WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES APRIL 25, 2019 27
Clearing the air on a trashy idea in Maspeth
BY THE OLD TIMER
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Nearly 30 years ago, New York
City found itself grappling
with a garbage crisis of epic
proportions. It wasn’t due to a
strike of sanitation workers or some
unforeseeable disaster. It was simply
about volume — there was too much
trash, and too few places to put it.
The most notorious symbol of
the city’s — and, for that matter, the
nation’s — trash problem was the
Mobro 4000, a barge loaded with tons
of trash from New York City and Long
Island that went on a months-long
Atlantic odyssey. It was supposed
to be docked and offl oaded in North
Carolina for transformation into
methane gas, but the North Carolina
government refused it, fearing the
trash contained medical waste and
other hazardous materials.
The garbage barge was then
rejected in Louisiana, Mexico and
Belize. Nobody wanted New York
City’s trash. Ultimately, the Mobro
4000 and its stinky haul were
returned to the city, and the garbage
was incinerated.
Burning trash was a common
practice in New York City for decades,
and even in the more environmentally
conscious 1980s, the city looked
upon incineration as a critical part
of handling the garbage crisis. The
city proposed building what they
called “Resource Recovery Plants”
across the city, including one site in
industrial Maspeth.
On July 23, 1987, the Ridgewood
Times reported on a meeting of
Community Board 5’s Environmental
Committee that focused on the
The inactive Maspeth incinerator is
shown in this 2016 photo from the
Ridgewood Times archives.
proposed construction of a new
incinerator located off the Maspeth
Creek near 47th Street. The
Sanitation Department already
had a large incinerator near 58th
Street in Maspeth, and another one
a short drive away at the Brooklyn
Navy Yard.
The proposed incinerator was to
be located in the heart of Maspeth’s
industrial area, close to the recently
closed Phelps Dodge smelting plant
and the heavily polluted Newtown
Creek. It also happened to be, as
West Maspeth Local Development
Corporation Executive Director
Frank Principe said at the meeting,
at a point of Maspeth 7 feet below
sea level.
Principe compared the situation
to a “deep bowl with a huge smoke
stack inside,” and he warned that
the fumes billowed by the proposed
incinerator would hang low over
the neighborhood. When combined
with emissions from the nearby
Long Island and Brooklyn- Queens
expressways, he warned, the
residents could experience an air
“inversion eff ect that is dangerous.”
“We appreciate the problems
of garbage disposal faced by the
city, but we don’t want Maspeth
dumped on,” Principe told Sanitation
Department representatives
in attendance.
Principe’s arguments, and those
of residents fearful of other side
eff ects of the proposed incinerator,
ultimately led the Sanitation
Department to abandon the idea. In
the years to come, the city would
find another way to reduce its
garbage stream: by mandating
recycling of glass, plastic, paper and
metal products.
Not only was recycling a more ecofriendly
alternative to burning waste,
it also allowed the city to save tens of
millions of dollars annually.
Today the industrial site where
the Maspeth incinerator was
proposed remains in use for local
industrial purposes. Maspeth
residents, of course, still deal with
the pollution in the Newtown
Creek — now a Superfund site
awaiting a major cleanup — and all
the noxious fumes from vehicles
traveling major highways through
the neighborhood.
Considering what might have been,
however, they may at least breathe
somewhat easier.
Reprinted from the June 16, 2016
Ridgewood Times.
* * *
If you have any remembrances or old
photographs of “Our Neighborhood:
The Way It Was” that you would like to
share with our readers, please write to
the Old Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 38-
15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361, or send
an email to editorial@ridgewoodtimes.
com. Any print photographs mailed
to us will be carefully returned to you
upon request.
The front page of the July 23, 1987 Ridgewood Times featured as the top story information about the controversial
Maspeth incinerator plan.
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