Safe Streets JC will hold a virtual workshop at 7 pm tonight on the $4.7B widening of the turnpike extension (I-78) from Newark to Bayonne and through Jersey City.
According to the group, “the additional traffic will make our local streets clogged and unsafe, and the resulting pollution would heap injustice on top of historical injustice for the residents of Newark and Hudson County.”
EmpowerNJ, a statewide environmental group working on climate change issues will talk about two legal petitions they’ve filed to the NJDOT and NJTA to stop this project.
SustainableJC will talk about “asthma alley” and their air quality monitoring efforts.
SafeStreetsJC will talk about opposition efforts, how you can help, and smart alternative investments that would improve transportation and quality of life in the region while helping with the problem of climate change.
If you expand the road, more people will come – not less – and those drivers will bring more unwanted exhaust fumes to an already overburdened Jersey City population.
So reasoned a string of citizen environmental organizations at a May 24 meeting of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority at its Woodbridge headquarters. The NJTA offered no rebuttal.
Thus far, the NJTA has been sticking to its plan to widen a section of the Newark Bay/Hudson County Extension between Interchange 14A in Bayonne and the Columbus Drive exit in Jersey City, claiming it will lead to reduced traffic congestion along the approach to the Holland Tunnel.
Will reconfiguring that stretch of roadway achieve that goal? Critics of the proposal, including the City of Jersey City, answer with a resounding no.
In a public statement released earlier this year, Barkha Patel, director of Jersey City’s Department of Infrastructure, writing on behalf of Mayor Steve Fulop, said the project – whose cost is estimated at $4.7 billion – will only exacerbate existing traffic, pollution and noise.
According to published reports, the project would widen the Turnpike Extension and replace elevated structures in phases: first, between Exit 14 in Newark and 14A in Bayonne, including replacement of the 65-year-old Newark Bay Bridge; second, between 14A and Columbus Drive exit in Jersey City; and third, re-doing the elevated roadway from Columbus Drive to Grand Street.
The 5-mile-long stretch from 14A to 14C would be widened from two to three lanes in each direction, with full shoulders, the NJTA website says.
“In addition to running counter to state, regional and local climate goals, projects that induce additional single-occupancy vehicle driving cannot keep up to provide the necessary capacity to meet growing travel demand,” Patel said.
Moreover, Patel said, “Jersey City residential neighborhoods already see significant traffic destined for the Holland Tunnel using local streets to bypass the congestion on existing highways.
A graphic posted by Safe Streets JC
“By widening the roadway, starting at Interchange 14 in Newark, we are concerned that additional traffic will be induced to enter Jersey City and continue to use local streets to bypass congestion that will still exist in the approach to the tunnel.”
That outcome, Patel warned, flies in the face of the city’s push for zero traffic fatalities or serious injuries by 2026, fewer vehicle miles traveled, a 400 percent hike in “cycling mode share,” and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
“Please consider a reconstruction and modernization plan that maintains the existing number of travel lanes,” Patel concluded.
Representatives of various citizen action groups, including EmpowerNJ, Safe Streets JC, Bike JC, Sustainable JC, Journal Square Community Association and Harsimus Cove Association, spoke at last month’s NJTA meeting to register their opposition.
Of the approximately 25 speakers, about 10 were from Jersey City.
EmpowerNJ, a coalition of 100-plus environmental, faith and social justice organizations, has filed petitions with the NJTA and N.J. Department of Transportation claiming they’ve failed to comply with executive orders by Gov. Phil Murphy directing state agencies to halve greenhouse gas emissions — for which vehicles account for 40 percent — by 2030 and to factor in environmental equity for minority communities already overtaxed by pollution’s byproducts.
The petitions call on the NJTA to scrap the expansion plan in favor of projects focused on public transit, roadway repairs, and bicycle and pedestrian walkways that won’t produce greenhouse gas emissions.
The petitions also call for the state agencies to do a study assessing how the widening will impact traffic volume and health costs for community residents exposed to carbon and other forms of pollution.
