to combat New York's moun-
tains of waste. Less than a month after
the Board of Estimate approved the
first plant, Steisel quit his job as sani-
tation commlSSlOner to become a
senior vice president for Lazard Fre-
res - one of three lead underwriters
for the bonds that will finance the
plant.
Both Steisel and DelBello have
been cleared of any wrong-doing by
government investigators, but critics
remain unsatisfied. "There has been
no independent investigation of the
scenario," charges Walter Hang, di-
rector of the taxies project at the New
York Public Interest Research Group.
the country. At that time, the city's
Industrial Development Agency will
issue an estimated $409 million in
tax-exempt bonds for the plant,
which, along with $48 million from
state Environmental Quality Bond
Act proceeds, will cover the esti-
mated $355 million construction cost
plus about $100 million interest and
reserve fund. Henry Diamond, a
former state environmental conserva-
tion commissioner, was instrumental
in getting the EQBA passed. The
Bond Act has been used to help fund
several incineration plants. Dia-
mond's law firm, Beveridge and Dia-
mond, does legal work for Hempstead
and Oyster Bay, Long Island, resource
recovery projects.
The city will pay Wheelabrator,
which also has a 20-year contract to
operate the plant, a "tipping fee" for
taking the garbage. Wheelabrator also
will earn revenues from the proposed
sale of plant-generated steam to Con
Edison. The tipping fee is based on
the plant's operation and mainte-
nance cost (which is specified, with
some increases allowed, in the origi-
nal contract), the capitalization
charge for the bonds and the revenues
from Con Ed's steam purchases.
Eighty percent of the Con Ed money
is supposed to go to city coffers. A
recent federal regulation, which frees
Con Ed from requirements to pur-
chase the steam, could throw a mon-
key wrench at that part of the revenue
stream - or at least reduce the city's
and Wheelabrator's take.
At the sanitation department's cur-
rent estimate of $40 per ton, the tip-
~
~ ping fee compares favorably with the
> $51-per-ton cost of dumping at Staten
~ Island's Fresh Kills landfill. But the
v New York Public Interest Research
~
~ Group contends that the disposal cost
::: can go far higher. NYPIRG questions
"We want an investigation to look at
every aspect of the deal."
Price Tag
The price tag for the Navy Yard
plant is already steep, and some be-
lieve it's going to get steeper. When
the final environmental permits are
granted - the city's Department of
Sanitation expects this to happen this
coming fall - Wheelabrator will
begin construction of one of the most
expensive garbage-burning plants in
a range of sanitation department as-
sumptions about the plant: the
amount of ash, some toxic, that will
remain after burning that the city not
Wheelabrator - must dispose of; the
value of the generated steam; and un-
anticipated cost overruns. In all, the
group calculated in a 1986 report, the
tipping fee, plus the cost of disposing
the ash, could rise to as high as $333
per ton.
The $409 million IDA bond will be
the second largest issued by the
agency, eclipsed only by the one to
keep NBC in Rockefeller Center.
Along with Lazard Freres, the other
lead underwriters for the bond are
Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill
Lynch. The underwriters will net an
estimated $14 million for their role.
Both Goldman, Sachs and Merrill
Lynch are major campaign con-
tributors to Mayor Koch and Comp-
troller Harrison Goldin. Since 1987,
Koch has received $20,000 from Mer-
rill Lynch; the firm contributed
$36,000 to Goldin from 1981 through
1984, but nothing since. Goldman,
Sachs has kicked in $71,800 to the
mayor's campaigns, $49,900 to the
comptroller's. (Although Goldin was
outspoken in his opposition to the
Navy Yard plant, some critics contend
he blocked a move to put the bond
underwriting out for bid, a charge
Goldin has denied.)
Professional Advice
New York City, like municipalities
nationwide, turned to professional
advice for coping with the garbage
crisis. According to a Newsday study,
the city has spent some $19 million
on trash consultants since 1981. But
critics like Hang charge that the con-
sultants merely spit back the recom-
mendations the city wants. "The re-
port is done to reinforce what the city
already knows it wants," he says.
In some cases, it's more than just a
process of justifying a predetermined
action. The consultant hired may also
be in the business of building re-
source recovery plants. New York City
shelled out $1 million to the consul-
tant firm Dvirka & Bartilucci, which
had been hired to design a plant on
Long Island. The city paid CSI Re-
source Systems $680,000 for advice
on coping with the garbage crisis. CSI
also helps businesses get permits for
their recovery plants.
Construction of the Brooklyn Navy
Yard plant should begin soon after
the bonds are issued, and sanitation
department officials expect Wheela-
brator to fire up the plant in 1991 or
early 1992. Once built, the in-
cinerator will burn 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, reducing 3,000
tons of garbage to ash each day.
