OUTRAGE stated their position as one of the fifty organizations concerned with Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement on March 6th, 2012 that the City would be seeking proposals to pilot waste-to-energy incinerators to burn New York City’s waste. In response, OUTRAGE and these organizations drafted and signed a letter declaring their opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement urging him to exclude these technologies as options for NYC residents because of their harmful environmental and public health impacts. As of now, there are no commercial-scale gasification, pyrolysis or plasma incinerators operating anywhere in the United States and these technologies have experienced significant problems in other countries. It is disappointing that the City is continuing to advance these risky and polluting technologies, especially when it has yet to implement the Solid Waste Management Plan, which calls for both fair share and a reduction of overall waste production in NYC. The truth is, the already overburdened communities, such as North Brooklyn and the Bronx, would most likely be sited for these incinerators bringing more trucks through our streets and increasing poor air quality for our residents.