“NJTA should not be spending tens of billions of dollars on highway expansions without a rigorous analysis of whether they are worth the costs,” the petitions say. “NJTA has not shown how its projects would improve traffic congestion.”
John Reichman, a member of Empower NJ’s steering committee, said the NJTA’s “failure to adopt a climate reduction strategy” will shut out the state from applying for a pot of $6 billion in transportation grants available under the federal infrastructure law.
“Expanding the Turnpike extension in Jersey City past our schools, playgrounds, parks and homes is an environmental crime,” said Dr. James Lee, an organizer with Safe Streets JC.
Lee warned that increased levels of exhaust fumes generated by the heavier volume of traffic anticipated from the turnpike extension “will increase already elevated rates of asthma and (will) release toxins into the air and soil ….”
This outcome, Lee said, “is the 2020s equivalent of using lead pipes because it’s convenient. The overflow of traffic onto our local streets will make them less safe and more congested.” Better for the state to invest in mass transit and freight rail, he said, “not continuing to ignore and stomp on our urban communities, especially those who have long suffered under unjust highway expansions and industrial pollution in the past.”
Efforts to get the NJTA to clarify the status and timetable of the project were met with silence, Reichman said. “They haven’t given out a public schedule. It’s pretty much a black box.”
What is known, he said, is that the NJTA has contracted for a preliminary design and environmental review and that 60 properties will have to be acquired to facilitate the widening of the roadway.
So far, the NJTA has started eminent domain proceedings to secure one of those properties in Bayonne. Therefore, assembling all the pieces before the actual work can start may take a lot of time to complete, he said.
“We’re frustrated by the lack of further opposition to the project by local government, such as a letter of protest from the City Council to Gov. (Phil) Murphy,” Reichman said. “The governor can stop the project tomorrow by issuing an executive order or by vetoing the minutes of the NJTA,” he noted, “so that’s where the most political pressure should be applied.”
Reichman said the DOT and NJTA have until October 12, 2022 to review and respond to the petitions that were filed May 12, 2022.
If and when NJTA is ready to apply for federal and state clean air and water permits to proceed with the project, and if its position hasn’t changed by then, “litigation (by citizen groups) is certainly a possibility” to stop it, Reichman said.
In a surprise move, the City Council is poised to vote tonight on an ordinance reorganizing the city’s Forestry Department, undermining recommendations made by The Jersey City Shade Tree Committee.
According to members of the committee, who wish to remain anonymous, the timing of the vote on the ordinance, which will disperse responsibility for maintaining the city’s trees among several departments, was unexpected.
According to the members, Ward B Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey, who chairs the Shade Tree Committee, did not notify its members that the vote would be taking place.
Currently, a Division of Parks and Forestry falls under the Department of Public Works. Should the ordinance be approved, “Park Maintenance” and “Forestry” will become separate divisions. The former will reside in a newly created Department of Recreation and Youth Development; the latter will remain under the auspices of the Department of Public Works.
The Shade Tree Committee in its “formal recommendations” to the council and mayor implied that Forestry should not remain under DPW because in its assessment, the latter “is understaffed … and as a result [the] tree canopy in Jersey City is not properly managed.”
A member of the Shade Tree Committee said the issue was transparency. The point of the letter, the person said, was to encourage transparency and to assign the responsibility for all tree planting and maintenance to a single department with its own budget and decision making authority.
Ward B Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey, who chairs the Shade Tree Committee and penned the letter on the group’s behalf, had asked the administration to “recruit and hire both the Senior and Junior Forester positions as soon as possible,” within the new forestry department.
The proposed ordinance does call for the city to hire a forester, but it stipulates that such a person will work in a new Division of Sustainability (formerly a mere “office”) and report to the director of that division. (The “Division of Sustainability” will itself be located within a newly formed “Department of Infrastructure,” should the ordinance pass.)