The Department of Sanitation also ,
is advancing its plans for four addi-
tional incinerators. one in each
borough. planning 2.000-ton-per-day
plants for Queens. the Bronx and
Although resource recovery is costly, say critics, in some ways
it gives the city an easy out.
Manhattan and a 3,000-ton-per-day
plant for Staten Island. The Depart-
ment of Sanitation currently is draft-
ing an informal Environmental Im-
pact Statement for each plant and
will issue requests-for-proposals for
each one by the end of the year. Ac-
cording to Ben Miller, director of rub-
lic policy for the DOS's Office 0 Re-
source Recovery, the plants tenta-
tively are scheduled to be operating
by the mid-1990s.
Clean Hands
The neatness of this massive public
works project, DOS officials like to
point out, is that it leaves little re-
sponsibility to the city. "The city has
no financial liability of the project
until its operation," explains Jim
Meyers, Miller's de.puty. Yet it is pre-
cisely this attitude critics question,
saying it has led the city to emphasize
an expensive, environmentally harm-
ful, big-business-oriented technology
over an environmentally beneficial,
decentralized one - recycling. "The
Deaprtment of Sanitation has in-
vested a lot of money in supporting
it (resource recovery). Recycling is
seen as a threat to that strategy," says
John Rustin, an economist with the
Evironmental Defense Fund.
city will be in debt for 20 years and
will have to burn garbage 24 hours a
day to cover costs." Should "resource
recovery" at some point in the future
be deemed unsuitable - for health
reasons, for example - the city
would still be tied to paying the tip-
ping fee for the length of the current
contract.
Though incineration burns up the
garbage, the garbage does not com-
pletely go away. The resulting ash, ac-
cording to standard industry figures,
will be 25 to 40 percent of the weight
and 10 to 20 percent of the volume
of the incoming garbage. Like gar-
bage, it must be disposed of some-
where, for instance a landfill.
tion.) "Burning is a political solution,
not a real solution," he says. "The
landfill cycle is not broken. "
According to Hang, incineration
was embraced by politicians allover
the country in the early 1980s as a
way of blunting constituent concerns
about landfills. Intense national pub-
licity at that time about toxics in
landfills had brought such concerns
to a head, he says.
The business of incineration plants
is growing rapidly, perhaps no more
prominently than on Long Island.
Just like the real estate developers
who have come to dominate so much
of the city's political scene, resource
recovery companies are now major
Although resource recovery is
costly, these critics say, in some ways
it gives the city an easy way out. "The
Koch administration would rather
hand over the task (of waste disposal)
to an outside corporation than take
responsibility for organizing it upon
itself," says Barry Commoner of
Queens College's Center for the Biol-
ogy of Natural Systems. Recycling, he
points out, can't be administered by
an outside corporation, but rather in-
volves small-scale activities such as
public education and setting up dif-
ferent programs for different kinds of
neighborhoods. "If you write a con-
tract with an outside agency, you can
essentially wash your hands," he
says.
Mayor Koch's solution to the crisis:
In the garbage crisis, as in th. liscal crisis of th. 1970s, th. city is turning to
th. corporat. s.ctor for solutions.
Walter Hang maintains that the
proposed plants are not the high-
tech, sophisticated approach to gar-
bage portrayed by the city. "The city
has always done incineration. (This
program) allows them to continue to
pick up and transport grabage in the
same way," he says. He maintains that
although the plant's financing ap-
pears to be a "neat" arrangement, it
has a big catch: "Once it's built, the
r
Not only the quantity but the com-
position of the ash causes problems:
It is loaded with harmful heavy met-
als like cadmium that can leach out
of the landfill into the surrounding
environment. The sanitation depart-
ment currently plans to dispose of
the ash from the Brooklyn Navy Yard
plant in a special area of the Fresh
Kills landfill. According to Miller, the
ash cannot be mingled with the other
garbage because organic solvents pre-
sent there can cause the metals from
the ash to leach.
Hang believes the question of the
ash points to the basic insincerity be-
hind the entire incineration plan.
(NYPIRG is one of the few organiza-
tions left in the city that is still on
the record as opposed to incinera-
players on Long Island. Newsday re-
ports that many of the major cam-
paign contributions to Long Island
Republicans, who dominate the
area's politics, come from firms in-
volved in resource recovery.
While campaign contributions may
not yet be a feature of the industry'S
role in New York, politics are no less
an isssue. Goldin spokesperson Jon
Lukomnik notes that recycling has a
"more long-term political impact be-
cause homeowners have to separate
garbage forever." The incinerators are
out of mind and sight of the vast
majority of people - unless some-
thing goes wrong. "Koch cast this as
either you're for resource recovery
plants or you're just pandering to a
community and being obstruc-
June' July 1988 CITY LIMITS 15
tionist," adds Lukomnik.
