A new plan to send Brooklyn's garbage upstate would solidify the city's waste export strategy for decades, but also shows how impractical the system has become.
Under a newly proposed 20-year contract with IESI—a major industry player owned by Canadian company Progressive Waste Solutions—much of Brooklyn's residential garbage would be shipped to the company's Seneca Meadows landfill at a projected cost of $3.3 billion.
"It's significantly more than what the city pays now," says Tammy Gamerman, a senior research associate for the Citizens Budget Commission. "A much smarter investment would have been infrastructure to process our trash in the city and convert it into an energy source."