The city’s former forester, Ed O’Malley, who resigned in the fall of 2021, also reported to Sustainability. O’Malley was the second forester to have resigned since 2018. O’Malley’s replacement, a consultant who served as acting forester and who was ultimately offered O’Malley’s job earlier this year, declined the offer and no longer works for Jersey City.
As a result of the changes, responsibility for maintaining the city’s trees will also change and seemingly be split. It is unclear which division —and therefore which employees — will have ultimate control over the tree canopy with all the attending credit for successes (and blame for failures) that such control brings with it.
Currently, tree planting and maintenance are the responsibility of the Division of Parks and Forestry. According to the ordinance, the new Division of Forestry will be “responsible for the regular maintenance of street trees and trees within city parks” while the Division of Park Maintenance “shall be responsible for [the] trimming of trees on sidewalks” and for the “planting of trees within public easement areas.”
At the City Council caucus meeting Monday night, Councilman James Solomon expressed concern that this overlap would be a problem. City Business Administrator John Metro replied that the Division of Forestry “will be solely in charge of maintaining city trees and infrastructure of the city’s tree canopy, with the foresters being an important part of that.”
Neither Metro nor Prinz-Arey responded to emails requesting comment on the matter.
In its October 2021 report commissioned by the city of Jersey City, Davey Resource Group, a multinational tree care consulting company, recommends that, for the next five years, Jersey City nearly double its spending on trees and, in a departure from the city’s longstanding practice, prioritize all forms of tree maintenance over tree planting.
The report, which is based on a “significant but partial” inventory of the city’s trees conducted from 2018 to 2021, uses economic language to state its case.
“Supporting and funding the proactive maintenance of the public tree resource is a sound long-term investment that will reduce tree management costs over time,” Davey said.
Davey analyzed three aspects of Jersey City’s tree canopy and noted several bright spots.
Of approximately 13,000 trees inventoried, 83 percent are in “fair” or better condition. The age distribution of the city’s trees is “starting to trend toward ideal.” And in 2020, 24 percent of the city’s tree budget was effectively reimbursed by the trees by virtue of the many environmental benefits that trees provide, according to the report.
But the report revealed real threats to the city’s tree canopy. Forty-eight percent of the city’s trees are in only “fair” condition, and 17 percent are “fair/poor.”
Most startling to some advocates is the divergence between Jersey City’s forestry budget — and the priorities it reflects — and those Davey recommends.
From 2015 to 2020, the city spent an average of $361,000 per year (exclusive of salaries) on trees and had no budget line specifically for tree maintenance, according to information obtained via an OPRA (Open Public Records Act) request.
Davey advises the city spend $800,000 (on average) annually for the next five years, most of which should be allocated toward maintenance, not planting.
“Planting new trees is important for increasing population size and urban canopy but cannot wait until higher priority maintenance is complete or at least in progress,” the report reads.
So relatively unimportant does Davey consider planting for the immediate protection of the city’s tree canopy that in a graphic that shows how the city should prioritize nine different forestry management activities, the planting of new trees is dead last.
Jersey City’s 2018 Forestry Standards
Even for the layperson, it isn’t hard to find evidence of poor tree maintenance. On just one block Downtown at Christopher Columbus Drive and Barrow Street, six trees are being “strangled” by metal grates specifically banned by Jersey City’s own 2018 Forestry Standards.
While Davey’s recommendations represent a seismic shift in priorities for the city, they should not come as news to City Hall.
In 2010 the city designated only two activities as “high priority” in its Community Forestry Management Plan: pruning and updating the city’s shade tree inventory; and the city’s 2015 CFMP further deemed regular, systematic pruning (ideally every tree every ten years) “one of the four highest priority tasks” (though writing candidly, the report’s authors then went on to characterize this goal, which Davey describes as the bare minimum a pruning cycle the city should implement, as “not achievable”).
