As millions of Americans across the country engage in Earth Day activities and celebrations to…
Tag: Environmental Justice
Ese Olumhense, THE CITY This article was originally published on Sep 28 at 8:09pm EDT…
In 2014, New York City sprayed Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide—now classified as a possible carcinogen by The World Health Organization—2,748 times (more than double the 2013 rate) but only 2,000 locations have been revealed through data released by NYC Parks as a result of a Freedom of Information Law request.
From The South Bronx, to Riverdale and City Island to Pelham Parkway, many neighborhoods were sprayed with this pesticide linked to cancer. Manhattan has the least amount of sites (partly due to incomplete data from Central Park and other conservancies) but Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island have been doused with this pesticide more than our borough.
Emails between FreshDirect lobbyist Harry Giannoulis and New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, Alicia Glen raises a number of questions including whether or not Mayor Bill de Blasio and his administration were pushed into ceasing any attempt to derail FreshDirect’s proposed move to The Bronx — a campaign promise de Blasio was quite vocal about.
Mayor de Blasio was so vocal, in fact, that on March 10th, 2014, Harry Giannoulis sounded the claxon calls of panic on behalf of FreshDirect
FreshDirect once again had an opportunity to purchase new electric trucks as they promised to do but instead they chose to purchase ten brand new diesel trucks, Welcome2TheBronx has learned.
We went over to Milea Trucks Sales & Leasing on 149th Street and Austin Place to investigate after a local concerned citizen took some photographs and sent them over. What we saw really shocked us at how FreshDirect continues to lie to our community about their intentions. Sitting on their lot were 10 brand spanking new diesel trucks. I checked each and every truck and all of them were diesel with “certified clean idling” stickers. I asked one of the workers at the office what that meant and they said, “All that means is that when they stop, they don’t pollute but as long as they’re driving around, they still are spewing diesel fumes.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. What about all the promises to convert to electric?
Many people often ask why we fight against the proposed move of FreshDirect move to the South Bronx — an area that is already plagued by asthma where 1 in 4 children have the life-threatening ailment. The truck intensive and polluting industry that is FreshDirect will only exacerbate such ailments in our community, something which many studies have clearly shown is a health problem.
Now, just after last month’s announcement about Columbia University’s study linking pollution to childhood ADHD, Harvard has released a study which indicates that pregnant women are at almost TWICE the risk of giving birth to a child with autism due to smog spewed by vehicles, or smoke stacks: something which the South Bronx has been a dumping ground for.
For decades, The Bronx was an ignored environmental mess but for the last 20 years major groups have been working on restoring our ecology and environment. The Wall Street Journal reports on the rebirth of our waterfront at the mouth of The Bronx River which for years was just a wasteland.
Whether it’s the Harlem River in the South Bronx or up in Riverdale, our parks or the Bronx River, thousands of Bronxites are working hard on a daily basis with many organizations to clean and preserve our beautiful borough. We are, after all, the greenest of the 5 boroughs with 25% of our land as parks.
Today Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr, along with FreshDirect Founder and CEO Jason Ackerman (neither who showed up to the public hearings this past Monday for the company’s proposed subsidies) handed out 500 turkeys to residents of Mitchel Houses in Mott Haven (“…taking advantage of the poor and hungry” as one person put it). Oh did we mention that we can’t even take Diaz’s photo-op seriously since he doesn’t seem to know that Mitchel Houses is spelled with one L and not two and secondly, the NYCHA development is located in Mott Haven and not Port Morris as he says on his Facebook Page.
Dozens of people from all over The Bronx and the city came out today for a sneak peak tour of the new Randall’s Island Connector which will connect our borough to the 432 island park. Once the connector is completed by Summer 2015 it will provide Bronx residents with walking access onto the island which currently is only accessible from the Bronx by car via the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (Triboro Bridge) or via Manhattan through East Harlem. This, of course, is ironic considering that The Bronx is closer to the island and only separated by 30 feet at the narrowest point by the Bronx Kill — during low-tide you can walk from The Bronx to Randall’s Island.
IMPORTANT: If you can’t make next Monday’s public hearings, you can submit testimony via email so please click this link to do so!
Researchers from Columbia University and elsewhere have found a possible link between air pollution and adolescent ADHD. According to the report, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, pregnant women from New York City exposed to certain air pollutants were more likely to birth a child with ADHD. The pollutants —polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)—are released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal, tobacco, and petrol.
Today, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Region 2, which covers the 5 boroughs…
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