With the arrival of a new season, residents who live on 10th Street west of First Avenue are anticipating a long, hot summer with garbage trucks continuing to park on their block.
A resident from 240 E. 10th St. shared this from a recent warm weather day:
Due to the three enormous sanitation trucks parked directly in front of our building ... there were dozens of flies in my apartment. You could see them on and around the trucks and flying up to people’s apartments. I have a new-born daughter in the apartment and there were flies on her pacifier, flies in my apartment and flies in her room. This is unacceptable.
As first reported last Sept. 18, the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is now using this section of 10th Street to park up to seven garbage trucks or other vehicles. The DSNY no longer has use of their garage on 30th Street, and their solution for the foreseeable future has been to relocate their fleet elsewhere, including overnight on residential blocks.
And why park here? The Theater for the New City complex at 155 First Ave. near 10th Street was previously used by DSNY for storage, and they still maintain space in the facility for crews.
Meanwhile, residents say they continue to have quality-of-life and safety concerns — as expressed in previous posts — over the row of trucks parked on this block.
Last September, shortly after the trucks arrived, Mayor de Blasio promised to "relieve the immediate pressure" on 10th Street. "Do we want garbage trucks parking on residential streets? Of course not," said de Blasio, as CBS 2 reported on Sept. 26. "What we’re trying to do every day is figure out the kind of facilities that will help avoid that in the future."
Nine months later residents here are still waiting.
"Making phone calls and writing letters doesn’t seem to be doing anything," resident Michelle Lang said. "While Mayor de Blasio promised to relieve the residents of 10th Street from this undue burden back in September, nothing has been done."
Apparently there isn't any quick solution to the parking situation. DSNY included in their capital plan funding to start designing Manhattan Garage 6 (now temporarily on Montgomery and Jefferson streets) in 2022 with an anticipated completion date in 2028.
Local Councilmember Carlina Rivera has advocated for City Council to call to move the sanitation vehicles from residential neighborhoods in its 2020 Preliminary Budget Response.
Here's part of a missive from City Council:
The Council calls upon the Administration to relocate DSNY operational vehicles that are currently parked in residential neighborhoods to new, centralized locations within their respective sanitation districts. By centrally locating personnel and vehicle fleet, specifically in areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, DSNY would improve efficiencies and reduce safety/air quality risks to local residents and small businesses.
Updated 8 p.m.
I asked Avi Burn, an owner of Pinks, whose bar-restaurant looks out at the parked garbage trucks, for his thoughts.
"Obviously businesses and neighbors are quite worried as the trucks are still parked on the block and the summer is the most perilous time for us as the stench is magnified, consumer foot traffic is heavier (will avoid smelly truck lined blocks) and there is more potentially hazardous street behavior late at night."
Previously on EV Grieve:
Questions and concerns as the sanitation department begins using 10th Street to park garbage trucks
More trash talk about those garbage trucks parked on 10th Street
Local elected officials continue to press city for alternatives to parking garbage trucks on 10th Street; muggings now a concern
A waste of space: 10th Street still waiting for the garbage trucks to move on
19 comments:
Please Leave our Mayor ALONE! He has other and more important considerations like selling his Progressive Agenda around the great United States. Under his administration,there will be a Sanitation truck parked on every street in the Great USA!
Every square inch of public land has been handed over to private developers Carolina, so what's your next solution?
As a 10th street resident, it's AWFUL. They are loud - they park around 2 or 3 am, oftentimes screaming at one another and idling for up to an hour, which echoes and smells up the whole street. The flies are real and they are everywhere. They swarm around the trucks and up into windows and vents. I can't even have my AC on anymore because it brings in buckets of flies from the trucks at night. I can't believe it's been 9 months and nothing has been done.
We have Garbage-Truck-Rivera for our representative that's why we have garbage trucks parked on 10th St. for 10 months. ONE PARTY RULE. ONE PARTY RULE.
Nothing will be done. This post will probably start a new wave of media attention and DSNY will weather the new storm until it dies down and then it will be right back to the status quo until the next time there's a flare up. Nothing short of executive action can change it.