But forestry has been a continuing problem area for Jersey City. The Jersey City Times reported on the 2018 culling of 84 mature London Plane trees from the West Side neighborhood of Society Hill. During the period between 2014 to 2019 Jersey City planted 212 trees per year on average as opposed to the 700–1,000 recommended by the 2015 plan, and when taking tree removals into account, lost 104 trees on average during this time period.
It is precisely this disconnect between the city’s words and its deeds that led Ryan Metz, a former forester for Jersey City, to resign in 2018.
“It was very clear to me that Jersey City had no political will whatsoever to implement any kind of forestry program,” Metz told the Jersey City Times in 2020 in an interview on the city’s shrinking tree canopy.
Tree on Christopher Columbus Drive “strangled” by banned metal grate
More recently, a tree planting program on Central Avenue was botched.
Whether or not the will has increased to implement a forestry program, including the city’s hiring at least two foresters, is open to debate. On the one hand, the city’s Shade Tree Committee will soon issue revised Forestry Standards that expand upon definitions in the manual, update tree selection criteria and clarify tree planting protocols.
On the other hand, left largely untouched in this process will be the section dealing with maintenance, which currently sets forth care standards for a tree’s first two years after planting but says nothing about what these standards should be—nor who has responsibility for them—after a tree turns two.
In this context, in January the committee’s chairwoman, Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey, penned a letter on behalf of the committee to the mayor and her colleagues on the council recommending the city “allocate a yearly tree maintenance budget” and “fully fund and staff the forestry department”—among five other things at this “critical point” in the city’s stewardship of its tree canopy.
But Complaints Lay Bare Underlying Community Tensions, Inadequate City Enforcement, and Serious Oversights in City’s Planning Process
Local residents and activists are charging that the city botched the design and planting of 80 new trees installed as part of Central Avenue’s $4 million, mile-long refurbishment.
The renovation, which spans the stretch from Manhattan Avenue to Paterson Plank Road, was initiated by late Councilman Michael Yun and the SID in 2019 to fix the avenue’s crumbling pavement and sidewalks and replace its outdated lights.
What could have been a beautiful and verdant boulevard is now spotted with trees that are damaged and spindly, provide little shade, and lack sufficient diversity, the critics say.
A recently planted Gingko tree on Central Ave.
“With no vision to guide it, the project is a dismal and depressing indicator of the failure of Jersey City to do something as simple as beautify a few blocks,” said Heights residents and landscape architects Heather Sporn and Camille Cesari in a lengthy memo to Reni Stoll, a neighbor and member of the city’s Shade Tree Committee, in December.
Numerous problems involving the project’s design and execution were reported by other local residents over a period of months. Kevin Crystal counted 16 mature trees that had been burned or gashed, almost every tree in one particular section of the project. For her part, Stoll noticed numerous serious mistakes in the way the trees had been planted. Also, she said, the trees were not being maintained as the contractor was required to have done.
“This contractor repeatedly showed a complete disregard of [the city’s] Forestry Standards and respect for trees,” Stoll emailed Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh in April.
To Stoll, the end result would have been far more beautiful—and sustainable—had landscape architects been part of the planning process. Instead, that process was limited to Councilman Yun, the city’s Division of Engineering, Traffic, and Transportation, and the Central Avenue Special Improvement District, which represents many of the shops along the avenue.
“Professional landscape architects understand the design elements of successful streetscapes: materials selections, rhythm and balance (alternating trees for color and shape), scale and proportion, uniformity and connection throughout. None of these elements are part of Central Avenue,” Stoll said.
The project also laid bare the differing priorities of residents and businesses along Central Avenue. For the SID, maximizing the visibility of the stores’ signs and choosing the trees that were easiest to care for were paramount. For many residents, however, shade and beauty were the top priorities.
Poor quality soil mixed with crushed stones used for planting
“The city should have included residents in the planning process,” Stoll maintains. After all, “It is the local Heights community that supports business on Central Avenue,” she said.
