In the last century I observed and demonstrated a connection between the mafia and the sewer in New York City. I did a lot of environmental and computerization work in my beloved Harlem in the 1990's.
One of the issues I took on was educating folks about the need to fix the North River sewer and close the windows because not only were the elevated cancer rates connected with the sewers. The infant mortality rate was two and a half times higher than the rest of the city, yet, the man who is now president of the USA thought at the time his real estate project was more important than the lives of the residents of Harlem.
I ran a street corner campaign called 'Taking Back Our 2 1/2'.
I had no care at the time whose project I was fighting that would have raised the infant mortality rate even higher. Turns out it was a Trump real estate project.
A summary of my notes on the problem of Harlem being surrounded by 5 open sewers, one with the best park in the area on top is posted.
http://harlemnayer.blogspot.com/2009/09/harlems-sewer-problem-did-it-get-any.html
Back in 1990 The New England Journal of Medicine published a health warning concerning Harlem.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199001183220306#t=articleTop
"We conclude that Harlem and probably other inner-city areas with largely black populations have extremely high mortality rates that justify special consideration analogous to that given to natural-disaster areas. (N Engl J Med 1990;322:173–7.)"
Yet, the public was given ways to be understanding with the "Turning Sewage Plants Into Friendly Neighbors" article in 1991
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/16/nyregion/turning-sewage-plants-into-friendly-neighbors.html
Harlem's leadership was told to focus on the odor, not the toxins that were coming off the sewer. Those who did got funded.
"We can never get a straight answer about whether all the odor-control equipment is functioning 24 hours a day," said Peggy Shepard, co-founder of West Harlem Environmental Action, a citizens group that has followed the plant's odor problems. If properly functioning odor-control systems are not the answer, then design becomes a bigger issue. The city is already looking for a way to stop solids from rising to the top of tanks in the secondary treatment process, rather than settling, as they should. At the top of the tanks, solids can create a terrible smell."
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| With Great NY State Senator Nelson Dennis |
By 1994 the problem was undeniable. The New York Times reported
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/nyregion/neighborhood-report-harlem-when-babies-die-what-the-numbers-mean.html
"A recent study by the city's Health Department indicates a sharp increase in the infant mortality rate of Central Harlem, from 15.9 deaths per thousand live births in 1992 to 25.2 in 1993."
Trump's reaction
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/04/nyregion/trump-development-clears-hurdle-despite-objections.html
"Over the strenuous objections of environmentalists, Harlem residents and some elected officials, the city gave Donald J. Trump permission yesterday to connect the first phase of his Riverside South development to the troubled North River sewage treatment plant. With the certification, Mr. Trump clears a major hurdle in his long struggle to construct a mixed commercial and residential development with 16 buildings along the Hudson River, from 59th to 72d Street."
Despite being sold out by Harlem's poverty pimps, the battle went on even after Trump got approval to increase the death rate in Harlem so he could have his dream real estate project on the West side of Manhattan that would have cast an evening shadow over a part of Central Park at sunset. (The horror!)
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/16/opinion/l-harlem-sewage-plant-can-t-handle-trump-s-riverside-south-219295.html
"Strenuous objections voiced by all the West Side's elected officials, the Coalition for a Livable West Side, the North River Community Environmental Review Board, Community Boards 7 and 9, the Harlem community and even the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is a member of Mr. Trump's Riverside South Planning Corporation, fell on deaf ears. The objections to a sewer hookup were based on a careful examination of the data presented by the city. There is no capacity in the North River plant for additional hookups and no basis to believe that capacity will be available in the future."
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| Jacqioe Hardin-Bailey (r) with affected community members. |
"About 200 million gallons of sewage came in each day to the sewage treatment plan, well above its design capacity of around 170 million gallons per day. So on dry days, about 30 million gallons of raw sewage continued flowing into the Hudson River. Rainy days swelled the volume. Ruth Messinger, the Manhattan borough president at the time, was adamant that no development would take place on the Trump property without proper sewage treatment for the estimated five million gallons per day his project was expected to generate.
Messinger wrote a 1992 letter to the city environmental commissioner saying a “host of experts” agreed with her that Trump’s project should not get approved “unless there is sustainable, reliable, and certain commitment to mitigate the anticipated sewage flows”. Days later, Messinger testified that “there is no justification” for any claims that the existing sewage plant could handle the flushed toilets and other wastewater from 5,700 new apartments."
It is reported that in 1994 he tried just dumping raw sewage into the Hudson. That didn't work out very well. Folks learned if one is going to change reports, one has to cross reference the changes, in other words, he got caught.
https://www.wateronline.com/doc/did-donald-trump-sidestep-manhattan-sewage-standards-0001
"Amid tension between the developer and the city, something shifted: Documents on city sewage flow began showing a drop in volume on the Upper West Side by 24 MGD, resolving the conflict at hand, according to The Daily Beast. It was “a mysterious decline that occurred within the space of a two-hour period,” The Village Voice reported in 1995.
But Rich Herschlag, the former chief borough engineer, developed a theory about the sudden decline in sewage volume. “It may be the raw sewage was simply diverted into the Hudson River, but Herschlag believes another answer is highly likely.
He learned that there are two independent sets of sewage flow data. One is from the collector pipes, the other at the entry to the treatment plant. Herschlag believes someone tampered with the plant intake meter, but neglected to fudge the collector-pipe meters so their numbers would match, either out of hubris — what are the odds someone would compare the two? — or laziness,” The Daily Beast reported.
Trump sold most of his interest in the land to Hong Kong investors in 1997, according to the report. And Herschlag appears to have immortalized his perspective in fiction by writing a novel called The Interceptor."
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| Taking Back Our 2 1/2 Campaign |
