New York City officials are lobbying Albany in hopes of getting approval to build a marine waste transfer station for recyclable materials on the Gansevoort Peninsula on Manhattan’s West Side.

The facility, whose cost is still undetermined, would be a holding ground for Manhattan’s recyclable metal, glass, and plastic. It would obviate the need for city sanitation trucks to travel to current facilities in the Bronx and New Jersey, reducing truck use by nearly 30,000 mi a year.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has argued that the new station would be the key element to fully implementing the city’s Solid Waste Management Plan enacted in 2006. The plan aims to make each borough responsible for its own waste, easing the heavier share now borne by the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, says N.Y.C. Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg and the City Council – which largely supports the new plant that sits in the district of Christine Quinn, the council speaker – have lobbied New York state legislative leaders by urging them to approve a bill that would authorize construction of the plant. Though Senate Bill 5988 passed and went to the Assembly, neither that bill nor its corresponding Assembly Bill 9005 made it out of the lower house’s Environmental Conservation Committee before the legislative session ended in June.

Neither Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno nor Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver responded to calls for comment.

The Gansevoort site selection faces strong opposition from groups such as Friends of Hudson River Park, the Federation to Preserve the Greenwich Village Waterfront & Great Port, and members of Community Board 2, which contend that the facility would blight efforts to make the waterfront more attractive and accessible, going against the vision laid out by the state’s Hudson River Park Act. City officials say that the site on Pier 52 was chosen only after others were deemed less workable, but opponents of the plant say they have prepared a study showing that Pier 75 further north provides a cheaper, less obtrusive alternative.

Sewer Plan Faces Funding Hitch

Initial work on a $1.6 billion sewer upgrade program in Hartford and seven surrounding suburbs advanced this summer, even as the agency in charge of the effort remained uncertain about whether funding will become available for the whole program, which is slated to run through 2013.

Voters in the Hartford area last November authorized the Metropolitan District Commission, the regional water and sewer agency, to borrow the first $800 million for the program. Its main focus is to address sewer overflow problems, particularly during heavy rainfalls, and reduce levels of nitrogen in effluent that flows to the Long Island Sound.

The plan includes various “sewer line separation” projects and $250 million to cover both the expansion of a wastewater treatment plant and installation of nitrogen-removal equipment.

The program suffered a setback in the spring when a funding bill failed in the Connecticut General Assembly’s regular session. It would have allowed the MDC to raise the other $800 million through a consumption-based surcharge on customer water bills.

The bill died after two state legislators from Hartford added language that would have required the set aside of a percentage of construction jobs for minorities and ex-felons. Though MDC, construction industry officials, and legislators later worked out a compromise on those set-asides, it was unclear whether state lawmakers would revisit the bill during a special session over the summer. Legislators were expected to instead grapple with other state budget and bonding issues.   

Without state authorization for the consumption surcharge, MDC officials said they might resort to an existing system of linking the charge to local property taxes. Municipal leaders in the region oppose that option, because some could have sewerage costs triple over the next decade.

“We are under incredible stress as it is,” says Lee Erdmann, Hartford’s chief operating officer.

The MDC plans to find a funding solution soon to ensure that construction will continue, says Brendon Fox, an MDC lobbyist.

“We are going to look at various alternatives,” he adds. “We are looking at ways to mitigate the impact so it is spread fairly across all users and so the fiscal impact isn’t [only] felt by member towns. The bottom line is the project will happen. There’s no question about that.”

The MDC’s resolve is partly to due to the pressure from a consent decree that requires repair of the antiquated sewer system. The decree arose from a legal settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, both of which had ordered the agency to address sewage overflows into area rivers, streets, and basements during an estimated 50 heavy storms a year.

Besides Hartford, the MDC covers West Hartford, East Hartford, Newington, Wethersfield, Rocky Hill, Windsor, and Bloomfield.

Mohegan Sun Expansion Begins

Work recently began on the first half of Project Horizon, a 1.4-million-sq-ft expansion of the Mohegan Sun hotel and casino complex in Uncasville, Conn.

The $350 million Northern Expansion is the first phase of what will be a $740 million effort to add hotel, dining, retail, entertainment, gambling, and office space to the 240-acre resort. Skanska USA Building of Parsippany, N.J., is construction manager on the first-phase effort.

The Northern Expansion, designed by Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo of Irvine, Calif., features a new 1,000-room hotel tower, 115,000 sq ft of dining and retail space, 40,000 sq ft of office areas, and a parking garage with 3,600 spaces. In the tower, 300 of the rooms will have a “House of Blues” theme to complement a members-only House of Blues Foundation Room that will be built on the upper floors.

The resort will also add the 64,000-sq-ft “Casino of the Wind”, a sister venue to the recently opened “Casino of the Earth,” which provides patrons with Asian gaming options.