In January 2020, the City Council selected a consulting firm to draw up plans for the renovation, assist in the bidding process, and inspect the contractor’s work on a daily basis; seven months later after the bidding process ended, the council passed a resolution to hire the contractor and finance the renovation.
The entire construction bill would come to over $4 million with Jersey City responsible for $1.6 million and the state contributing the rest. The winning bid went to Cifelli & Son, a paving and masonry specialist from Nutley, NJ.
The project was a big one: repave the road, create bike lanes, paint new traffic markings; install new sidewalks, prepare 170 new tree pits, plant 80 new trees; install new parking meters and 130 decorative lights; and secure 20 new sidewalk benches, 95 new trash cans, and 75 new bike parking racks (among other things).
Soon after Cifelli started planting, Stoll noticed the company had violated many of the city’s Forestry Standards: The trees were placed off center and planted way too deep, and the soil lacked mulch and was full of crushed stones. All this hindered air, water, and essential nutrients from reaching the roots.
Newly planted Zelkova tree on Central Ave.
The standards also require that those city contractors hired to plant the trees also maintain them, i.e., to weed, prune, mulch, and water them, according to fixed schedules for two years. Stoll lives around the corner from Central Avenue and noticed sizable weeds in many of the tree pits containing the saplings. She also said the gator bags surrounding the trees never contained water.
Cifelli was not cited for any of these infractions.
While the trees that were planted during the spring were planted improperly, according to Stoll and others, they were healthy, vigorous trees. That was not the case for many of the trees planted this past fall. Eleven of the Gingkos installed were so weak and ill formed that they violated the Forestry Standards criteria for tree quality. Neighbors took notice.
“They look terrible in my opinion, each one has like 6 leafless branches lol they look sad,“ posted Rachel B.
Neighbor Sally M. agreed, calling the spindly specimens and all of Cifelli’s work on the trees unacceptable.
Technical violations were not the only problem. There were also matters of aesthetics, sustainability, and proper planting. Best practices in urban forestry call for planting multiple species in a given area. This recommendation is designed with aesthetics in mind and to protect the tree canopy as a whole since trees of different species are vulnerable to different diseases.
But the Forestry Standards do not set forth specific guidelines on diversity (such as for every city block there must be at least two alternating species of tree planted). They say simply that “the final selection of the species for each site is made by the Forester.”
Before the project got underway, Central Avenue’s most commercial stretch—from Manhattan Avenue to North Street—featured Gingko Biloba trees almost exclusively. Ed O’Malley, the city’s forester, and the Shade Tree Committee believed this constituted an unhealthful monoculture and wanted to diversify the stretch with Zelkova trees. The SID fought this idea, though it acquiesced and ultimately agreed to include 25 Zelkovas.
To the SID, this was more than fair. “[The] merchants’ main concern with Zelkovas is their big crowns blocking the visibility of their storefronts,” said the SID’s executive director, Alexa Lima, in an email in December.
And, they argued, Gingkos are hardy trees that require minimal maintenance. Because Zelkovas require more upkeep, including more than 25 would unduly burden the area’s businesses. Better to diversify the tree canopy north of the commercial stretch, she argued. Indeed, the city was planning to install numerous Yellowwoods and Lilacs between North Street and Paterson Plank Road.
Recently planted Gingko tree on Central Ave.
“Knowing there is no reliable tree maintenance plan in place for the city, the burden of caring for these trees will fall on the stakeholders along Central Avenue,” said Sanford Fishman, the group’s president, in a letter to the STC in October. Until the resources are available to provide Zelkovas the regular maintenance required, Sanford added, “It would be irresponsible to plant more than what is already in the plans.”
According to Stoll, Zelkovas do not require more upkeep than Gingkos.
Fishman also argued that planting Gingkos would not create a monoculture. “Planting more Gingko trees will help diversify the City’s overall tree canopy as Gingko’s account for only 2% of all trees in Jersey City,” he said.
Stoll disagreed and marshalled experts and community leaders to help make her case.
