BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Councilmember Corey Johnson stood on the westernmost tip of the W. 59th St. pier on a recent Thursday morning. Floating next to them in a long slip sat a giant open hopper barge filled with 400 tons of discarded paper.
As the two watched, a crew of men working power winches and thick braided ropes slowly eased the immense load silently — and, thankfully, odorlessly — past them and out into the Hudson River. The tide took hold of it and pulled the now-bobbing barge out further.
Ernest Mack, who manages the pier operation, heartily shouted back and forth with a crewmember perched on the prow of a waiting tugboat, which then started to push the massive block-long bin on its slow journey downriver. With his burly physique and suspenders, Mack looked straight out of “On the Waterfront.”
“This is fascinating! This is so cool!” Weinberg enthused. “This is impressive.”
“As you can see, nothing is a rushed movement,” Tom Killeen, director of solid waste management for the Department of Sanitation, said cooly of the careful choreography of the gargantuan garbage barge.
It was a “fluff load,” he added, meaning it was dry, not waterlogged from being in the rain.
No, this was not some kind of industrial performance art project — at least not yet, that is. (Weinberg may have some ideas along those lines, but more about that later.) It’s how Manhattan’s waste paper is currently sent to Staten Island for recycling. Much of the repurposed pulp ends up as white pizza boxes, with Tuscan scenes stamped on them.
Very likely, there are some landscape paintings of the West Side’s working waterfront in the Whitney’s collection. But, again, that’s not why Weinberg was out there.
Johnson set up the event to observe first-hand what goes on at the pier. The museum director is one of the councilmember’s appointees on a nine-member community advisory group, or “CAG,” that has been set up to weigh in on Gansevoort Peninsula’s redevelopment into a park. The mayor, borough president and Johnson each have three appointees on the CAG.
Plans for Gansevoort even call for it to sport a beach on its southern side. Yet, the peninsula won’t only be a park. Part of it, in fact, will be dedicated to a new marine waste-transfer station. Specifically, the paper-barging operation from W. 59th St. will be relocated to Gansevoort, which also will handle all of Manhattan’s glass, plastic and metal recyclables. All of these recyclables will be shipped from Gansevoort to a recycling facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The Whitney is a glittering newcomer to the Meatpacking District. On the other hand, across the West Side Highway, to the west of the museum, Gansevoort Peninsula has long been home to trash — as in, municipal garbage-related uses — since at least the mid-20th century.
Gansevoort once even sported an incinerator, the ominously named Gansevoort Destructor Plant, which was later converted into a garage for city garbage trucks, its current use.
In an earlier incarnation, the peninsula was a lively open-air farmers market. But the advent of supermarkets with refrigeration ended that use.
Before they went out to the pierhead to watch the barge maneuvers, Weinberg and Johnson observed several garbage trucks dumping the final loads of paper into the heaping barge.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” came a thunderous clanging from one truck. The cacophony lasted a few seconds.
“That’s him banging the hopper blade,” Killeen explained. “He’s trying to empty the truck.”
The Gansevoort transfer facility will have 12 bays, six each on its east and west sides, from which the garbage trucks will dump their recyclables into waiting barges in either of two slips. The peninsula’s existing marine waste-transfer structure — which has not seen use in decades — will be totally rebuilt in the same location. The bays on one side will be for paper, and those on the other for metal, glass and plastic.
“Recycling is neater than any of the other materials we pick up,” Killeen assured.
Later, responding to follow-up questions, Gregory Anderson, Sanitation’s chief of staff, said because the Gansevoort facility will be out on the water and also enclosed, noise shouldn’t be a problem.
Each day, about 50 to 60 garbage trucks will dump about 5 tons of recyclables at Gansevoort. Each truck will make one trip per day.
The heaviest days for recycling pickups will be Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The trucks will arrive at Gansevoort from mid-to-late morning, with 11 a.m. being peak time. Anderson said there will be some garbage trucks that come in the evening, namely those that pick up from schools.
Again, he assured, even if there are a few garbage trucks that come at night, the facility will be quiet and won’t affect any residents who happen to live within earshot of Gansevoort.