Ironically, it was the promise of re-
cycling that enabled the city's gar-
bage-burning plan to go forward. Be-
fore the city's Board of Estimate voted
to approve the plants, a deal was
struck making recycling official pol-
icy. Andrew Stein, then Manhattan
borough president, took credit for the
addition of a recycling policy to the
Board of Estimate resolution. The
"official policy" also placated some
of the city's critics and won support
for the five-incinerators plan from en-
vironmental organizations including
the Environmental Defense Fund, the
Natural Resources Defense Council
and the Environmental Action Coali-
tion.
Recycling is forever:
Critic. say "'at incineration provides an easy answer for politicians, wlti/e
recycling requires ongoing citizen eHort.
With the addition of recycling to
the Board of Estimate resolution - a
move that some charge was a paper
tiger - Stein provided the swing
vote in a six-to-five decision to ap-
prove the Brooklyn garbage plant.
Stein's vote came as an unwelcome
surprise to many of the incinerator's
opponents, inCluding Rabbi Chaim
Stauber, whose UnitedJewishOrgani-
zations of Williamsburg has vigor-
ously opposed the incinerator plan-
ned for the Navy Yard. Stauber claims
that after a history of opposing the
incinerator, Stein made a deal with
the devil- in this case Mayor
Koch - to support the plant in ex-
change for Koch's neutrality in the
City Council president's race be-
tween Stein and then-Deputy Mayor
Kenneth Lipper. Stein denies any
deal-making and says he was neutral
on incineration up until the time of
the vote.
While United Jewish Organizations
often attacked the Navy Yard plant be-
cause of concerns about the amount
of dioxin released into the nearby
neighborhood, they had other wor-
ries as well. A pricey co-op project to
be built by the local Hasidic commu-
nity was scheduled to rise directly
opposite the plant site. Nearby resi-
dents worried about a host of qUality-
of-life issues.
Even if the critics are right and the
resource recovery plants are just a
politically expedient solution to an
ongoing problem, it may be too late
to avert disaster. With incinerator
plants suffering the customary delays
associated with any public works pro-
ject and the city dragging its feet on
recycling, the time when a Depart-
ment of Sanitation barge may be met
by a "Dump Closed" s i g ~ draws
frighteningly near. 0
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458 BERGEN STREET BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11217 (718)398-1440
FEATURE
Garbage Diet: Reducing the
City's Flow of Trash
BY EVE HEYN
R
emember green Coca-Cola
bottles? Big Macs served in
paper sleeves? Vegetable
stands with paper bags?
The search for new ways to package
the same old product has led to an
80 percent increase in wrappers,
boxes, plastic foam containers and
other packaging materials since 1960.
Americans' dependence on disposa-
ble products - and love of marketing
gimmicks - fuels the trend. The
United States produces more solid
waste than any other country in the
world - about 150 million tons a
year. That is twice as much per per-
son as Europeans and Japanese throw
away. More than one-third of it is
packaging material.
As the city wrestles with its unen-
ding flow of refuse, New Yorkers still
haven't accepted one of the simplest
solutions to the garbage crisis: not
producing it. The city's Department
of Sanitation cites cutting back the
amount of trash produced, or "waste
about designing packages that are
less wasteful, but they're not going to
do it," said John Rustin, an economist
at the Environmental Defense Fund.
"That's why we need some legislation
to force them to do so."
One approach, environmentalists
say, is to discourage wasteful market-
ing trends -like putting little prod-
ucts in big boxes to take up more shelf
space or unnecessary packaging such
as individually wrapped slices of
cheese or shampoo bottles placed in
a box and sealed in plastic wrap.
"This is what you're up against," said
Ellen Feldman of the Environmental
Action Coalition. "You have to change
the whole marketing strategy and the
way people sell packaging."
z Equally problematic is the trend by
i packagers to use plastic instead of
:: easy-to-recycle materials -like alum-
~ inum and paper. Petroleum-based
u plastics now make up the largest part
F
rom throwaway utensils to plastic-
wrapped burgers, the city is knee-deep
in waste. The packaging industry would
like to keep it that way.
stream reduction," as its top prior-
ity - above incineration and landfill
dumping. But the department doesn't
have a single program or even one
staff person working on reduction.
The City Council has produced
numerous recent bills aimed at reduc-
ing garbage, but is facing vehement
opposition from the plastics and
packaging industries. So far, there has
been much talk but little action.
But there seems to be a growing
consensus that packaging excess
should be cut from New York's gar-
bage diet. "Businesses need to think
of our packaging waste, according to
one newspaper report. And plastics
are unquestionably the worst garbage
component. Environmentalists note
that plastics clog landfills because
they are hard to compact and take
hundreds of years to decompose. In-
cineration also is problematic be-
cause many plastics release poison-
ous fumes when burned. "It seems
silly to package something with that
durability for a hamburger with a life
span of 10 minutes," said Feldman.
