Stop East Side Garbage Dump

To the Editor: I recall sleepless nights due to noise from garbage trucks lining up for the old MTS, which was five times smaller than the proposed one. Since the old MTS closed, the number of children in the area has mushroomed and so have amenities catering to families.

Using rail to transport garbage out of Manhattan would be environmentally sounder, and the old West Side Yard has the rail infrastructure. However, the city struck a deal with wealthy real estate developers to create the Hudson Yards and another deal with Waste Management regarding Manhattan's trash business, to be processed in the middle of Asphalt Green before being shipped off to an unknown destination. -V. Stolt

It's a shame that "federal legislation" does not protect thousands of New York City families, the elderly and children from the harmful, wrong-headed, fiscally unsound and just plain dumb ideas of our local elected officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Christine Quinn.

This outrageously expensive-in excess of $190 million of our hard-earned tax dollars-proposed garbage dump in the middle of a highly populated residential neighborhood and heavily used playing fields and children's playground, just a stone's throw from public housing projects and schools, is a monument to the mayoral ego at a time when the city is firing teachers, cutting our police force and closing firehouses, schools and libraries.

It is particularly shameful that Quinn refuses to comment or visit the site located at Asphalt Green, one of the city's jewels and a nationally recognized recreational facility lauded for working with hundreds of thousands of children citywide, year after year. And just to be clear: the vast majority of Manhattan's residential trash is not trucked through disadvantaged neighborhoods but to waste-to-energy facilities in New Jersey, which is an environmentally sound and cost-effective strategy for coping with our borough's waste. Something about this deal smells a lot more fishy than the striped bass in the East River. Thank you for this illuminating article. -Serena

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.