WASHINGTON – About 700 yards from the end of a LaGuardia Airport runway, where thousands of planes take off and land, New York officials want to build what could be the equivalent of a bird magnet: a very large garbage transfer station.
Just four months after a run-in with birds sent a jet full of people into the Hudson River separating New York and New Jersey.
“That’s just insane,” said Jeff Skiles, co-pilot of USAirways Flight 1549, which ditched in the water Jan. 15. “We have a lot of difficulty keeping birds away from airports as it is.”
The city and the Federal Aviation Administration insist that the 2,000 tons of garbage, which would be hauled by truck into the 100-foot tall facility each day and sent out again on barges, won’t entice birds because the waste will be kept in containers or inside the building.
“We don’t see it (the station) as opening up some advertisement to the bird population that says, ‘Come here for a meal’ – it’s not that kind of facility,” said Walter Czwartacky, special projects director at the city sanitation department.
Now the Planet Gore angle for the story which the AP missed, with a dose of NYC politics thrown in for good measure. From Crain’s:
A small group of Queens businesses is quietly campaigning to defeat a proposed 100-foot-high waste transfer station near La Guardia Airport that is a key component of the Bloomberg administration’s five-borough plan to make the city’s garbage-disposal system greener.
The under-the-radar coalition spent $20,000 on a wildlife biologist’s study that shows the North Shore Marine Transfer Station — to be located about 2,000 feet from the end of one of La Guardia’s two main runways — would attract birds that could cause a replay of January’s US Airways Flight 1549 disaster. It commissioned a separate report arguing the MTS would prevent the installation of a state-of-the-art system to help planes land in foul weather. And it has lobbied in Albany to rally opposition among state lawmakers.
Its bird-danger arguments have even been embraced by the country’s biggest pilots group. And its efforts have complemented those of elected officials, including Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-Queens, who has railed against the MTS project with many of the same arguments.
The businesses have largely remained in the shadows, communicating primarily through Mac Gutman, a Port Washington, L.I., attorney. Mr. Gutman says the half-dozen Queens companies are worried the MTS will have adverse impacts on the airport, local truck traffic and land values. With the exception of New York Metro Peterbilt, which has sold heavy-duty trucks from a lot near the water in Queens’ College Point neighborhood since 1967, the businesses have refused to reveal themselves publicly because, Mr. Gutman says, they have city contracts and don’t want to upset officials.
Mystery solved
“Why you’d trade the future and safety of La Guardia for a waste transfer station you can locate virtually anywhere is absolutely a mystery to me,” Mr. Gutman says.
But the force behind the business group isn’t a mystery anymore. A source with knowledge of MTS issues says the opposition is being led by Tully Environmental Inc., a Willets Point, Queens-based waste management company with $80 million in annual sales. Tully has $27 million in annual waste transfer contracts with the city that would be made moot by the North Shore MTS, the source says.
The real question is, will this green project actually make sense? Here’s the scheme:
Under the plan, the city would transform the way it handles 14,000 tons of residential waste and recyclables each day, replacing a truck-based system with a barge and rail network. The shift would eliminate 6 million miles of tractor trailer trips per year, reducing congestion and improving air quality.
Only when bird-strikes became an issue did this project became controversial. It would be better if the media would report on the costs and benefits of the project to see exactly how much this new plan for NYC’s trash will cost and will the plan actually work as advertised.
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