Council unable to override Mayor’s veto. The proposed sites of three marine waste transfer stations were approved after the City Council failed to get sufficient votes to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto.

The Department of Sanitation had sought separate site selection approvals through ULURP applications to construct four new marine transfer stations. The four transfer stations were a component of Mayor Bloomberg’s 20-year Solid Waste Management Plan, which at the time of the applications was still pending approval before the City Council. (read more…)

Residents of Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Bensonhurst vigorously opposed Sanitation’s proposed sites. Sanitation sought site selection approval to construct four 90,000- square-foot, three-story marine transfer stations on sites formerly used as waste transfer stations or garbage incinerators. In Manhattan, Sanitation sought to reuse the site at East 91st Street and the East River, which had contained a waste transfer station until 1999. In Brooklyn, sites at Shore Parkway in Bensonhurst and at Hamilton Avenue in Sunset Park were proposed; both had incinerators or transfer stations that closed in the past five years. The fourth site in College Point Queens, at the foot of 31st Avenue, has a vacant marine transfer station.

At the March 2, 2005 Commission hearing, Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty testified that since the Fresh Kills Landfill closed in 2001 Sanitation has been operating on interim contracts for the export of residential solid waste by truck. He stated that the four transfer stations would allow Sanitation to comply with state environmental laws, decrease reliance on truck transport and make each borough self-sufficient in the transfer of its waste. Each new structure would incorporate state-of-the-art ventilation and odor control systems that would remove 90 to 99 percent of the odorous compounds. (read more…)