The proposed Upper East Side waste-transfer station would cost triple what the city currently pays to transport garbage through the borough, according to a study from the Independent Budget Office.
Moving garbage to New Jersey and Yonkers for incineration would cost $278 per ton through the controversial station, rather than $93 per ton, as it does now. Over the next 20 years, the city would pay $632 million to dispose of Manhattan’s trash with the new station at East 91st Street. The price tag now is $253 million.
“The per-ton export cost is higher under the MTS option due to the more costly multimodal method of transporting the waste from the transfer station to its final destination via barge and rail,” a spokesperson for the Independent Budget Office told the New York Post.
City Council member Ben Kallos of the Upper East Side requested the study in April.
Pledge 2 Protect, a coalition of nonprofits and local businesses, is among the city’s opponents to the plan. An Independent Budget Office analysis from 2012 found that the station is expected to cost the city about $554 million over two decades. [NYP] — Mark Maurer