by Chris Dobens
If you have played soccer in New York City, you know how few fields are available in this city of 8 million. And I’m troubled to report that one of those fields – one of the precious few in Manhattan – is in jeopardy. It all started when Mayor Bloomberg had the noble idea of relocating existing “marine transfer stations” – waterside sites where garbage trucks dump their waste into barges, which are then hauled off to be dumped somewhere else –
8
from impoverished areas of the city to locations closer to the source of the refuse they handle. This is supposed to be environmental justice, in which wealthy communities must process their own waste locally rather than ship it off to shores where the rents aren’t quite as costly. This, of course, would be nice if the City itself wasn’t then shipping all this garbage – around 12,000 tons each day - off to landfills in other states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. Is the Mayor really after
environmental justice, or is he just playing politics? As part of this grand plan, a huge marine transfer station is slated to be built across the street from one of New York City’s finest soccer fields, located on York Avenue between 90th & 91st Streets. The field is part of Asphalt Green, a 5.5-acre non-profit sports complex, and was renovated in 2009 with state-of-the-art artificial turf and stadium lighting. If this plan was to go through, more than 200