Among the players talking the
loudest about garbage reduction are
Stopping garbage at its source:
'ike fllen Fe'dman of the Action Coa'ition
are fighting against excess packaging.
the city's Department of Sanitation
and the state's Department of En-
vironmental ,Conservation. Both
agencies list reduction as their first
priority, followed by reuse, recycling,
resource recovery (incineration) and
landfilling. Ironically, the remedy
heading the agenda is left in the
dumps in terms of budgetary, staffing
and programmatic commitments.
The Sanitation Department doesn't
have a separate reduction office or
even a full- or part-time staff person
hired to work on programs to help
New York cut back. It lacks a long-
term reduction plan and offers no
educational materials. The only ef-
forts underway include promoting
legislation and possibly developing a
brochure next year on reduction.
"There's very little around that re-
ally speaks to the issue of having less
created in the first place," said Joan
Edwards, director of the recycling
office. Edwards supports the concept
of cutting back some of the garbage
New York produces, but is uncon-
vinced of its practical applications.
"Making it reality is something that
will put us all on the map because I
don't know of anyone who has suc-
ceeded in substantially reducing the
waste stream at the source," she said.
Environmentalists compare the
city's reduction budget and staff with
the department's efforts in other
areas. Resource recovery, for exam-
ple, is next to last on the sanitation
department's official list of priorities.
Yet the Office of Resource Recovery
and Waste Disposal Planning oper-
ates with a staff of about 90 people
and a budget of $120 million for Fis-
cal Year 1988. The reduction program,
on the other hand, doesn't have a staff
or budget, but falls under the recycl-
ing'office, which functions with only
$10'.5 million and a staff of about 25.
"The priority is the ideal," said Rus-
tin, "but funding priorities should re-
flect it."
Jim Meyers, deputy director for pub-
lic policy in the resource recovery
office, called these allegations falla-
cious and said that "to look at budget
and personnel does not show the pic-
ture accurately."
Only about 15 of those 90 people
, work full-time on resource recovery,
and just approximately $5 million is
spent on salaries and office expenses
for personnel, Meyers said. The re-
mainder of the budget - about $115
million.- goes for capital expenses
related to landfills and other existing
incinerators, but not to resource re-
covery.
Environmentalists point out that
the city's budgetary commitment re-
flects burning, not siniply the high-
tech plants.
Similar to the city's budgetary and
staffing constraints, the state Bureau
of Source Reduction and Recycling
has only eight employees (including
support staff) to oversee all the reduc-
tion and recycling programs for a
state of 18 million people.
State officials have set a goal to re-
duce New York's garbage by eight to
10 percent by 1997, but when asked
about specific reduction measures
underway, Bob McCarty, acting chief
of the Bureau of Source Reduction
and Recycling, could not mention
one. "Everyone's talking about waste
reduction. But what are the specifics?
Those specifics aren't there yet," he
said. Echoing the lack of conviction
permeating the city level, McCarty
said, "We're right in the beginning of
this. We're exploring what are the al-
ternatives, but we're really not sure
what they are yet." '
In April, however, the state legisla-
ture passed the 1988 Solid Waste
Management Act, which appears to
show signs of a stronger commitment
to reduction. Assemblyman Maurice
Hinchey, chairman of the Legislative
Commission on Solid Waste Manage-
ment, said the new law will increase
the state's reduction/recycling staff
from eight to 60. It also will fund a
program to encourage manufacturers
to label their packages if they are re-
cyclable or made from recycled mat-
erial, and consumers would be en-
couraged to products with the
recycling symbol.
The new law, Hinchey said, also
mandates that New Yorkers
their garbage by material source by
1992. "It's a good, strong bill. It's not
enough, but it's a beginning," he said.
But critics say that it won't begin
to put a dent in the garbage crisis, let
alone live up to the state's declaration
that reduction is it's top priority. Rus-
tin said that a number of stronger re-
duction measures were dropped from
the bill, leaving an ineffectual final
version. "The bill itself doesn't do a
thing to encourage reduction of the
Albany is reluctant to put taxes or bans on excess packaging
materials because many legislators perceive such acts as "anti-
business," says Randy Coburn.
waste stream of New York," said Rus-
tin. "We would like to see more hap-
pen besides staffing up the bureauc-
racy."
Tough Bills
During his two-year tenure as chair-
man of the City Council's Environ-
mental Protection Committee, Shel-
don Leffler has introduced a wide
range of bills aimed at cutting back
packaging garbage. The strongest re-
sembles a new Suffolk County law
that bans non-recyclable and non-
biodegradable food containers, rang-
ing from plastic shopping bags to the
Big Mac plastic foam containers.
