Incinierator Illustration

-Mike Rex

The Brooklyn Navy Yard had been identified as a potential site for burning municipal waste  since 1976. In 1984 Mayor Ed Koch, responding to the closing of City landfills, advanced a proposal to build five giant garbage burning incinerators across the city. In 1992, the Dinkins administration developed a plan to build eight incinerators, including a 20-story high waste-to-energy incinerator with a 500 foot smokestack located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Permits were approved in 1993 as environmental groups organized in opposition. This new incinerator would burn 3,000 tons of garbage a day, spewing 2,100 tons of nitrogen oxides and other harmful toxins into North Brooklyn’s already polluted air. A coalition of activists and environmentalists from diverse sectors of North Brooklyn united to fight the incinerator under the leadership of El Puente, UJO, and the New York Public Interest Research Group as Community Alliance for the Environment (CAFE.) Artists joined the coalition as Waterfront, Williamsburg, the World (W. W. W.) This coalition was effective in forcing the city to provide a study of the incinerator's impact on the public health, and succeeding with a lawsuit to classify incinerator ash as toxic waste, adding significant challenges to its disposal. The discovery of a possible Revolutionary War graveyard on the site added to the complexity of the proposal, while environmental groups pressed legislators to commit to recycling, waste reduction and sustainable alternatives to incineration and landfill. As out-of-state landfill costs came down, the cost of building the incinerator became less feasible. Mayor Guiliani delayed funding of the incinerator until 1999, and City Council members withheld their votes on a new solid waste plan, demanding an additional Environmental Impact Study to to include new information on the health impacts of incinerator emissions. A study by NYPIRG found that 192,000 pounds of PCB-contaminated waste had been spilled or stored in or around the incinerator site, a quantity sufficient to qualify for Superfund status. and the City withdrew its plan.

Read an archived New York Times article about the alliance formed between leadership of the Latino and Hasidic communities to fight the proposed incinerator here.