EPcase Timeline

Case Study: El Puente & the Struggle Against the Navy Yard Incinerator in Brooklyn, NYC

TIMELINE of EVENTS

MID to LATE 1800’s

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is an industrial area.

1966-1973

The Lindsay administration is in office.

1978-1989

The Koch administration is in office.

1979

The New York City government proposes the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerator project as a response to landfill problems. State environmental officials begin pressuring the city to stop using the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island as its sole solid waste disposal facility.

1982

A private grant and many volunteers are used to convert a former church into a youth center, called: El Puente.

1985

Hasidim organize a march across the Brooklyn bridge to prevent the city from signing a contract for the Navy Yard incinerator

Mayor Koch signs a contract to build an incinerator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard site, and plans incinerators in each borough. The proposed operator is SES Brooklyn Company, a subsidiary of Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. (WTI) of New Hampshire. In turn, WTI is a subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc. (WMX). .

1989

During the mayoral campaign, mayoral candidate David Dinkins pledges to study recycling and other options before moving ahead on the construction of new incinerators until 1993.

1990-1993

The Dinkins administration is in office.

1990

Browning-Ferris Industries of Houston, a big waste disposal company, proposes building a 240 ton a day medical waste processing plant in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) states that incineration reduces the volume of waste, but soot can pollute the sky and the landfill ash may contain hazardous substances.

1991

Luis Garden Acosta, El Puente's chief executive officer, and Rabbi David Niederman, director of United Jewish Organizations (UJO), lead a march through Williamsburg against Radiac , a storage facility of low level radioactive waste.

Mayor Dinkins announces that his administration will go ahead with the incinerator project.

1992

More than a thousand people attend Williamsburg's first environmental town meeting. Later community residents and groups formed CAFE: Community Alliance For the Environment.

AUGUST: The city council approves a solid waste plan that includes the incinerator project.

SEPTEMBER: In an editorial (9/13) evaluating candidates for the 1992 US Senate primary, the New York Times criticized Democratic nominee Elizabeth Holtzman for her position against the Navy Yard incinerator. The editorial stated the newspaper's pro-incinerator position: "There is no choice, even if the city takes all other steps needed to manage its waste, the incinerator must be built".

OCTOBER: CAFE and New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) file a law suit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to enjoin the DEC from issuing the incinerator permits before the Clean Air Act amendments take effect on November 15.

DECEMBER: Robert Paterson, a local historian produced an old map suggesting that the graves of 11,000 American prisoners-of-war, who died aboard British ships in Wallabout Bay (off the Navy Yard) during the Revolutionary War, remain beneath the site.

1993

JANUARY: CAFE organizes a large-sale, multi-ethnic group of 1,500 people to march across the Williamsburg Bridge to promote unity and to protest the incinerator (see footage).

MAY: Veterans and community residents lead a march to the Navy Yard and hold a memorial for the Revolutionary War dead to raise public awareness of the City's intention.

JULY: Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders reach a compromise that would allow the city to build the incinerator at the Navy Yard. It partly exempts the Williamsburg incinerator from new, strict federal air pollution regulations and allows the city to apply for state permits for the project. The city is still required to reduce air pollution citywide by a greater amount than what the Brooklyn incinerator would produce and to study the possible health effects of the incinerator on the neighborhoods surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

1994 to the present

The Giuliani administration is in office.

1994

MARCH: The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) seeks a formal investigation of the Navy Yard; elevated levels of toxic chemicals in soil and groundwater were found at the site.

MAY: The [U.S. or N.Y.?] Supreme Court rules that ash from incinerators may be hazardous waste. Therefore ash must be tested regularly and, if found toxic, disposal requirements of the Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) must be followed.

1995

FEBRUARY: Citing serious toxic contamination, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has added part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the State Superfund list of hazardous waste sites.

NOVEMBER: A coalition of community groups from Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side in Manhattan, organized by NYPIRG and the NAACP-Legal Defense and Education Fund, file a lawsuit to prevent the city from building the incinerator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard without preparing a new environmental impact statement.

DECEMBER: Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) compiles a report of findings from 75 governmental and independent studies to paint a broad picture of the City's environment since the first Earth Day in 1970, called "New York City's Environmental Vital Signs: A 25 Year Checkup.”

1996

JANUARY: The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation receives $739,000 from Mayor Giuliani's office to assess the state of the 260 acre plot and figure out how to attract more jobs and businesses to the industrial park.

FEBRUARY: The City Council approves a new solid waste management plan that will speed up the city's timetable for recycling "mixed paper". The plan calls for a new environmental impact statement of the proposed incinerator.

MAY: Governor Pataki signs a bill that prohibits the construction of the Navy Yard incinerator. The new environmental legislation, with wide bipartisan support, also requires the closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.