Queens, NY – Congress is moving against Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to build a trash transfer station in Queens that critics say would draw a dangerous number of birds to La Guardia Airport.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The transfer station planned for College Point would go up about 2,000 feet from La Guardia Runway 13-31. Federal Aviation Administration guidelines usually require trash transfer stations to be at least 10,000 feet from airport runways.
Despite the guidelines, the FAA last year OK’d the station, saying it poses no hazard to planes.
But House members voted to apply the FAA’s usual guidelines to the station. The measure, tacked onto another FAA-related bill, now heads to the Senate.
“This amendment is about public safety trumping garbage,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens), who sponsored the proposal with Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens).
The city Department of Sanitation promises the station will be sealed up so tightly that birds won’t be interested.
There are only a limited number of locations for this garbage station. The spent several years studying sites and if it doesn’t go to College Point, the alternate sites are at Far Rockaway and in an old industrial warehouse site in BP.
Finally, Mr. Bloomberg now has a problem he can’t erase with politics or with money.
These seagulls do not even have pockets where they could put the cash. They are not going to just fly awya. Two times New Yorkers voted against giving the mayor a third term, yet he managed to squeeze ti through over our objections. However, the birds have a policy, “If we see garbage dumps, we are going to fly all around it every single day, because there is always some new food to check out.”
Of course, that means trouble for all the passengers on all airplanes.
Far Rock is close to JFK.
But is it really on a flight path?
I am really tired of bloomberg pushing for his way in decisions in which he has no expertise and involve significant risk of life. I assume the family of the school teacher that died shares similar concerns. By the way, bloomberg also disclipsed hippa related information.
Why doesn’t he put it near Gracie Mansion so that his property value could go down sorry the city’s ?????
All of New York is Garbage! Come live in Florida.