Another proposal would require all
restaurants to use reusable plates,
bowls and eating utensils for its sit-
down customers. A more unusual ap-
proach adopts the carrot-and-stick
technique of establishing a tax on
packaging while granting credits to
manufacturers that use recycled pack-
aging material.
Despite the proposed bans, taxes
and restrictions, nothing exists on the
books. So when the Original New
York Seltzer Company started selling
its soft drink in plastic cans, Sanita-
tion Commissioner Brendan Sexton
vowed to keep it out of New York and
environmental groups threatened
boycotts. But New York Seltzer bub-
bled ahead and is now on the city's
supermarket shelves.
Assault an packaging:
City Council Member Sheldon Leffler, right, hos introduced a range of bills
aimed at reducing the waste stream.
If the plastic can caught on, said
Rustin, "it would be disastrous in en-
vironmental terms," because it
would replace the aluminum can,
which is the "backbone of the recycl-
reused again again andg.ecom-
pose in only one to six months, the
- report said. About five mUlinn tons
of diapers are dumped in.l!'tndfills
every year. . ...
"I wouldn't wish washing diap-
ers on any parent." said Jeanne
Wirka of the Environmental Ac-
tion Foundation in Washington,
D.C. But others found the
surprisin81y ;easy. <fIt's flntL The
diaper man comes every week, it's
nothing," said Gail BQorstein,
mother of auine-month-old baby.
"There's something kind of nice
about having your '. ba.by in f:;loth.."
Boorstein of 80"
diapers costs $12 -1:he sa.Me as a
box of 66 disposables. [JE.p.
ing industry." Unlike aluminum
cans, which are simply melted down
and rolled into sheets that become
new cans, the plastic can is harder to
recycle. For consumers, its benefits
are questionable - it's not cheaper,
lighter, nor does it keep soda longer
or fresher. The appeal narrows down
to image alone.
Other signs of the plastic trend run-
ning rampant are Quaker Oats' plans
to abandon its traditional oatmeal
container for .a plastic one and
Campbell Soup Co. 's introduction of
a microwaveable plastic can. "It's a
demonstrated fact that the aluminum
can is reducing at a rate of one to two
percent a year, whereas plastics are
gaining eight to 10 percent a year,"
said Dan Toner, senior research fellow
at Campbell Soup. "We're just follow-
ing the trend," he said.
Attempts to reverse the trend are
met with well-financed resistance
from the petroleum and packaging in-
dustries. A sampling of opponents
who recently packed City Hall to de-
nounce potential bans included
Mobil Chemical Corp. (the largest
manufacturer of plastic foam),
Amoco Corp., Pathmark, Dart Con-
tainer Corp., Korean-American Small
Business Association and the Wool-
worth Co., which operates five Burger
Kings in New York. Paper manufactur-
ers also showed up to lobby for a re-
turn to paper products.
Burn This
The plastics industry argues that
its products are safe to burn, bury and
even recycle for certain uses. "We're
here with a very safe product that's
being proposed for banishment, and
I don't think any of us understands
why," said Roger Bernstein of the So-
ciety of the Plastic Industry. He was
testifying against a bill to ban polysty-
rene food packaging - commonly
called Styrofoam, Dow Chemical's
trade name. If passed, McDonald's, John Rustin 01 the Environmentol Oelense Fund:
for exam p Ie, woul d have to relin - He believes legis/otion is necessary to force businesses to reduce pac/caging.
quish its bulky containers. Mayor
Koch has already barred mayoral
agencies from buying polystyrene (al-
though Styrofoam cups were set out
for speakers during the City Council 's
recent hearings on recycling). .
Besides gobbling up precious
landfill space, environmentalists say
that plastic foam is particularly
hazardous because some of it con-
tains chlorofluorocarbons. CFC gives
plastic foam its puffy, airy look, but
they also destroy the ozone layer.
Many plastics companies have stop-
ped using it.
Bernstein disagreed that poly-
styrene poses an environmental
threat. "I think as elected officials,
what you have to ask yourselves is
what is the environmental benefit
that is going to be the compensation
Subscribe to CITY LIMITS
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Pointing out that polystyrene makes
up less than one percent of the ~ a s t e
stream, Bernstein added that it has
become a scapegoat for politicians .
pressured to take action. "I don't un-
derstand why the facts have not been
more eloquent at getting this pro-
posal off of this emotional track. A
track ' that symbolically says that
something is going to be ac-
complished here when really not a
thing is going to be accomplished."
But Leffler sees the ban as just a
step - one ~ a t is in the right direc-
tion. "It's certainly not my intention
to do anything that's symbolic. Even
though it's a small portion, it's a por-
tion for which there are substitutes,"
he said. "It's not the answer by any
means, but it's a real step forward."
Similar proposals have been cir-
culating on' the state level in Albany,
but like the City Council, state offi-
cials have been slow to gain support.
