July 21,2009
Jim Van Woert
Senior District Manager for New York City Operations
Waste Management-
2 N 5th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Dear Mr. Van Woert:

Thank you for the recent tour of your Waste Management facility on Review
Avenue. I applaud the work you are doing to move toward a more rail focused way of transporting waste out of New York City. Rail is clearly the cleaner and more efficient mode oftransportation and it is a good positive step for waste removal in our city.

However, in carefully analyzing your current Review Avenue plan composed for a waste transfer station, I have several concerns. I believe I speak on behalf of my constituents when I say the current proposal must be adjusted before our community can embrace this plan. It is my understanding that Waste Management aims to reduce the long hall trucking of waste, but to do this by adding trucks per day to the streets of Maspeth seems unnecessary.

Several options proposed by community leaders and organizations throughout the area offer adjustments to your plan and you may find these plans to be more efficient. The plans below may increase productivity while relieving the impact of truck traffic in our neighborhood.

Proposal 1 – Build a rail spur on your property at Review Avenue and move waste directly onto rail cars from your transfer facility.

Proposal 2 – Acquire the Phelps Dodge land located in the shadow of the Kosciusko Bridge and build a new facility and rail spur at that location. This land provides more area to maneuver and will allow you to transfer waste directly onto rail cars.

I also encourage you to explore moving goods out through the already operating 65th Street Barge in Brooklyn. The infrastructure already exists and barging to New Jersey will avoid the unnecessary sending freight up through Albany only to come back down the coast. It appears to be both cost efficient and able reduce build up of waste on our neighborhood's railways.

I believe we must work to come up with a plan that focuses on a direct transfer from the NYC Department of Sanitation trucks onto rail and then out ofthe city. I understand that a lot of work has already been put into this plan, but we are very close to having a plan that will address the valid concerns of an overburdened neighborhood along with the larger goals of waste removal in the borough of Queens. Until a new plan is put forward that addressed both of these objectives, I cannot and will not support any plan for a truck
to truck to rail transfer station through Maspeth.

I ask that you thoroughly investigate these proposals and let me know of your findings at my district office located at 64-77 Dry Harbor Road, Middle Village, NY 11379. If you have any questions about the community proposals or alternative ways to reduce the impact on oUl; community I can always be reached at (718) 366-3900.

Thank you in advance to your prompt attention to this matter.
Elizabeth S. Crowley
Council Member, 30th District

CC: CB 5 Gary Giordano, District Manager
Long Island Railroad, Helena Williams, President
Department of Sanitation, John J Doherty, Commissioner
Alfred Ferguson, Queens West borough Chief