The facility has been in operation since 1991,<\/a> but its workload has gotten a lot bigger now that city residents are mandated to separate organic material from their trash for composting. <\/p>\nIt was reported in June that the facility, which handles all of the Island\u2019s compost and some from South Brooklyn, is actually nearing its operating capacity. <\/p>\n
So business is good. But it turns out it\u2019s been bad for Travis residents. <\/p>\n
And those folks know what garbage smells like. They lived with the dump stench for generations. <\/p>\n
Back when Fresh Kills was in full swing, the landfill took in all of the city\u2019s garbage. Tons upon tons of it every day, arriving by truck and by barge. <\/p>\n
The dump broke every environmental law on the books but was still allowed to operate. <\/p>\n
Staten Islanders were lied to when the dump opened back in 1948. We were told Fresh Kills would only be in operation for a few years. <\/p>\n
It turned out to be half a century. <\/p>\n
The Fresh Kills landfill, more than any other single thing, showed just how much disdain City Hall and the other four boroughs had for Staten Island. <\/p>\n
We were the Forgotten Borough in all things except for garbage. The City of New York sure did remember us when it was time to dump the trash. <\/p>\n
And while the whole borough suffered, it was Travis and the rest of the West Shore that took the everyday brunt of the dump. <\/p>\n
The foul smell emanating from the landfill, particularly in the summer, meant that people couldn\u2019t enjoy their own backyards or keep their windows open. <\/p>\n
Paper blown from the gigantic landfill mounds tangled in tree branches and dangled from utility wires. <\/p>\n
We literally had to sue the city and the state in order to get the dump closed. The landfill is now a park. We thought we\u2019d never have to suffer those smells again. <\/p>\n
Now we know different. Now it\u2019s compost that\u2019s causing funky smells to come from dreaded old landfill. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s like Staten Island is getting dumped on all over again. Maybe we should add this to the pile of reasons why Staten Island should secede from New York City. <\/p>\n
In a bid to curb the rank smells, a Sanitation spokesperson said that the department is looking to use a scented mist at DSNY operations; a special covered composting system; turning compost at 5 a.m., and regular odor assessments in neighborhoods surrounding the facility. <\/p>\n
A scented mist? <\/p>\n
Forgive me but that just doesn\u2019t pass the smell test. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Foul odors in Travis? You don\u2019t say. We thought we were done with rancid stenches coming from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-70345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}