Quote:

Not only have we not heard from Councilman Sottolano but what about 31st district Assemblyman Mainor, who is being touted to run for either Mayor or Ward E Councilman in 2013. We need to get both of them to voice their opinion. Get them on the record as once the Port Authority purchases this land JC has no say in what they do as they have done this before. City has no money to fight it legally and just one more way that JC will be screwed.

Funny how Schundler also proposed doing this when he was in office and the amount was the same, $5 or 6 million, so Healy can't even negotiate a decent price if we're gonna get screwed!

[quote]Jersey Journal - 11/11/99
by Jim Kennelly, Journal staff writer


Transfer Station Trashed

Trash it.

That was the verdict of the Jersey City Planning Board and City Council on a proposed garbage Transfer station for the Greenville Yards.

In votes last night and Tuesday night, the two bodies overwhelmingly supported amendments to the Greenville Yards Redevelopment Plan banning the construction of garbage transfer stations there.

The Planning Board voted 7-0 on Tuesday to recommend the amendments, authored by Ward A, Greenville, Councilman Robert Cavanaugh. The City Council voted 8-0 yesterday to approve the amendments as ordinances. Ward E, Downtown, Councilman Mariano Vega was absent.

The votes would appear to kill the plan of waste-hauling giant Browning Ferris Industries of New York to move 6,000 tons a day of New York garbage through the Greenville Yards from marine barges to rail cars headed for out-of-state landfills.

"Stick a fork in it - it's done," Council President Tom DeGise said of the proposal.

New York is considering the bids of BFI and four other competitors to help it export its residential Garbage because Staten Island's Fresh Kills Landfill is to close at the end of 2001.

"The problem is with this word, garbage," said BFI spokesman Alan Marcus. "This is a commodity to be shipped. If we called it 'Formica table tops' we wouldn't have this kind of emotional confrontation."

[b]BFI promised the city $5 million to $10 million in taxes and tipping fees to sell the station, but residents weren't buying.

Fearful of the potential for odor and disease, more than 5,000 Greenville residents signed petitions opposing the garbage station, and more than 400 packed the City Council chambers for the votes.

BFI executive David Iverson promised the Planning Board that the garbage station would be built so that
residents "never smell, see, or hear the waste."

The boisterous sign-waving crowd booed in response, and over the din, one man shouted, "Oh come on! Only you guys won't smell it."

The crowd, made up of Jersey City residents, old and new, lined up for nearly three hours to speak out against the garbage station.

"I live just four doors down from Linden Avenue East and I see those shiny new light rail cars zipping by," said Frances Oakley, a Princeton Avenue resident since 1954. "I can't think how sad it would be to have them riding right along next to garbage trains."

"The mayor calls this city a slice of heaven," said Mary Frances Strong, who also lives in Oakley's east Greenville neighborhood. "When did garbage become an ingredient to the pie?"

The largest contingent of protesters came from Port Liberte, the luxury waterfront condominium a quarter-mile up river from the proposed garbage station.

"Why do we want to turn the Gold Coast into the garbage coast?" asked Port Liberte resident Anna Freed. Her Port Liberte neighbor, microbiologist Micael Withers, described the garbage station as "potential Foodfest for germs, bacteria and pathogenic molds."

One of the largest employers now located in the Greenville Yards, Tropicana Juices, told the Planning Board it did not want a garbage transfer station for a neighbor.

"This year, 250 million gallons of the world's finest juices will be shipped to Jersey City from our Florida processing facilities," wrote Tropicana Senior Vice President Thomas Ryan.

"Our Jersey City Distribution Center would be a direct neighbor to the proposed garbage transfer station. Clearly this use is completely incompatible with our operations."
Ryan said Tropicana, which has 182 workers employed in the Yards, "would be forced to review the status of Jersey City and its continued importance" if the garbage station was approved.

Thomas Durkin, the attorney for Tilcon, the company whose land was condemned by the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency to make way for the garbage station, said his client would fight the project to the bitter end in the courts.
City Planning Director Robert Cotter reported that Greenville Yards and Port Jersey should be developed with an eye toward becoming a leading regional port, and said the station is "not a proper use for the site."

Cotter also countered the argument, raised by a representative of the Manhattan-based Tri-State Transportation Campaign, that if the city didn't accept a garbage station, it would be saddled with a never-ending stream of trucks carrying the New York garbage.

"New York has as many as 14 waterbourne avenues, including an excellent site in Staten Island now under construction by NYDOS - it is not just a choice of taking this station or taking the trucks," Cotter said. [/quote

How come we haven't heard from Sottolano on this? Wonder what the people in Ward A think about this?

Port Authority approves Jersey City purchase for garbage barge transfer station

Tuesday, May 18, 2010
BY TOM DAVIS
The Record
STAFF WRITER

A plan to barge New York's trash to New Jersey and then ship the solid waste out-of-state by rail took a significant step forward Tuesday.

The Port Authority on Tuesday approved the purchase and redevelopment of Greenville Yards in Jersey City that will serve as the lynchpin for a barge-to-rail trash transfer station.

The $118.1 million plant, which will be built by 2013, will help replace 1,000 trash trucks that pass through New Jersey each day, Port Authority officials said.

The Port Authority took action one day after Governor Christie urged the bi-state agency to move the project along more quickly.

Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia said the Hudson River crossings are overburdened with truck traffic, and the agency's action ?provides an environmentally sound alternative.?