She asked an independent certified arborist (who asked that his name not be used) to stroll the avenue and evaluate the trees, which he did in October. Writing to Stoll afterward, he agreed additional Gingkos should not be added because even the mature specimens lining the thoroughfare were not doing well.
“The majority of the Gingko are in moderate to severe decline at a young age. Gingko biloba … are great in an urban environment when properly established, but given the characteristics of this planting site, I would not expect success,” he said.
Stoll also sought the opinion of Lisa Simms, executive director of the NJ Tree Foundation. Simms’ assessment addressed Fishman’s reasoning about diversity head on.
“Planting only Gingko trees along a 1.5 mile stretch of road is not even close to diversifying the urban forest,” she told Stoll.
In time, the Riverview Neighborhood Association, the leading residential group in the Heights, got involved.
“We would like to strongly recommend no more Gingko trees be planted on Central Avenue,” wrote the RNA board. “We are concerned that while hardy, Gingko trees don’t provide enough shade to enhance the look of the Avenue. In addition, planting too many of the same type of tree could leave them open to disease or an infestation that might require the removal of many of them at one time, negating the positive effect the trees would create,” the board added.
Even Mayor Fulop got drawn in to the debate. He wondered, in an email to Engineering’s director, Paul Russo, whether the city “could pivot on the trees if we can find something better.” Russo acknowledged that there were sufficient funds to do this but recommended sticking with the current plan in order to avoid delay.
The SID and Shade Tree Committee were also in conflict over planting methods. The SID wanted the tree pits covered with plastic grates to maximize sidewalk space and protect the trees’ roots from trash and harm. This, however, would require an exemption from the Forestry Standards. For similar reasons, they also wanted the tree pits covered with porous pavement. This is something the Forestry Standards do permit.
Tree with damaged trunk planted in soil with crushed stones
Again, the Shade Tree Committee and outside experts disagreed. Stoll said that, while the current iteration of the standards allows for porous pavement, arborists have since learned much more about the material and no longer recommend it. Indeed, the updated version of the standards, which the STC is currently drafting, will ban the material as infill in tree pits.
The independent arborist explained porous pavement “will girdle the tree … and immediately present a hurdle for the tree to overcome.” But he said the larger problem with porous pavements involves properly watering, fertilizing or caring for the trees’ roots without removing the pavement.
The parties reached a compromise: The tree pits would be filled with soil and mulch, not porous pavement, for six months as a test. But the battle lines had been drawn, and the crossfire reflected deep resentments.
Sanford pointed out that the design elements the STC opposed meet the criteria set by both the city’s forester and Forestry Standards.
“If the Shade Tree Committee feels the Forestry Standards needs to be updated, the Central Avenue SID would welcome the opportunity to provide a main street/commercial corridor perspective that is profoundly missing in the original document,“ he wrote to the committee in October.
There were some silver linings. Lima says she convinced Engineering to save 12 mature trees that had been slated for removal. The trees had not been in compliance with the Americans for Disabilities Act. And, she said, Central Avenue is now “modern and beautiful“ (though ironically, the photo the SID uses touting the virtues of the new trees depicts a Zelkova, not a Gingko.
Stoll appreciates the new lights, bike facilities, benches, and other amenities the renovation brought.
But for many, the rancor over the project was not only unpleasant but unnecessary. They say it might have been avoided had landscaping and forestry professionals—along with residents—been part of the planning process. And arguably, the SID would have embraced the advantages of a fuller tree canopy had it had more confidence that the burden for maintaining lusher, faster-growing wouldn’t fall on them.
Like the battle over the 84 mature trees cut down in Society Hill in 2018, the city in this case delegated most of the landscaping decisions to small group of lay people with vested interests rather than to its forestry division.
In July, O’Malley told the Shade Tree Committee that he wished the city better enforced its tree ordinance.
