Nothing says “green” policy like poisonous air and unsustainable living conditions.
Nicole Rosenthal at the New York Post reports today that a NYC recycling center is “crop-dusting” the plant’s vicinity with “noxious fumes” that are leaving residents sick, literally choking and gagging when they’re hit with a whiff of the stench—one man even had to evacuate his nonagenarian aunt from her “childhood home” because the chemical haze was seeping into her house.
You should not be surprised to learn that this plant is a “green” enterprise which began operations in 2011, on a mission to “recycle” old asphalt into “green” asphalt, which happens to be the name of the company that runs the plant: Green Asphalt Co., LLC. Here’s this, from a 2016 government press release on the relationship between Green Asphalt and the city:
Greening the Streets of New York
How Recycled Asphalt Pavement Saves Energy[.]
Recycled asphalt is another method DDC employs to meet Mayor de Blasio’s goals for a more sustainable City, reducing landfill use and helping to meet the City’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. With thousands of miles of streets in the five boroughs, there’s great potential for this to have a substantial effect on the environment while reducing infrastructure costs.
[snip]
Right now, the City uses a minimum of 30% recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) to create new asphalt according to Local Law 71. DDC, together with Green Asphalt, wants to make that 100%. Green Asphalt, based in Long Island City, is one of the only hot mix asphalt plants in the country that produces 100% RAP, and is the only asphalt plant that does so in New York City.
What the public announcement left out was the stank smog that would accompany the process, a poison cloud so foul that you’d be gagging in your home while trying to relax with a nice book, and which could also kill you—Rosenthal includes OSHA guidance, which asserts that “asphalt fumes can cause serious injury and permanent damage” like coughing and throat irritation (which the residents are already experiencing), as well as cancer. But, as Green Asphalt executive Nima Roohi Sefidmazgi says, “The whole process of making asphalt pavement – the excavating, trucking, crushing, refining – all of this makes a lot of CO and CO2 gases[.]” Call me “anti-science,” but I’ll take the God-created CO2 over “green” effluvium. Sefidmazgi also adds this: “The best part is you’re not damaging the environment; you’re not putting excess material in the landfill.”
I bet the residents of Long Island (and the facts) would suggest otherwise.
Here’s the government’s solution though: a demand to increase the height of the smokestacks from 45 feet to 90 feet. I’m no genius engineer, but how does that tackle the real problem, which is the actual pollution? Doesn’t that just bring the chemical clouds slightly higher? Don’t those chemical toxins still float back down? 45 feet is a mere fifteen yards. In fact, I’d wager that it would make the problem worse, and when you consider this is the government we’re talking about, it’s an entirely reasonable expectation.
Image from Grok.