Exactly. One party rule. What are you going to do? Vote Republican? Why should they respond? The Dems use NYC as an ATM. Why should they care about you? Unless and until the voters show some resistance to the Dems this will continue. NYC needs a third party that cares about NYC residents.
Just like in Taylor Swift's Welcome to New York video!
He's a zero. Talks and does nothing. Any and every issue he's done Nothing!
The only thing progressive is his desires to move himself and his wife forward. Homelessness, no heat/hot water in the projects, Vision Zero, subways, etc... The worse mayor ever!
De Blasio, Carlina Rivera and CB3 have done nothing to help the residents of 10th Street and the East Village with this awful situation. Garbage trucks should not be parked on residential streets in front of people’s homes. One phone call from the Mayor to DSNY would end this situation, but he is far too busy running around the country and polling at less than 1% everywhere he goes. This is a disgrace to our neighborhood and NYC that this is still going on.
This is a disgraceful and unsanitary! De Blasio needs to stop wasting time on his delusional presidential aspirations and start doing the job he has.
I was flat out told by Community Board 3 that this could be resolved with one phone call from the Mayor, that this is the by-product of a political dispute (of which Carlina Herrarra is one of the participants). It is a disgrace that we residents and businesses alike are bearing the burden. It is absurd, disgusting and dangerous (neighbors with disabilities, difficulties with first responder ambulances and fire trucks and a bike lane!)
We have offered many possible solutions and have been rebuffed each time. For instance, an idling "supervisor" sits all night in a car or van "guarding " the trucks and street... why can't our block be used for parking their personal vehicles and that person be used as a shuttle service taking workers to and from the trucks that are parked elsewhere?
Come on Mr. Mayor and Carlina, get over yourself!
It is hard to believe that it has been 9 months and nothing has been done to alleviate this dangerous hazard on 10th street. I wrote a complaint when the trucks first appeared and conditions have become worse.
Flies are bad, smells are disgusting, noise is irritating but SAFETY is paramount. Incidents have occurred while the garbage trucks have been parked on the street, because they create a wall to hide what is happening on the sidewalks. Is the city going to wait until someone is badly injured or worse. Unacceptable! My daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live on 10th street and their safety should never be knowingly compromised by the city.
Debbra Lang a.k.a Grandma
Does anyone know *why* "The DSNY no longer has use of their garage at 606 W. 30th St"?
Why don't they go park in Hudson Yard???? The space is bigger there and people living in those condos are so high up there they won't even smell anything down below.
I live right on this block and it's f*king disgusting. Every morning I get greeted by these loud giant trucks. When I sleep with the window open on these summer days I inhale the smell of garbage.
This issue has been going on since last year. These politicians are full of BS.
Trash them.
We have been over this already. Nothing meaningful can or will happen until the new Sanitation garages rare built, and that will take at least another 5-7 years if not more. The problem is that every Community Board in Manhattan is pushing to eliminate old sanitation garages and then block new ones from opening. New sanitation garages and transfer sites which were planned for the East 90s, 60s and 20s have all been scrapped, blocked by each community. The District 6 & 8 sanitation garage which was supposed to open on 25th Street on the site of the old Hunter College dorms in 2022 (the Brookdale campus site) was blocked by DeBlasio in 2017 as a concession to Peter Cooper and Waterside Plaza so that he could get reelected.
Now it’s 2 years later, and there seems to be no active plan to locate and build a new facility. Since nobody wants the garbage trucks housed in their community, we have ended up with the trucks being left on the street for well into the next decade. So get used to the flies, grime and smell of ripe compost in the summertime, because without a plan the garbage trucks aren't going anywhere.
If every resident of the block sued the city separately in small claims court, the situation would be resolved immediately. Costs nothing to do.
The Dept. of Sanitation’s annual budget is over $1.5 billion. I doubt a bunch of lawsuits in small claims court would even get their attention. As others have said, this is a political issue. Now that they have gotten away with parking the trucks here for almost a year, do you really expect them to just pick up and leave? These people crush large appliances and millions of tons of waste for a living. They don't care.
Just because the harm is caused by a city agency doesn't make it a political issue, and just because they have a large budget doesn't mean they want to defend hundreds of cases, and get the press coverage to go with that.
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