Where does New York City’s trash currently go?
Virtually all of the City’s waste is now transported out of the city. At present, that transport is heavily reliant on trucks, which haul to landfills in Pennsylvania and Ohio. When Fresh Kills was an active landfill, the City primarily used barges to bring waste there from around the city. Now that the City is dependent on private trucking firms to transport waste elsewhere, the cost of disposal has risen from about $40 per ton to over $100. The Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP), approved by the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in October 2006, is a 20–year plan that calls for compacting waste and storing it in containers so that it can be barged or put on rails for long–distance hauling—a much cheaper option. The Staten Island Transfer Station, a 79,000 square foot facility located on the Fresh Kills site, was completed in 2006 and helps to meet goals of the long–term SWMP: compacted waste is sealed in inter–modal shipping containers, which are loaded onto flatbe
