Steel One Day, Irony the Next

Two days ago, a woman was almost killed by a ten pound steel chisel that got hurled through a fourth floor window by construction of the 91st Street Marine Transfer Station in Yorkviille in upper Manhattan.

Today, by coincidence, a judge dismissed two lawsuits seeking to stop the other deaths that will occur if the garbage site gets built and becomes operational.

This vastly insensitive Bloomberg project is opposite public housing and adjacent to a playing field used by 34,000 city kids a year. Were it not for "grandfathering" (a garbage site was built here in the '30s when it was an industrial area), it would be illegal.

It is shocking to see the supposedly progressive de Blasio regressing to the past to make legal something that contravenes all modern health and safety regulations.

Absent the grandfather bullshit, no one would be allowed to build a garbage facility within 400 feet of children or housing. It would be totally illegal. For obvious reasons.

This dump, however, will be within 11 feet of 34,000 children (yes, 11), while 2,000 public housing units are within 400 feet of it, some as close as 200.

This is not progress, this is going back to the days when tenements and slaughterhouses shared the same block.

An enormous amount of money is being spent on this. Meant to cost $43 million, it is now almost $200 million over budget. It solves no problems. And it is morally wrong.

If you live anywhere in the five boroughs you should ask yourself this:

Why is Mayor de Blasio supporting this?

Or better yet, ask him.