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DECEMBER 29, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
GARBAGE PLAN Prospect Park to institute carry-in, carry-out trash policy in 2020
BY COLIN MIXSON
The non-for-profi t caretakers
of Prospect Park will ask
visitors to take a greater hand
in maintaining Brooklyn’s
Backyard beginning sometime
next year, when certain areas
of the park will be subject
to a “carry-in, carry-out” garbage
policy modeled after the
National Park Service’s likenamed
program, according to a
spokeswoman for the Prospect
Park Alliance.
“I can confi rm that we are
planning to pilot a carry-in,
carry-out trash program in the
park’s Lookout Hill,” said Deborah
Kirschner.
The upcoming pilot program
is designed to help protect
wooded, highland areas of the
park, where work vehicles have
diffi culty maneuvering and litter
poses a danger to the natural
environment, according to
Kirschner.
Prospect Park’s upcoming
garbage program is in the early
stages of development, and is
being modeled after carry-in,
carry-out policies utilized by
the National Parks Service, in
which trash cans are removed
from natural areas to encourage
visitors to manage their own litter
and free up state resources
for other projects, according to a
City Lab report.
However, fewer trash cans
hasn’t always translated to less
litter, according to a report by
the Wall Street Journal, and
Kirschner said that the Alliance’s
program would be accompanied
with a strong public education
campaign in an effort to
increase compliance.
The spokeswoman could not
confi rm whether the Alliance
would reduce garbage pickups
in the affected areas, but said
that garbage cans would be reshuffl
ed to centralized locations
within the park and that the aim
of the new policy is not to cutback
on maintenance.
“The idea behind carry-in,
carry-out is to centralize the garbage
cans in key access point areas
– it does not necessarily mean
fewer cans or fewer pickups, just
more strategic placement of cans
and garbage removal points,”
Kirschner explained.
Prospect Park Alliance
President Sue Donoghue unveiled
the upcoming carry-in,
carry-out policy to volunteer
members of the Prospect Park
Community Committee — a coalition
of local organizations
that gather on a monthly basis
with the Parks Department and
Prospect Park Alliance to discuss
issues concerning Brooklyn’s
Backyard — at a meeting
on Nov. 20, where some members
were skeptical that park
patrons would do their part
maintain the green space.
Stanley Greenberg, a longtime
member of the Brooklyn
Bird Club, pointed to the proliferation
of dog poop around the
park, along with the city’s failure
to police the prohibition on
cars in Prospect Park as a sure
sign of the plan’s impending failure.
“This kind of policy doesn’t
work for dog walkers, or drivers,
so I don’t expect that it will
work for people who litter,” said
Greenberg.
But others were pleased at the
new direction the Alliance was
taking, claiming it’s high time
that the people who love and enjoy
Prospect Park do their part
to keep it clean.
“We can’t have a garbage can
every 10 feet,” said Seth Kaplan,
a member of the Prospect Park
Community Committee. “It’s giving
people a new frame of reference
and saying, ‘just bring it in
and take it out,’ and that’s all.”
The Prospect Park Alliance will institute a carry-in, carry-out garbage policy affecting
certain areas of the park next year. File Photo
Carroll Park Redesign
ground over here, and an older playground over
there, and then have kids running around with
their baseballs and soccer balls,” said Sarah
Weber, who volunteers as a gardener in the
park. “You need the playground equipment to
be more integrated.”
In the end, members of Community Board
Six’s Parks Committee voted by show hands for
a project that improves the play equipment currently
at the park — which already has a play
space — in lieu of creating an entirely new playground.
City offi cials stressed that the designs presented
on Wednesday were purely preliminary,
and that the project remains unfunded at this
time. Parks offi cials will continue soliciting
community input and modify designs based on
the feedback they receive.
This was the second time the city came
to board members with their pitch for the
Carroll Park redesign, and earlier renderings
of the park showed the blacktop being
divided between artificial turf and playground
space, with a seating area in the
corner.
The designs shown on Wednesday had fewer
specifi cs. There is no commitment to turf being
installed on the upper level, but offi cials
said that remains a possibility, with the space
around the playground being labeled as “fl exible
use.” The size of the proposed playground
expansion has also been scaled down signifi -
cantly.
At past community meetings, residents had
pushed for a litany of improvements, including
a dog run — after a group of pet owners were issued
fi nes for walking their dogs off-leash amid
what one local man described as an ICE-style
raid. But Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Martin
Maher shot down the possibility of pooches
ever having a spot to run free in the historic
park, saying there just wasn’t enough space.
“There is not going to be a dog run at this
park,” he said.
Continued from page 1
Residents prefer the empty lot at Carroll Park to remain, rather than building a new playground in its
place. Photo by Ben Verde