Dumped hauler may opt for day in court
Blocked from building a garbage transfer station in Jersey City's Greenville Yards, waste hauling giant BFI is now "assessng its options," a spokeswoman said Friday.What options?
BFI could simply drop Jersey City as a proposed site for a garbage station and yet remain in the bidding for the lucrative New York City residential garbage export contract as the company already included two other station sites in its final proposal.
In BFI's "best and final offer" submitted to the New York Department of Sanitation in March, it included 65th Street in Brooklyn, Carteret and Jersey City as proposed garbage station sites.
New York generates about 13,000 tons of residential garbage every day. With the planned closure of New York's only remaining landfill at the end of 2001, all that garbage will have to be exported.
Under BFI's proposal, the Brooklyn site would handle about 6,500 tons a day and an "Upper New York Bay" site would handle the other 6,500. Carteret may now be that undisclosed site.
However, Jersey City was considered the better of the two Upper New York Bay options, and spokeswomen for both BFI and the NYCDOS have refused to confirm if Jersey City is no longer a potential location - even though the city banned garbage transfer stations as a permitted use in the Greenville Yards earlier this month after a huge public outcry.
BFI might also consider suing Jersey City to either maintain control of the Greenville Yards site the firm was awarded by the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency in July or to recoup any monetary losses the company calculates it suffered.
The JCRA (Redevelopment Authority) voted recently not to extend BFI's status as sole temporary developer of the Greenville Yards site beyond Jan. 20. The New York garbage export contract is not likely to be awarded before that date.
BFI could argue that it was only after being wooed by certain city officials and the JCRA that the company included Jersey City in its proposal to New York; and later it was dumped by the City Council, causing damages.
A similar argument is being put forward by BFI's competitor, American Marine Rail, which signed a lease to build a transfer station in Bayonne last year only to have it rescinded by the city this fall.
But Jersey City officials say the JCRA resolution giving BFI sole temporary developer status over the Greenvile Yards site was loose enough to protect the city from a suit. While it gave the city the option to extend during the time BFI tried to win the New York contract, it did not require it to do so.
The second option for BFI is to offer a new proposal to New York and Jersey City based on one alternative export plan now under consideration by NYCDOS.
That proposal would containerize New York's residential waste on the New York side of the Hudson. Instead of open barges full of garbage headed to Greenville, sealed containers would be sailed over to be loaded on rail cars for transport.
However, experts say this approach is unlikely to be adopted by NYCDOS because it would require expensive retrofitting of New York's garbage truck-to-barge stations.