Three years after the City Council passed a Waste Equity Law sharply reducing trash trucked to waste transfer stations in environmentally hard-hit neighborhoods, one lawmaker is pressing to roll back the change in his own district.
Councilmember I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens) is the sole sponsor of a bill that would lift the restrictions for transfer stations that deliver plans to ship out trash by rail — including in Queens Community District 12. The measure is scheduled for a pair of votes Thursday, while a key committee chair is out of the country.
While the existing law already exempts facilities that rely on rail as an alternative to long-haul trucks, Miller’s bill would fast-track the exception, lifting the restrictions for facilities that intend to begin using garbage trains soon, giving them four years to follow through.
“We want to make sure that there’s provisions in place where companies want to do the right thing,” Miller told THE CITY.
Among the trash station operators in the area, along the Long Island Rail Road tracks, are Royal Waste Services, Regal Recycling Company and American Recycling Co.
Not so fast, say Miller constituents who advocated for the Waste Equity Law’s passage.
They say that living alongside the waste stations in southeast Queens is a daily experience of environmental racism, with garbage trucks constantly rumbling down the streets and exhaust leaving them gasping for air.
Air reeks near the stations, they say, forcing them inside their homes and away from Liberty Park. A group of community leaders has even begun legal proceedings against two waste stations on Liberty Avenue in Jamaica.
“Clean air is something that we have to ask for on top of everything else,” said Oster Bryan, 41, chair of the St. Albans Civic Association, who held a sign with the slogan “We literally can’t breathe” at a Tuesday rally outside Miller’s office.
“We shouldn’t have to ask for that.”
City records show that waste stations based in Southeast Queens have lobbied Miller and other elected officials for years over legislation.
Most recently, Royal Waste Services paid a lobbyist to target Miller and Reynoso to amend the Waste Equity Bill. American Recycling spent more than $19,000 in total this year to lobby Miller and Reynoso, along with Councilmembers James Gennaro in Queens and Justin Brannan in Brooklyn.
Four years for stations to export by rail means four more years of keeping the windows closed and never entering the park, said Caroll Forbes, 74, who lives across the street from the stations on Liberty Avenue. She said she doesn’t recall the last time she set foot in Liberty Park.
“I can’t open my windows,” Forbes said, adding that her nine grandchildren were asthmatic when they lived in the neighborhood.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson shelved legislation Thursday that would lift the trash truck caps as questions mounted over the bill, which environmentalists said would benefit a politically connected southeast Queens carting company.
The term-limited Johnson pulled the measure just an hour before sources said a vote was scheduled to take place.
It was a dramatic about-face after he fast-tracked the bill, despite it having just one sponsor, the area’s equally termed-out local Councilman, I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens).
Johnson also made his now-reversed decision to move the bill even though Sanitation Committee chairman, Councilman Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn), is out of the country.
This confirms Reynoso will continue Adams record of unaccountability in the borough president's office. Hope you gentrifiers are glad who you voted for.
Anyway...
Council insiders pointed to Miller’s endorsement of Johnson’s failed Comptroller bid as a likely explanation for the decision to move the bill despite significant initial pushback.
Johnson strongly disputed the charges Thursday when he was pressed repeatedly by The Post about the timeline of events.
“What you are saying, there is no truth, there is no merit. Zero,” he said.
His remarks came after a slew of statements by activists and Council insiders to the Post laying out their concerns.
“That’s the obvious connection — that Daneek endorsed Corey,” said Jen Guiterrez, the Democratic nominee to succeed Reynoso on the Council. “There’s just no other logic – there’s so many bills being waited on to be heard, and this is the bill? This is the one you want to prioritize?”
9 comments:
You vote for garbage. You get garbage.
The United States long has been a nation that has lended a helping hand to the needy across the world, but under the Biden Administration, our country is forgetting the needs of its own people. This is shameful...
South East Queens has the best politicians!
You really want to breathe in garbage? Build a coal power plant. Burn baby burn!
Cujo has neglected South Queens for years.
Now he was to poison the people who live there because he did not get elected to the job position he wanted.
People of South Queens should send all their garbage to where he lives and works so he could breathe what they have been breathing for years. Also, send him the dead rats they find in the streets so he can get the message, we don't want to continue to breathe air filled with garbage.
Come on, man said...
Buy a $1,000 HEPA filter for your bedroom !
To the people of Jamaica QUEENS and SE QUEENS: Keep putting SHIT in office (Miller, Comrie, Flake,Meeks, Huntley, Wills, Smith, etc) and you should not be surprised when you GET SHIT.
Same old story........with the same old faces too.
Environmental racism perpetrated by a black lawmaker (Miller) on his black constituents. Miller was a corrupt crook to begin with, which the folks should have known, since he as Comrie's boy. Leroy Comrie being another perpetrator of environmental racism.
Lots of this kind of black on black crime in the area. Wonder why Jamaica stays in the dumps, people like Miller, Comrie and the majority of black church leaders like Flake who are the worst culprits of environmental racism. I don't know of the people of Jamaica will ever wake up and smell the garbage.
"I don't know of the people of Jamaica will ever wake up and smell the garbage."
The people of Jamaica, Queens smell the garbage everyday for the past couple of decades. They believe all the hype and all the lies their local leaders spew because they like what they hear.
But when their local leaders fail and break their promises, and ignore their problems, they stupidly reelect them over again. They just cannot fathom voting against their skin color.
They continue to live in garbage and be treated like garbage for what they refuse to do....Vote their Failed politicians out of office.
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