NEW YORK,, NY August 01, 2002 — Mayor Michael Bloomberg is backing away from former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's plan to send half the city's trash to a proposed waste transfer station in Linden, New Jersey. That facility was going to take raw garbage and load it into containers for shipment to out-of-state landfills. Instead, Mayor Bloomberg is going to upgrade existing waste stations in the city, and pack the containers there. WNYC's Amy Eddings reports.

The speculation is over. The Linden waste transfer station pland is dead. Mayor Bloomberg finally, officially, said it.

Bloomberg: The Linden facility was the best idea at the time. But things have changed, and I don't think we should be so dependent on a facility in another state. I also don't like the idea of // taking barges with loose refuse in them via our waterways. We would be better off compacting it and containerizing it and sealing it right as it gets off the trucks.

That's where the city's eight marine waste transfer stations come in. They dot the waterfront in four of the five boroughs, and have been dormant since the closing of the Fresh Kills landfill last year. They'll be retrofitted within two years to do what Linden would have done: compact raw garbage into 20-foot long containers. Staten Island, which never needed a transfer station because of Fresh Kills, will get a brand new facility. And from these sites, the city's barges will ship the containers to any place that wants the business.

Bloomberg: We need alternatives. Being independent and having alternatives is, long term, the legacy we can leave to our successors. Because none of us know when, and how, and who is going to take our waste.

Mayor Bloomberg says the total price tag will be several hundred million dollars. He says he couldn't be more specific, because the costs of upgrading the individual sites will vary. And while his Power Point presentation featured charts, showing how the city's billion-dollar trash budget has doubled in the last five years, Bloomberg could not say whether the plan will save any money. What he says it will do is reduce the city's dependency on 21 private transfer stations, clustered mostly in the South Bronx, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg.

Bloomberg: If you live in those neighborhoods, it may take us a year or so, but you will not have to live next to open waste anymore.

An earlier study by the Department of Sanitation had shown that it was only feasible to retrofit two of the city's eight marine waste stations, because the others were too small. Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty says that, unlike the Giuliani Administration, Mayor Bloomberg gave the department more leeway to think about expanding those water-based sites.

Doherty: I mean, that's the beauty of this thing. We wanna get those trucks off the road. You see 'em any time you go to Jersey, or around this city, you see those long tractor trailers and they look dirty and crummy-looking and they're driving all over the road. And I think we want -- we have to eliminate that. And we're gonna do it.

Several councilmembers, including Michael McMahon from Staten Island, are pleased that Bloomberg's plan means every borough will handle its own waste. And Mark Izeman from the Natural Resources Defense Council is glad the plan uses barges, and will reduce truck traffic and emissions. But, unlike the mayor, he's not sure that people will be lining up to take the city's garbage.

Izeman: There's a lot of unknown of, who's gonna take that garbage and how that garbage is going to be transferred to other states. There could be environmental concerns there, there are unknown costs there, and there continue to be political and logistical costs, as well.

One environmental group was ecstatic at the news. The Organization for Waterfront Neighborhoods had proposed this plan several years ago and Bloomberg had campaigned on it. Eddie Bautista is the group's lead organizer.

Bautista: We're so unaccustomed to politicians following through on their campaign platforms that we're still trying to process this, but we think the mayor made the right decision for both economic and environmental justice reasons.

Over in Linden, a spokeswoman for the group Jerseyans United to Stop New York City's Trash says she won't celebrate until the waste company, BFI, stops eyeing the site for development. And BFI is still interested in doing something in Linden. A spokesman says that, while the container-packing facility is no longer on the drawing board, a container port could be. For WNYC, I'm Amy Eddings.