A TRASHY, EXPENSIVE IDEA: Bloomberg's East Harlem Marine Transfer Station is DOUBLE the Cost of Current System

NEW YORK—Such a boondoggle! At the request of Councilmember Jessica Lappin, THE CITY OF NEW YORK INDEPENDENT BUDGET OFFICE prepared a scathing, nonpartisan indictment of Mayor Bloomerg and Council Speaker (and likely mayoral candidate) Christine Quinn's ridiculous plan to achieve "environmental justice" by aggregating all of Manhattan's residential trash and processing and containerizing it on a so-called "marine transfer station" to be located just two hundred yards from East Harlem/Yorkville's public housing projects and immediately adjacent to a public park used annually by more than 1 million New Yorkers.

Council Member Jessica S. Lappin
Council of the City of New York
250 Broadway
Room 1762
New York, NY 10007
 
Dear Council Member Lappin:
At your request, the Independent Budget Office has prepared an estimate of the cost of constructing and operating the East 91st Marine Transfer Station (MTS) compared to continuation of the interim plan of exporting waste to transfer stations in New Jersey under short-term contracts. Based on IBO’s analysis, the present value of the twenty-year cost of exporting under interim contracts to transfer stations in New Jersey is $218.9 million, compared with $554.3 million for export at the East 91st MTS. We estimate that the cost per ton in the first year the new facility could be operating is $90 for the interim plan and $238 for the East 91st MTS....

PLAIN AND SIMPLE, Bloomberg and Quinn's plan represents an INCREASE of 153% increase in the total cost of trash export or an extra $335.4 million, which could have gone to homeless programs, low-income housing, or education over the next 20 years. This is NOT environmental justice, this is government WASTE.