Op-Ed
By Gil Maduro, Fay Muir, Lyn Pyle and Hal Strelnick, M.D.

City Must Limit Diesel Exhaust on Filter Project  Machinery

Recent articles in The New York Times and AM New York call our attention to the air we breathe. The articles report the American Lung Association gives the Bronx (and most of New York City) an F for filthy air. And it is getting worse.

Breathing particulate pollution in filthy air causes asthma and is tied to diabetes, cancer and heart attacks. In other words, breathing in New York can kill you.

According to the Lung Association, the two top triggers for New York City’s air pollution are diesel trucks and power plants. Hard to believe, but a significant part of the problem comes to us on the wind from coal burning power plants in Ohio. Particulate matter travels that far, and falls on us as acid rain, or sits on the city in clouds of smog on summer days.

Unfortunately, only the federal government can help us control emissions from Ohio’s power plants, but our City Council has taken on the first cause — diesel-fueled vehicles. In response to local legislation, both the MTA and the city’s Department of Sanitation are in the process of using cleaner fuel and retrofitting city buses and sanitation trucks to control diesel emissions.

Here in Norwood, however, the problem looms unresolved and close to home. Diesel powered bulldozers, backhoes, and drills have been at work preparing the filtration plant site in Van Cortlandt Park since late December. Last week, blasting began and diesel powered trucks began hauling away the broken rock and dirt. The city’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) predicts a diesel-powered truck will leave our corner of the park every two minutes for the next two years. The EIS also predicts a 2 percent increase in deaths and incidents of asthma caused by this construction in our neighborhood. The DEP is committed to use best available technology to control emissions from diesel-powered equipment, but their equipment has been at work in our park for six months and they have not yet completed research into what that best available technology might be!

In Van Cortlandt Park, the DEP has taken many measures to control the visible dust that rises from their work. Trucks are washed down and their loads of dirt and rock are covered. Grass is planted on exposed dirt surfaces. Blacktop roads have been built. All equipment is required to use Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) fuel, which cuts emissions by 10 percent.  But the invisible fine particulate matter emitted by use of diesel fuel — the invisible, killer dust that causes asthma, cancer, and heart problems — remains 90 percent unchecked.

Friends and neighbors concerned with the problem have suggested various solutions. Some propose tracking emergency room visits to see if there is the increase in deaths and incidents of asthma predicted by the EIS. But tracking can take more than a year to gather statistics, and won’t prevent a lifelong problem for those affected. Tracking is good, but will only tell us we were right — two years after the damage has been done.

Others have suggested planting additional street trees in the Norwood section. A great idea. We will all enjoy their beauty, and eventually those trees will help clean our air. But trees the size you can transplant won’t in the next two years significantly clean the air we breathe as the city prepares the park site for construction. More trees are not a sufficient solution.

The only way to prevent the health problems before they happen is to retrofit the heavy equipment and trucks with emissions controls that filter out 90 to 95 percent of the fine particulate matter.

Retrofitting the heavy equipment and trucks on this project with emissions controls will cost approximately $500,000. Fortunately, New York State law (SEQRA) requires the city to “avoid or minimize” environmental impacts, including impacts to air quality. City law (Local Law 77) quite specifically requires best available emissions controls on the heavy equipment used in city projects. The Mayor and DEP must follow the law.

Make no mistake. Although the $200 million promised for rehabilitation of other Bronx parks is a good thing, that $200 million does not satisfy the law’s requirement that environmental impacts in our neighborhood be mitigated. “Mitigate” under the law means to avoid or minimize the impact. To satisfy the law, $500,000 in mitigation money must be found to minimize impacts to the air we breathe.

And there is plenty of time. Site preparation in Van Cortlandt began four months before the published schedule in the EIS. The city can halt site preparation until they retrofit the dozen or so pieces of heavy equipment and a fleet of 40 trucks, and still be ahead of schedule. If they do not, increased death and ill health will come to Norwood and the Bronx, invisible with the summer breeze.

Gil Maduro, Fay Muir and Lyn Pyle are members of the COVE Environmental Justice Committee. Hal Strelnick, M.D., is professor and director of the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center.

 

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