The Adams Administration Is Paving Community Compost Paradise for a Parking Lot - Hell Gate (2024)

Don't let the word "compost" written on the side of those orange Smart Bins or on your curbside brown container fool you: The vast majority of organics taken in by the City's Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is not turned into nutrient-rich compost.

Instead, around 80 percent of organic waste collected by DSNY becomes noxious methane, which is then burned for electricity, while just 20 percent is turned into the valuable black stuff that makes tomatoes beefier and trees leafier, with the added benefit of not contributing to the climate crisis by creating more fossil fuels.

So here in New York City, the task of mixing the right balance of food scraps and yard waste and turning it into nutrient-rich compost has mostly fallen to community composting groups, which have seen their already-anemic funding drastically slashed in rounds of recent budget cuts. Those cuts have shut down community composting sites across the city and resulted in dozens of workers losing their jobs.

Now, the Adams administration is about to deal another massive blow to community composting. On June 30, the Parks Department is evicting a community composting site in Long Island City from its longtime location under the Queensboro Bridge, and is replacing it with a parking lot for City vehicles and the private vehicles of City employees. Parks says it needs the space for staging as improvements are made to the nearby Queensbridge Baby Park—yet a recent visit by a Hell Gate reporter showed that there is plenty of space under the bridge to accommodate vehicles that would not require kicking out an award-winning climate initiative.

Since the Adams administration announced its intentions to evict Big Reuse in late February, the composting site, which is run by the group Big Reuse, has garnered support from thousands of community members; two Queens community boards; members of Congress; the comptroller; and 20 councilmembers, who signed a letter to the administration in April expressing their "unwavering support" for the site staying where it is.

"While we understand that the Parks Department will be undertaking a capital project to improve Queensbridge Baby Park, the site that is currently utilized by Big Reuse falls outside of the project footprint," the letter states. "Given that multiple City agencies utilize lots under the Queensboro Bridge for agency parking, it would be unfortunate if this vital community resource was sacrificed for a handful of parking spaces."

Justin Green, the executive director for Big Reuse, told Hell Gate that by eliminating the Queensbridge site, the Adams administration is essentially killing Big Reuse's community composting programs citywide. The other Big Reuse site in Gowanus had to be closed in 2023 so the City could do work on combined sewage outflow points there. "When [Queens] shuts down, everything is shut down. It's super frustrating," Green said.

Green said that the Queensboro Bridge site takes organic waste from a variety of sources—Parks Department workers ("they're psyched to bring it to us," he said) who bring organic waste from parks, community gardens that have more organics than they can handle, and residents who drop off food scraps.

The main beneficiary of the resulting nutrient-rich compost: the Parks Department.

"Seventy-five percent of that compost directly goes to Parks horticulture and GreenThumb," Green said, referring to the City's urban gardening program. "The other 25 percent goes to community gardens or street tree care. It's public waste for the public good."

Green added that the fact that the City is replacing the composting site with parking is "mind-blowing."

"They're not building senior housing, they're building a parking lot that is definitely going to be used, if it's how their other spaces are used, for Parks staff driving to work. Does that make sense from a climate perspective?" Green said.

Hell Gate asked the Parks Department why they are kicking out Big Reuse, how the site impedes parking for Parks workers, and whether they offered Big Reuse an alternative site. Parks responded with a statement that did not directly address any of these questions:

Parks recognizes the importance of composting and other sustainability efforts that are facilitated by organizations in the city like Big Reuse, and we will continue to assist these efforts by providing a free space for Big Reuse to use through June. We will then begin construction on our capital project in the fall, which will revitalize the park and provide more recreational amenities, increased access to greenways, and improved public spaces. We look forward to executing our vision for this space, which will enhance the neighborhood’s quality of life, including the nearby NYCHA complex.

Hell Gate asked DSNY if they were concerned that their sister agency was ending community composting in Queens for seemingly specious reasons, at a site that they provided funding for. After touting their own in-house organics programs—which, again, largely do not produce actual compost—DSNY referred us back to Parks.

"I think they just don't get it," Clare Miflin, an architect and founder of the Center for Zero Waste Design, told Hell Gate. "The Sanitation commissioner said in the last hearing that we have more compost than we can give away. But their municipal compost is from yard waste—it's fine for street trees, but it's not good for urban agriculture, because it doesn't have much food scraps in it, so it's low in nitrogen. And it's got bits of plastic in it."

Miflin added that the Adams administration doesn't understand "that the [compost] quality is really different, and they don't appreciate the community involvement and the education side."

Green said that since the City announced Big Reuse would have to leave the Queensbridge site, he's heard from other sites expressing interest in hosting them. But starting from scratch requires significant amounts of funding—money that his organization doesn't have. "So if we were to move to these other sites that are expressing interest, we don't even have the funding because of budget cuts to build them out," Green explained, though he is hopeful that the few million dollars the City slashed for community composting will be restored in the upcoming budget, which is supposed to be finalized soon.

Green noted that the sense of empowerment that New Yorkers feel from composting is real, and took years to cultivate.

"People are terrified about climate change, but here's something valuable they can do. It's not just, like, turning off a light switch," Green said. "You're doing a step that is greening the city, and reducing your climate impact at the same time. You're actually making the city, you know, more climate-friendly, more resilient."

This feeling is why public defender and community gardener Mike Pate dashed from the courthouse in Brooklyn over to City Hall last Tuesday afternoon to rally to save the Big Reuse site. "I walked into the courthouse, I saw they weren't gonna get my cases done before noon, so I'm gonna go over here and say something," Pate told Hell Gate.

Sweating through his blazer in 90-degree heat, the 54-year-old Pate said that he began gardening at Bushwick's Moffat Street Garden during the pandemic, and that in addition to providing high-quality compost, Big Reuse taught novices like him how to make things grow. "It opened up a whole new world," Pate recalled. "Without Big Reuse, I don't know where our garden would be. It was such an important partnership."

Pate added, "I gotta say, having a little brown City container just isn't the same."

With additional reporting from Max Rivlin-Nadler.

Because of a transcription error, this story initially quoted Clare Miflin as stating that DSNY compost contained too much nitrogen, when in fact Miflin stated that it was low in nitrogen.