As for garbage trucks crossing the heavily used Hudson River bikeway and park esplanade, he said, “Our drivers are very attentive. They know there’s a heavy volume of traffic there. There will be some sort of stop light there.”
The garbage trucks that currently park on Gansevoort cross the bikeway and there currently are traffic lights for both the trucks and bikes.
According to Anderson, construction of the marine transfer station, or M.T.S., on Gansevoort is included in the city’s fiscal year 2020 budget — so won’t start before then — and should be at least a two-year project. Until 2020, the W. 59th St. pier will be used for barging recyclable paper, while recyclable metal, paper and glass will continue to be sent to New Jersey or the Bronx by trucks and then barged.
Meanwhile, the plan for the W. 59th St. facility is to convert it to handle “C and D” waste, or construction and demolition debris.
To get to the Gansevoort M.T.S., the garbage trucks will drive along a ramp on the peninsula’s northern edge, adjacent to the fireboat access road, then turn left and go up to the facility.
The entire trash-barging scheme is part of the citywide Solid Waste Management Plan, or SWMP, a.k.a. “SWAMP,” which was pushed by Mayor Bloomberg and is being continued under Mayor de Blasio.
“It’s a fair, equitable, environmentally sound plan,” Anderson said. “Each borough shoulders its fair share of trash. It gets trucks off the road by relying on barges and rail. Traditionally, majority-minority low-income communities got hammered with garbage.”
Upper East Siders, however, have notably been battling an M.T.S. in their neck of the woods. Construction on that facility — which could start operating as soon as mid-to-late 2017 — was able to start earlier than the one slated for Gansevoort, Anderson said, because Gansevoort’s salt shed and garbage trucks first had to be relocated. What’s left of the old Gansevoort Destructor also must be demolished, and the peninsula’s soil needs some remediation to ensure it’s safe for park use.
“As far as remediation,” Anderson said, “we’ve already completed a lot of work on the incinerator in order to allow it to function as a safe garage space for employees. Post-demolition, we will excavate soil as needed — approximately 5 feet — and replace with clean fill.”
Meanwhile, a new three-district mega-garage at Spring and Washington Sts. is expected to be completed by this year’s end. The garbage trucks currently on Gansevoort, from Sanitation Districts 2 and 5 — which serve Community Boards 2 and 5 — will then relocate to the new Hudson Square garage, which will also house the garbage trucks from District 1, which currently are squeezed into Pier 36 on the Lower East Side. A new shed for road salt at Canal and West Sts. will replace the one on Gansevoort.
The Gansevoort M.T.S. is also planned to have a “recycling education center,” where schoolkids and others can learn how garbage is repurposed for reuse.
The Gansevoort M.TS. plan, though, still hinges on whether the state and city can agree on a payment to the Hudson River Park Trust in order to “alienate” the part of Gansevoort that will be needed for the M.T.S. The state Legislature already voted some years ago to alienate the parkland, and a figure of $50 million has been cited. However, the state has been reluctant to pay half of that sum, arguing that the M.T.S. is part of the city’s garbage plan and thus not a state issue.
“We’re confident there will be a resolution,” Anderson stated.
The design of the actual M.T.S. structure is in the “very, very preliminary stages,” Anderson added. Weinberg indicated that he just hopes the shed is as low as possible.
Over all, Weinberg was inspired by the tour of the W. 59th St. barging operation.
“I don’t think Villagers even understand this is going on. Coming up here, you see what a great educational experience it is,” he said.
“I think the Whitney ought to do something with artists and recycling,” he added. “We can plan this.”
For his part, Johnson said that, above all, the whole operation in the Village will need to be done safely.
“I appreciate the Sanitization Department’s willingness to work with the community as the Gansevoort Peninsula transfer station is built,” Johnson said. “Touring the W. 59th St. facility gave us a feel for what will be built at Gansevoort.
“While I recognize that the city has an obligation to process our recyclables, it is also responsible for safeguarding the health and safety of our residents and respecting the Hudson’s fragile ecosystem. My community advisory board appointees and I are looking forward to working closely with the Department of Sanitation to ensure that our recyclables are processed in a safe and responsible manner.”
Johnson is currently setting up two more tours, one of the Sunset Park recycling facility — specifically to look at a recycling education center there — and another of Gansevoort Peninsula.