Editor’s note: O’Malley tendered his resignation in October, the second forester to have resigned from Jersey City since 2017. In five of the tree pits where Zelkovas were supposed to have been planted, Gingkos were planted instead. It is unclear whether this mistake will be rectified.
Correction: An earlier version of this article contained two errors, i.e., that the updated Forestry Standards will ban porous pavement entirely and that Sanford Fishman was the former executive director of the Central Avenue SID.
Jersey City’s decision to reduce street sweeping from two days to one day per week is being hailed by some motorists as a welcome respite from parking tickets and the hassle of car moving. However, if the experience of other cities is any guide, the tradeoff may be dirtier streets, clogged sewers, flooding, and water pollution.
In September, the New York Daily News reported that city streets had become noticeably dirtier following Mayor Bill De Blasio’s pandemic-driven decision to cut the city’s alternate side parking rules and street sweeping, requiring drivers to move their cars only once a week instead of twice.
“Our streets are much less clean now,” Howard Yaruss, transportation chair of Community Board 7 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, told the News.
The problem of dirty streets and stopped-up sewers initially leaped to the fore during Hurricane Ida, when 153,000 New York City catch basins became clogged. In some instances, according to the News, residents were forced to clean catch basins themselves to prevent flooding.
In Bushwick, a mutual aid group took it upon themselves in the wake of Ida flooding to clean trash filled drains. The website Curbed noted the fifty percent decrease in street sweeping as a contributor to the Bushwick mess.
Here in Jersey City, a manager overseeing the upgrading of sewer pipes under Wayne Street yesterday morning said, “People don’t realize that if the streets aren’t swept, the trash ends up clogging sewer pipes or in the ocean.”
38 Wayne Street
Like many older cities, Jersey City has a combined sewer system that manages both wastewater and stormwater runoff. When debris and litter enter storm drains, they can cause sewer main backups.
Some cities, like Camden and Seattle, have increased street sweeping to mitigate the pollution problem. In 2015, Seattle increased street sweeping in an effort to reduce stormwater runoff pollution. “We have been able to show definitively that street sweeping is one of the most cost-effective measures we can use to protect our waterways” the program manager, Shelly Basketfield, told the Seattle Times.
Some Jersey City residents are expressing concerns about trash-strewn streets. Said Kevin Link in response to the news that street sweeping would be reduced, “I think reducing street sweeping to once a week per side will reduce parking turnover and actually reduce the amount of available parking. People will drive less and park more resulting in less parking and dirty streets and sidewalks.”
Upon learning about the new street sweeping schedule, Lea B. said, “Ugh, dirtier streets: just what we need.”
Steve Krinsky of the Hudson County Sierra Club considers trash just one component of the problem. “Street cleaning is not just an aesthetic issue, it’s an environment issue. Will Jersey City be paying closer attention to keeping storm drains clear? I hope so. It is common, especially during the fall, that they are clogged with trash and leaves, and rainwater cannot drain as it should. Jersey City needs to fix the CSO [Combined Sewer Overflow] problem. Trash in the storm drains is bad enough; sewage in our rivers is worse.”
According to Debra Italiano, president of Sustainable JC, the city was onto something when it created the “Adopt a Catch Basin” program. “It was a great idea but isn’t being sold to the public very well. So, that’s an opportunity. Street cleaning does not correct the buildup of debris into catch basins, and it’s exacerbated when street cleaning is reduced. If the street cleaning is being reduced, then someone needs to attend to the clogged, debris-laden catch basins.”
The threat to health posed by sewer system backups caused by a combination of climate change and human refuse was illustrated by Samantha Bee in a YouTube video.
Asked if there was a plan to deal with the potential issues, Ward E Councilman James Solomon said “As far as I know, there is no formal plan, however, the staggered implementation is in part to observe the changes in street trash, etc. to see its magnitude and work on a response.”
Mayor Fulop’s spokesperson, City Council President Joyce Watterman, Councilman-at-large Daniel Rivera and Councilwoman-at-large Amy DeGise did not respond to our emails requesting comment.
