Sanchez questions Gajwani on organics transport and community impact at Hunts Point
Sanchez asks how organics will be transported to Hunts Point and about storage and odor impacts on nearby residents. Gajwani describes the pre-processing and enclosed vessel process, interest in partnering with the adjacent food market, and exploring waterway transport to minimize community impacts.
And how will the organics processed at the facility be transported to the site for processing?
Will the waste need to be...
Stored on site prior to co-digestion?
And if so, what steps will DSNY or DEP take to limit the impact on the residents that live next to the facility?
So there's a few pieces to this, and Jen might want to weigh in on this as well.
But so the food waste that's collected curbside or that are coming from private haulers, there's a really important step that needs to take place where there's pre-processing.
And so for the Newtown Creek facility that we have, waste management has a waste transfer station where they do this pre-processing, where they take out all of the physical contamination, and then they kind of macerate it and thin it down so that it's pumpable.
And so then they can put these into vector trucks that can then go, you know, kind of the mile from their facility to our facility.
And then it gets put into a tank.
These are all kind of enclosed vessels, so there's not a tremendous amount of odor concerns with them.
And then it goes into our storage tank that happens in batches, obviously, because they're truck deliveries.
And then, you know, from the storage tank, then it is evenly brought over to the digesters because the microbiome and the digester is like a steady diet of material, of organics.
So that's kind of how that process works for the Hunts Point facility.
We are interested in looking at alternatives for transportation.
It would be great if we could partner with the food market next to it.
And so then that would be kind of a very easy transfer.
So that's one example of kind of keeping it very local.
We're also interested in and have been talking to EDC if there's ways to move this material, as Commissioner Anderson had mentioned.
New York City has this long history of moving material by waterways, and so we'd like to see that as well.
We really want to keep any impacts to the local community at a minimum.
That was my very next question is I'm really excited to hear about the partnership, especially with the markets next door.