Staten Island Transfer Station profiled

11.22.10

The Staten Island Advance profiles the Staten Island Transfer Station (SITS), where 750 tons of the island’s garbage is trucked every day, compacted, containerized and sent out on a seven day journey by rail to Lee County Landfill in Bishopville, South Carolina.

Between three and four 20-foot orange containers are filled with 19 tons of trash an hour and loaded onto a rail car. The cars, which leave once a morning, travel eight miles over the restored Arthur Kill Lift Bridge — often joined by freight from the New York Container Terminal — into Elizabeth, N.J. There, they connect with the national rail network.

In Fiscal Year 2010, the city paid $31 million for the processing of 222,576 tons of garbage to Allied Waste Systems, which won a long-term contract with the city to cart the borough’s trash to its South Carolina landfill. Recyclables are not processed at SITS.

SITS is a 79,000-square-foot facility operated by the NYC Department of Sanitation and opened in 2006 as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s 2006 Long-Term Solid Waste Management Plan.  We were given a tour of the impressive facility last year.

Tags: Department of Sanitation, Fresh Kills Landfill, garbage, Staten Island