Community News
GARBAGE GONE
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I MAY 2018 23
BY ANGELA MATUA
arbage trucks parked
near a garage operated
by the Department of
Sanitation have caused
headaches for residents
of the Ravenswood Houses in Astoria
for years.
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer,
who said he has been pressing the
city to move the site and stop the
trucks from being parked in the area
since his first year in office in 2010,
announced that the Department of
Sanitation will no longer be storing
garbage trucks outside of a garage
at 34-28 21st St.
“It’s a decades-long problem and
the people of Ravenswood in my
district have led this fight for over
20 years to remove the trucks from
double parking in the streets,” he said.
Van Bramer said he brought up the
issue with Mayor Michael Bloomberg
but “didn’t get traction” and had a
similar experience with Mayor Bill de
Blasio until a blizzard in 2016.
When the mayor came to visit As-toria
to check on snow removal, the
councilman, along with Ravenswood
Tenants Association President Carol
Wilkins, made sure to walk past the
garage during their tour.
“All the trucks were lined out on the
street and we took that opportunity to
say to him personally that this is an
environmental justice issue. This is a
Vision Zero issue because the trucks
made it really dangerous to cross the
street along 35th Avenue and I said
to the mayor, ‘This is the biggest thing
that you can do to make life better
for a lot of people in Ravenswood,’”
Van Bramer said. “I think he took that
to heart.”
During a town hall in Long Island
City last April, residents again brought
up the issue of the garage and the
mayor announced that he had allo-cated
$142.6 million to relocate it.
“Not only have a lot of the mem-bers
of the community obviously raised
this very powerfully, the councilman
has raised this during the last snow-storm,”
de Blasio said in the town hall.
Though the city promised residents
that the trucks would stop idling in
the area by last summer, they did not
meet that deadline, according to Van
Bramer. But in April, he received a let-ter
from the Department of Sanitation
saying that trucks would no longer be
parked on the street.
According to Belinda Mager, a
spokesperson for the Department
of Sanitation, the city has operated
that garage since the 1930s.
“The neighborhood has grown
through the decades, and to meet
the needs of the expanding neighbor-hood,
our equipment fleet has also
grown,” Mager said. “The old facility is
just not adequate to contain the cur-rent
neighborhood needs. We recently
finalized an agreement that will help
alleviate overcrowding at the garage,
allowing us to move some trucks off
site for parking.”
The construction of a new site will
take several years but Van Bramer
argues that the trucks no longer idling
around 35th Avenue “makes a big
difference.”
“There’s a playground right next to
the depot and basketball and handball
courts right adjacent to it as well,”
Van Bramer said. “My first year as a
council member I sponsored a bas-ketball
tournament on a hot summer
day. All the kids were running around
playing basketball but the smell in the
court from the garbage trucks was
really intense. It was a stench that
no child should have to smell while
they’re playing in the neighborhood
playground.”
He said the community, including
Wilkins, are “elated” and that a bus
driver who transports senior citizens
to and from the Ravenswood Senior
Center stopped his bus on the street
to shout out that this relocation is “a
great thing.”
“He said it was always really dan-gerous
to pick up the seniors and
deliver them home in a sea of garbage
trucks,” he said.
According to the Department of
Sanitation, construction on a new site
will begin in 2021 and is expected to
be completed in 2024.
Photo via Google Maps
It’s a decades-long
problem and the people of
Ravenswood in my district
have led this fight for
over 20 years to remove
the trucks from double
parking in the streets.
JIMMY VAN BRAMER
Councilman
/www.qns.com