?It will provide a host of important benefits ? reduced congestion for those who use our crossings [and] a better quality of life for the people of our region,? said Coscia, who, at Christie's request, was reappointed Port Authority chairman on Tuesday.

Currently, the majority of New York City's trash is trucked through the Port Authority's Hudson River crossings in unsealed open-topped containers with fabric coverings. Under the new plan, trash would be shipped in watertight sealed containers.

Judith Enck, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, applauded the Port Authority?s move, saying the Greenville Yards project is ?as an important step for cleaner air in the region.?

?Rail is an excellent transportation alternative, removing pollution from the congested roadways impacting our communities and taking advantage of efficient and lower polluting railroads,? she said in a prepared statement.

Christie said New Jersey's roads have been clogged by trash trucks for too long, making the quality of life worse for all of our residents.?

The track at Conrail's Greenville Yard connects to two railroads ? CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway.

The two railroads could eventually ship trash to solid-waste facilities that currently handle New York City trash in Pennsylvania, Virginia and elsewhere, Port Authority officials said.

E-mail: davist@northjersey.com
A plan to barge New York's trash to New Jersey and then ship the solid waste out-of-state by rail took a significant step forward Tuesday.

The Port Authority on Tuesday approved the purchase and redevelopment of Greenville Yards in Jersey City that will serve as the lynchpin for a barge-to-rail trash transfer station.

The $118.1 million plant, which will be built by 2013, will help replace 1,000 trash trucks that pass through New Jersey each day, Port Authority officials said.

The Port Authority took action one day after Governor Christie urged the bi-state agency to move the project along more quickly.

Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia said the Hudson River crossings are overburdened with truck traffic, and the agency's action ?provides an environmentally sound alternative.?

?It will provide a host of important benefits ? reduced congestion for those who use our crossings [and] a better quality of life for the people of our region,? said Coscia, who, at Christie's request, was reappointed Port Authority chairman on Tuesday.

Currently, the majority of New York City's trash is trucked through the Port Authority's Hudson River crossings in unsealed open-topped containers with fabric coverings. Under the new plan, trash would be shipped in watertight sealed containers.

Judith Enck, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, applauded the Port Authority?s move, saying the Greenville Yards project is ?as an important step for cleaner air in the region.?

?Rail is an excellent transportation alternative, removing pollution from the congested roadways impacting our communities and taking advantage of efficient and lower polluting railroads,? she said in a prepared statement.

Christie said New Jersey's roads have been clogged by trash trucks for too long, making the quality of life worse for all of our residents.?

The track at Conrail's Greenville Yard connects to two railroads ? CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway.

The two railroads could eventually ship trash to solid-waste facilities that currently handle New York City trash in Pennsylvania, Virginia and elsewhere, Port Authority officials said.

E-mail: davist@northjersey.com

At least it is only being transferred here and not dumped.

Does this change anything other than the method of transportation for the trash? I rode my bike down linden ave (i think) and found a flow of NYC trash trucks using a transfer station there. I thought that was technically Bayonne, where is the border?

you have to love it.....NY crap dumped in NJ and we will accomodate that process.

Gov. Christie urges Port Authority to build trash-hauling rail station

By Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger
May 17, 2010, 7:18PM

JERSEY CITY ? Gov. Chris Christie urged the Port Authority to buy the proposed site of a barge-to-rail transfer station that would keep as many as 1,000 trash-hauling trucks a day off New Jersey roads.

"For far too long, New Jersey?s roads have been clogged by trash trucks ad the harmful emissions they produce, making the quality of life worse for all of our residents," Christie said in statement today. "But the Port Authority can act immediately by completing its purchase of this land, investing in the resources needed to build a first-class operation, and moving waste off our roads onto rail in sealed, safe containers."

In response, the Port Authority said its board could vote to purchase the proposed site of the transfer station in Jersey City as soon as this afternoon, when board members will gather in Manhattan for the agency?s annual reorganization meeting. Half of the 12-member board is appointed by New Jersey?s governor, who also names the board chairman.

The 27-acre site lies along New York Harbor, in Jersey City?s working-class Greenville neighborhood just south of Liberty State Park. Officials say the site, which is in view of the exclusive Liberty National Golf Club ,would allow sealed shipping containers filled with New York City garbage to be placed directly from barges onto rail cars, then shipped south or west for disposal in Pennsylvania landfills or at other sites.

Stephen Sigmund, a Port Authority spokesman, said the estimated cost of the transfer station is $30 million, though he declined to provide an estimate for the cost of the property because the agency is still in negotiations with its owner, Conrail.

Right now, most New York City municipal waste is hauled by trucks through the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and over the George Washington Bridge, a method that causes traffic congestion, puts ruts and potholes on the state?s highways, and fouls the air with diesel and other fumes.

Environmentalist and local officials have generally welcomed the project, some more cautiously than others. The New Jersey Environmental Federation released a statement calling the transfer station "a win-win for all parties involved," that would eliminate 15 million vehicle miles annually driven over new Jersey roads, and stop "millions of pounds of global warming and toxic air pollutants from ever being emitted."

Mayor Jerramiah Healy of Jersey City issued a statement saying his administration would work with the Port Authority to monitor the site?s environmental standards. And, Healy stated, "We will also work to ensure that the city receives a significant host fee, thus providing some needed relief to our Jersey City taxpayers."