Hinchey, who has introduced much
of the legislation, says the reluctance
has mainly to do with the legislature
not coming to terms with the urgent
need for reduction measures. "People
have not regarded it as an important
~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~
Plastic packaging:
Wi,h mar. company's lik. Campb." Soup 'urning '0 plastics, s'ate I.gis/a,ors
ar. pushing for a packaging bill 'hat would 'ox such containers. One such
measure was dropp.d from the 1988 Solid Was'. Managem.nt Act.
enough issue," he said. "It's only this
year that it's beginning."
Randy Coburn, a policy analyst at
the Legislative Commission on Solid
Waste Management, doesn't under-
estimate the influence of the opposi-
tion. Albany is "listening to the in-
dustry," he commented, adding that
many legislators are averse to bans
and taxes "because it's anti-busi-
ness."
Though most of the bills attempt
to reduce excess packaging, other pro-
posals tackle different hazardous
products altogether. Two bills intro-
duced in both the state and city
would establish a deposit to encour-
age consumers to return household
batteries, which leach toxic metals
that contaminate ground water, and
tires, which don't decompose for hun-
dreds of years and emit dangerous
gases during decomposition. Both
products can .be dangerous when
burned. But these efforts also face up-
hill battles. "It'll be a long haul," pre-
dicted Joan Edwards. "Clearly, they
are both vociferously opposed by the
industry," she said.
So while everyone's talking about
reduction, pressure from the packag-
ing industry coupled with general
malaise in the agencies mandated to
cut back New York's garbage keep di-
rect action at arm's length. "The
closer we get to D-Day, the closer we'll
be to having major bills passed," Ed-
wards predicted. But D-Day is already
right around the corner. 0
Eve Heyn contributes frequently to
City Limits.
...
I
8
...
;:)
S
~
I
PROGRAM FOCUS
Cash for Trash
IV LYNDA CRAWFORD
ONE WAY OUT OF THE GARBAGE
crisis is to pay people for what they
recycle, and an operation in the
South Bronx, R2B2, has been doing
that for the past six years. Started by
the nonprofit local development cor-
poration Bronx 2000, R2B2 (Recover-
able Resources/Boro Bronx 2000) is,
in garbage parlance, a multi-material
buy-back recycling and processing
enterprise. Its goal is not only to recy-
cle trash but to get money for it into
the hands of cash-starved local resi-
dents.
About 50 people a day - 1,000 a
month -line up with shopping
carts, strollers, vans and trucks to be
paid for the garbage they drop off:
newspapers, aluminum cans, plas-
tics, glass and other non-deposit,
non-redeemable materials.
After learning about R2B2, a group
of women from a nearby housing pro-
t
'eet down the street from R2B2 regu-
arly saves and brings in detergent
boxes from their laundry room. Carlo
Perez goes to the dump on Webster
and Claremont streets at 10 a.m. most
weekdays, scavenges aluminum cans
until he fills a supermarket cart, then
wheels it over to R2B2. "I've survived
doing this alone," he says.
Village Green, a voluntary recycl-
ing center in Lower Manhattan, some-
times makes two trips daily to R2B2.
"It's the only place in the city you
can bring this material," says driver
Christina Datz. A community group
from Newark, N.J., which showed up
at R2B2 with a school bus filled with
aluminum cans, used the proceeds to
put on a circus and other efforts for
the community. Another 40 or so
people come by with vans. They have
built up their own small businesses,
selling trash to R2B2.
In a recent nine-month period,
R2B2 paid more than $110,000 to
street people, voluntary recycling
groups and individual entrepreneurs,
and processed and shipped an aver-
age of 975 tons of materials a month.
That translates into saving about
7,200 tons of raw material used in
making glass and aluminum, 15,500
barrels of crude oil, 24 million cubic
feet of natural gas, and 58,000 trees -
Bronx 2000's David Muchnick:
His buy-bade center brings much-needed cash into this low income community.
more than twice the number in Cen-
tral Park.
Start Up
The idea for the buy-back was tied
in with Bronx 2000's effort to re-
vitalize the nearby Tremont Avenue
shopping district. According to David
Muchnick, president of R2B2, the
agency initially thought it would give
out some sort of green stamps for the
recyclables brought in, and these
stamps would be redeemable for mer-
chandise at Tremont Avenue stores.
R2B2's originators even envisioned a
catalog picturing the goods available
for the stamps. But after three or four
business plans, it became clear that
the idea was too elaborate. It seemed
simpler and more feasible economi-
cally just to buy the materials from
the public for cash, then cover costs
by turning around and selling the
materials.
They started with gifts and loans
of equipment and about $40,000 from
a consortium of bottlers, distributors,
container manufacturers and super-
markets opposed to the bottle bill and
looking for an effective alterna-
tive.
