Health hazards loom over New Yorkers living among waste stations
Even on the sunniest day, a dark cloud lingers. It is the veil of exhaust and stench of garbage that hovers over northern Bushwick. Osiris Arias and his wife, Marina, have endured it since they moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood in 1995, and it has only gotten worse, they say. The source of their problem stands a few hundred feet from their home: a waste transfer station.
Three neighborhoods in three boroughs take in nearly 80 percent of the city’s trash, about 40,000 tons a day. They are located in the South Bronx; Jamaica, Queens; and North Brooklyn. There are no waste transfer stations in Manhattan, despite the fact that the borough produces 40 percent of the city’s garbage.
