LIC Composting Site Fights Looming Eviction By Parks Department

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — In the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge, a battleground has formed between what may seem, at least superficially, to be two sides of the same coin: a community composting site and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.

The composting site, Big Reuse, is the tenant and the parks department its landlord. For years, their relationship has been symbiotic: The parks department allows Big Reuse to use its site for free, and Big Reuse turns the agency's yard waste into fresh, nutrient-rich soil.

But Big Reuse's lease is up at the end of this year, and the parks department has declined to renew it.

Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver and other agency officials said the composting site's half-acre space is needed for parks operations, including vehicle parking. They have also gone as far as suggesting that the site violates the state's public trust doctrine, which requires that parkland be open to public use.

Big Reuse staff and supporters, united as the "Save Our Compost" coalition, emphasize that the parks department benefits from the composting site and insist there is more than enough space under the bridge for everything they and the parks department want to do with it.

They note that the parks department's insistence on evicting the Big Reuse composting site runs counter to Mayor Bill de Blasio's pledge that New York City send zero waste to landfills by 2030. And some lawyers have taken issue with the parks department's legal arguments.

All this comes at a time when community composters like Big Reuse have taken on a larger role, thanks to the city's decision to cut funding for its curbside composting operation as it grappled with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Another composting site, the Lower East Side Ecology Center in Manhattan, also faces eviction.

"Everyone’s so shocked that we’re getting kicked off," Justin Green, Big Reuse's executive director, told Patch. "We’re one of the only options to compost in the city right now. If we have to move, that just takes one more option for composting off the plate."

In response to a question from Patch about the issue, de Blasio pledged to get involved.

"I’ll get involved to make sure that we find a resolution that protects the ability of folks doing composting but also serves what the parks department needs in general," de Blasio told Patch during a Tuesday news conference. "I have been down this road with these kinds of conflicts many times, and I find there’s almost always an acceptable solution if we just get everyone talking to each other."

A spokesperson for the parks department declined to answer an emailed list of questions, referred Patch to the mayor's statement Tuesday and sent a copy of a Dec. 3 letter signed by Silver, the parks commissioner, for "the facts of the matter."

In the letter, Silver wrote that "the arrangement was predicated on an understanding that Big Reuse would seek an alternative permanent location by this time."

The City Council is scheduled to hold an oversight hearing Friday to examine the circumstances surrounding the evictions, according to Antonio Reynoso, who chairs the Council's sanitation committee. (The Department of Sanitation is in charge of the city's composting operations.)

During a "Save Our Compost" rally held over the video-conferencing platform Zoom on Tuesday, Reynoso said the situation is "like an Onion article," referring to the satire publication.

City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, whose Queens district includes the Big Reuse site, called the parks department's eviction plan "sickening" and "stupid."

"I’m somewhat shocked and surprised that we’re even having to have this conversation,” said former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who is now running for mayor.

Big Reuse's site under the bridge dates back to 2014, when the parks department agreed to let the nonprofit use its land for composting operations, according to Devin Reitsma, a project manager for Big Reuse.

“At the time it was a lot of volunteers with pitchforks and a couple staff people who were collecting a small amount of food scraps," Reitsma told Patch.

In 2017, Big Reuse signed a three-year licensing agreement with the parks department and moved onto a different part of the compound. The nonprofit cleared the site of trash and paved it.

The site now processes more than a million pounds of food scraps and up to 400,000 pounds of yard waste a year, Reitsma said. That includes more than a quarter of the scraps collected at New York City farmers' markets and other drop-off sites.

Using state-of-the-art technology, Big Reuse mixes the food scraps, leaves and wood chips together and turns it into compost. The process takes about four months. The finished product goes to community and school gardens, street trees and the parks department.

Composting not only improves New York City's soil, which is severely contaminated, but also helps reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change by diverting the waste from landfills, where it emits methane.

Big Reuse's composting site prevents the release of the greenhouse gas equivalent of 350 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to Green, the nonprofit's executive director.

In an emailed statement, Belinda Mager, a spokesperson for the sanitation department, referred to composting as a "key component of our zero waste goals and the city’s push to fight climate change."

In 2015, de Blasio made a pledge that the city would send zero waste to landfills by 2030, but, as POLITICO has reported, waste totals have actually increased.

Community benefits notwithstanding, parks department officials have said the agency needs Big Reuse's land for operations currently housed on parkland — including parking, as POLITICO first reported in August.

"Once Big Reuse vacates the area under the bridge, Parks will move our operations into that space, freeing up parkland currently used as operational parcels adjacent to the bridge to provide much needed recreational amenities for the community," Silver wrote in the Dec. 3 letter.

Silver also cited a 2014 court ruling that a composting site on parkland in Brooklyn’s Spring Creek went against the public trust doctrine.

“As a result of that decision, we have worked and continue to work to allow composting in our parks consistent with the public trust doctrine — for example by predominately processing organic material from our parks, on parkland,” Silver wrote.

Green, Big Reuse's executive director, shot down both arguments. He said the parks department, which has five lots under the bridge, uses about a third of its parking space and only half of another lot dedicated to operations.

In October, the agency opened a $6.25 million field house in Queensbridge Park that is meant, in part, to house maintenance equipment.

Green said the 2014 lawsuit is not relevant to Big Reuse's site, which is volunteer-driven and open to the public — rebuttals echoed by Eric A. Goldstein, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and part of the "Save Our Compost" coalition.

"The legal theory the department cites to justify its reversal of long-standing policy was applied to a 20-acre industrial composting facility that was emitting odors and triggering community complaints — facts completely different from the modest and beloved community composting operations of the Lower East Side Ecology Center and Big Reuse,” Goldstein said in a statement.

Crystal Howard, a parks department spokesperson, did not respond to emailed questions on why the agency and Big Reuse would be unable to share the space and how many vehicles the agency plans to put there. She also declined to provide a comment from Silver.

“We really see our efforts as helping to support parks — we're here to help them,” Green said with a chuckle. “That’s also what’s so aggravating. It’s not like we’re running a golf course. We’re not a restaurant. We’re actually helping parks with their own operations."