"We were foolhardy enough to start
a seriously under-capitalized busi-
ness," says Muchnick, "because we
thought the social benefits were sig-
nificant enough to take a shot at doing
it. "
None of the conventional commu-
nity development partners trusted
the idea until they could actually see
the lines of people cashing in. "The
corporate world was sure we would
fail," says Mike Schedler, R2B2's vice
president. Corporate and foundation
support followed only after the pub-
lic began arriving at R2B2.
"We weren't prepared for what hap-
pened," says Schedler. "The lines!
People lining up with baby carriages,
carts, trucks. Our mentality was all
geared for kids coming in ... But after
three weeks, when the adults disco-
vered there was money in it, they
were the ones who were showing up.
The only kids you see are those that
come with their parents on Satur-
days."
"In the two years before the bottle
bill we were the neighborhood bank,"
says Muchnick. "The streets were
very clean, the vacant lots were clean,
and it was all done without benefit
of deposits and the incredible tax that
puts on the consumers."
With the inception of the bottle bill
in September, 1983, everything
changed. The principal cash crop-
aluminum cans - was taken out of
the waste stream and diverted
through the redemption process.
"That's why a lot of voluntary recycl-
ing centers went down," says
Muchnick. "They had no cash crop
to recycle because it was going
through supermarket redemption."
The bottle bill also caused disloca-
tions in the container manufacturing
industry, Muchnick explains, forcing
a major switch from glass containers
to aluminum and plastic, and many
glass bottling companies went out of
business. All of this had its effect on
R2B2's operation and it suffered
major losses for a few years.
But R2B2 pulled through, partly be-
cause the bottlers now bring their
cans and bottles to R2B2 after re-
demption. Bottlers are grateful to get
an accurate count of the returned con-
tainers, and this adds to R2B2's vol-
ume.
In September, 1985, the Board of
Estimate approved a contract with
R2B2, administered through the city
Department of Sanitation. The con-
tract, since renewed, covers the differ-
ence between R2B2 's cost for purchas-
ing the refuse and its income for resel-
ling the refuse - a revenue gap of
some $50 per ton.
R2B2 plans to expand its own plant
and is consulting with groups hoping
to initiate similar operations. How
would you start a buy-back? "Can-
didly and not self-servingly," says
Muchnick, "you'd look for technical
assistance from experienced recyc-
lers who've done this already. It's not
something you start up on your own.
It requires an amazing knowledge of
materials, material processing, equip-
ment processing, sources of supply
and market outlets, trucking and
shipping, transportation costs, fluctu-
ations in materials and markets and
prices on a national and world scale.
And it requires some terrific account-
ing and financial managment skills,
as well as access to capital."
One community group receiving
technical assistance from R2B2 is lo-
cated in a town outside Dublin, Ire-
land. Members of the group came to
New York a couple of years ago and,
after seeing R2B2 's operation, wanted
to start something similar in their
community, where unemployment
rages at 70 to 80 percent and virtually
no recycling exists. .
Via one trans-Atlantic phone call a
week, Muchnick and Schedler have
been trying to find access to material
markets for the Dublin group. They've
talked to some markets and to con-
tainer manufacturers about donating
equipment so the group can get up
and running. They've discussed plant
layouts, logistics of transportation,
processing methods, equipment,
"and all those sundry kinds of
things," says Muchnick.
Closer to home, Muchnick and
Schedler are working with Material
Central, a Lower East Side group cur-
rently negotiating with the city for a
site for a new buy-back center. Mater-
ial Central already has two voluntary
recycling sites in the neighborhood.
R2B2's contribution to Material
Central will be a huge container, the
type that is used on cargo ships. Recy-
cled newspapers will be stored in the
container until it's full, when R2B2
will pick up the papers. They also
will give the Lower East Side buy-
back another crucial element: insur-
ance coverage. "That stops a lot of
projects. Any kind of not-far-profit
group has to worry how they are going
to get insurance," says Christina Datz.
Mike Schedler says R2B2 is helping
Material Center because "we want to
help build them up so they don't have
to come schlepping up herg so often."
There's certainly enough garbage to
support a buy-back in every borough
of the city, if not more, as well as
smallersatelIiteoperations that could
hook into the bigger networks. R2B2's
volume is limited only by the size of
its plant and the quality and volume
of its equipment, says Muchnick.
There's plenty of garbage to go
around.
"We think it's important that there
be replication," he adds. "The
amount of money that the city is
going to spend on coming up with a
waste management program, regard-
less of its shape - all the burning
plants they are talking about doing,
all the recycling centers they are
thinking about, all the collection ve-
hiclesthey are going to have to buy-
we've reached the figure of about $5
billion over the next 10 years or so.
We think that a proportion of that ex-
penditure really ought to benefit
economic development oppor-
tunities in low income areas, and
we're dedicated to trying to help low
income neighborhoods get a piece of
that kind of public expenditure.
