‘Take a Whiff of Our Daily Lives’

‘Take a Whiff of Our Daily Lives’
STOP THE SMELL: Residents and activists concerned with the air quality in the South Bronx held a tour of the area's trouble spots. At the end of the tour they held a press conference outside of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company (Christine Lin The Epoch Times)
Christine Lin
8/17/2008
Updated:
10/1/2015

South Bronx residents hold air pollution tour

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/whiff.jpg" alt="STOP THE SMELL: Residents and activists concerned with the air quality in the South Bronx held a tour of the area's trouble spots. At the end of the tour they held a press conference outside of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company (Christine Lin The Epoch Times)" title="STOP THE SMELL: Residents and activists concerned with the air quality in the South Bronx held a tour of the area's trouble spots. At the end of the tour they held a press conference outside of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company (Christine Lin The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1834144"/></a>
STOP THE SMELL: Residents and activists concerned with the air quality in the South Bronx held a tour of the area's trouble spots. At the end of the tour they held a press conference outside of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company (Christine Lin The Epoch Times)

 NEW YORK—Activist group Mothers on the Move (MOM) led a bus tour on Saturday, August 16 of several facilities they blame for the South Bronx’s poor air quality.

Hunts Point in the South Bronx has the second worst asthma rate in New York City, after Harlem. In the last ten years, hospitalization for asthma rose 20 percent for adults, and asthma rates are almost twice as high in the Bronx than in Manhattan, according to a 2003 city report.

MOM members spoke of the pervasive stench that emanates from trucks and sewage plants. “In the summer it smells like a hundred elephants walking by and leaving their stuff,” said Sara Lind, who has lived in the Bronx for 25 years. MOM board member Lucretia Jones has two children who went in and out of hospitalization for asthma and a 90-year-old father who has to keep the windows at home closed in the summertime due to the odor.

The Hunts Point neighborhood is home to more than its fair share of polluting facilities, MOM members say. Six out of eight families live near a toxic facility, according to MOM Tanya Fields, who guided the bus tour. “It’s a cumulative impact, not just one offender,” said Fields. The area has two waste treatment facilities side by side; several transfer stations for shipped groceries, and four jails that that bring outside traffic.

En route to the first stop on the tour, Fields pointed out a large fenced in lot fenced protected by barbed wire. Inside were row upon row of 16-wheeler trucks. “That’s the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market,” she said through a megaphone from the front of the bus. The produce market terminal is a meeting place for food retailers and trucks coming from farms all over the country.

On the weekends, “it’s a procession of trucks,” Fields said. “It’s impossible to try to cross the street. The drivers won’t slow down for you. Sometimes they'll even think you’re in their way and speed up.” Fields would know—she usually does the toxic tour on foot.
Fields said that although the market claims to be open to the public, doors only open at 3 a.m. for an admission fee of $16.

Right around the corner from the produce terminal is the Hunts Point Riverside Park. It was founded after environmental and human rights activist Majora Carter discovered that a part of the Bronx River ran through the area—despite it having been covered in rubber tires.

Now the park, with plumes of water spraying into the air and a tree-lined walkway by the river, is a site for free canoe-making and rowing lessons for kids.

As idyllic as the park seems, Sims Metal Management is visible right through a fence. The steel claw of a crane picks at a pile of metal several yards high in the distance. Although a fence separates the park and the metal recycling plant, contamination from the plant still gets into the park, according to Fields. “When it rains, guess where the runoff goes?” Fields said. “Into the river. And when it’s hot, where do the kids go? Into the river.”

MOM sees Hunts Point Riverside Park, sandwiched between the Produce Terminal and Sims Metal, as a mixed blessing. Others feel that the City granted the park to smother residents’ complaints about lack of green space but failed to provide accessibility to it. “It’s like they (the City) are shaking our hands with one hand and stabbing us with the other,” Fields said.

The South Bronx has four corrections facilities—Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, Spofford Juvenile Center, Rikers Island Jail, and Horizon Juvenile Center—and the City plans to add one more.
The proposed jail, which is yet unnamed, will be sited in Hunts Point. Correction Commissioner Martin Horn claimed that the new corrections facility will bring jobs to the area, but Fields is skeptical.

When a similar claim was made when the Fulton Fish Market moved from Manhattan to Hunts Point, Fields saw that Fulton’s workforce moved along with the company. “Again, we didn’t get much from it, except for the lovely smell of fish whenever the wind blows,” Fields said.

Fields is saying the jail is a similar, Commissioner Horn claims that it will bring the incarcerated closer to their families, but most of the offenders are from Brooklyn, not the Bronx, according to Fields.

Furthermore, because no bus goes to the jail, relatives and friends either have to walk the distance from the main road, or drive. The increased car traffic, in addition to the buses inmates already use to come in and out of the facility, is what worries Fields about the disproportionate number of jails in South Bronx, where the air is already acrid.

The MOMs traveled forward to their final destination on the tour—NYOFCO, the New York Organic Fertilizer Company. NYOFCO processes 70 percent of New York City’s raw sewage, turns the waste into pellets using a patented chemical process, and sells them to farms as fertilizer.

In theory it sounds like a great thing for the environment, and MOM member Lucinda Ortiz recognizes the legitimacy of the waste treatment plant.

“Yes, we need this facility and the services they provide, but we don’t need to hurt at their expense,” Ortiz said.

Standing outside of NYOCO’s cylindrical white towers that belch white steam, MOM members scrambled for the surgical masks they received at the start of the tour. The sulfurous smell was already overpowering for some long-time Hunts Points residents, who said that their throats were burning. Many commented that the stench is usually stronger.

No one knows exactly what is in the steam that NYOFCO expels because the company has not been open to investigation. Most likely, it is sulfuric acid, ammonia and other nitrates commonly used in the production of fertilizer that causes the burn.

Christine Lin is an arts reporter for the Epoch Times. She can be found lurking in museum galleries and poking around in artists' studios when not at her desk writing.
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