"Combine that dollar amount with
the cash value, economic value of the
garbage itself," adds Muchnick, "and
it really is a potentially valuable re-
source." 0
Lynda Crawford is a New York writer
especially concerned with environ-
mental issues.

.r.
1 fA Since 1980, the Housing Energy Alliance for Tenants Cooperative Corp. (H.E.A.T. COOP) has provided low
/r"r ,"" If! cost home heating oil and energy use reduction services.
. . i l l ; The H.E.A.T. Coop has targeted for services the largely minority low and middle income neighborhoods of the
, !; / -- Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. H.E.A.T.'s general purpose is to provide assistance and services that lead
I to neighborhood stability.
k. a proponent of economic empowerment for revitalization of the City's communities, H.E.A.T. remains committed
to assisting newly emerging managers and owners of buildings with the reduction of energy costs (long recognized as
the single most expensive area of building management) . H.E.A. T. has presented tangible opportunities for tenant
associations, housing coops, churches, community organizations, homeowners and small businesses to garner
substantial savings and lower the costs of building operation.
Through the primary service of providing low cost home heating oil, various heating plant services and
energy management services, H.E.A.T. members have collectively saved over 1.5 million dollars.
W:lr!<ing collaboratively with other community service organizations with similar goals, and working to establish its
viability as a business entity, H.E.A.T. has committed its revenue generating capacity and potential to providing
services that wor!< for and lead to stable, productive communities.
If you are interested in learning more about H.E.A.T. or if you are interested in becoming a H.E.A.T. member, call
or write the H.E.A. T. office.
Housing Energy Alliance for Tenants Coop Corp,
853 Broadway, Suite 414, New York, NY. 10003, [212] 5050286
WORKSHOP
COMMUNITY AIDE. Office of State Sen. Franz S. Leichter (0-
Manh). Help run 181st St. district office. Represent Sen. at Com-
munity mtgs & hearings. Work closely with other community
leaders on adequate health care, educ, tenant displacement,
drug abuse & other issues of concern to constituents as well as
their individ problems. Salary: $20,000 + full state benefits.
Knowledge of PCs & Spanish a +. Resumes: Glenn von Nostitz,
Office of Sen Franz Leichter, Rm 517, Legislative Office Bldg,
Albany, NY 12247.
HOUSING SPECIALIST. Community org in NW Bronx seeks
tenant organizer. Knowledge of NYC housing laws, exp with
organizing, exc writing & research skills & Spanish speaking
helpful. Salary: $17,000 + benefits. Resume: NIOC, 2541 Olin-
ville Ave, Bronx, NY 10467.
DIRECTOR OF LEGAL WORK. Provide training, leadership &
support to office's welfare, medicaid & food stamp work, & overall
supervision of other legal work, including tenant rep. Collective
decision-making, community-based office. Salary based on expo
Resume: Martin S. Needelman, Project Oir, Brooklyn Legal Ser-
vices Corp A, 260 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211. EOE.
CITY LIMITS ON THE AIR
"How the Mass Media Covers Housing Issues"
From the panel discussion sponsored by City Limits featuring
Alan Finder of the Times, Michael Moss of Newsday, Arnold
Oiaz of WCBS-TV, Wayne Barrett of the Voice and Barbara
Lippman and John Belmonte of the Daily News.
WFUV (90.7FM), Monday, June 13 at 6:00 p.m.
SOHO OFFICE SHARE. Split 400 + sq ft on Broadway. $315
includes utilities; copier avail. 212-966-9619.
TENANTS:
Learn About Coop Convenlon
The New York State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition
is sponsoring an aJl-day workshop on conversion of rental buildings
to co-operatives and condominiums.
SUBJECTS COVERED:
The conversion process and timetable; differences between cooperatives and
condominiums, and eviction and non-eviction plans; role of New York State
Department of Law (Attorney General); rights of tenants in occupancy; ware-
housing; how to read a prospectus; role of attorney; selecting an attorney and
engineer; organizing and negotiating strategies; protecti ng non-purchasing
tenants; assessing ability to buy and financing options; a review of pending
legislative changes.
SATURDAY, JUNE 11 , 1988
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
(with 45-minute lunch break)
Location . . . . . . . . . . . . Holy Trinity Parish Center
213 West 82nd Street, Manhattan
(between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue)
Tuition: $25 per person
(3 or more people from same group: $20 per person)
Send check payable to NYSTNC to:
New York State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition
198 Broadway (Room 1100)
New York, New York 10038
Mark check " Co-op Conversion." Include your name, address, home and
work phone numbers. For information on registration: (212) 9647260.
Competitively Priced Insurance
LET us DO A FREE EVAWATION OF
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Our Coverages Include:
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at our
CELEBRATE
I
Thirteen Years of
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FUNDRAISING
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