From Manhattan Beach to the Brooklyn Naval Yard will examine
the long and vocal tradition of citizen protest against sanitary nuisances
and environmental pollution in New York City. Since the middle of
the nineteenth century, few issues have generated more vehement and
sustained public debate than that of proper waste disposal. Brooklynites,
like their counterparts throughout the rest of Greater New York, have
not been idle in their concern for efficient and sanitary refuse management.
From Manhattan Beach to the Brooklyn Naval Yard will highlight
four major episodes in the struggle for a healthier borough and an
improved quality of life throughout the city.
The first waste disposal controversies to be examined are the co-called
"Garbage Wars" that erupted every summer in the late nineteenth century
over the dumping of refuse near Manhattan Beach. Every summer, residents
along the Brooklyn shore would accuse New York City of polluting beaches
with wastes from garbage scows. The city's quest to find a replacement
for ocean dumping eventually led to the establishment of garbage rendering
works on Barren Island (now Floyd Bennett Field) in 1896. However,
odors from the Barren Island made life miserable for neighboring residents.
In 1918, pressure from a variety of Brooklyn citizens, civic, and
business organizations forced Mayor John Hylan to close the Barren
Island facility and resume ocean dumping of refuse; this time, further
out to sea.
By the late 1930s, a third period of citizen activism arose once the
New York City Department of Sanitation (DS) began landfilling operations
in and around Jamaica Bay. Between 1938 and 1948, thousands of New
Yorkers organized to oppose sanitary landfills in their neighborhoods.
By the 1970s, a fourth round of controversy developed as the DS announced
plans for a new waste-to-energy incinerator at the old Brooklyn Naval
Yard. Throughout each of the above episodes, special emphasis will
be given to how citizens perceived environmental threats, how they
organized and lobbied government officials to remedy sanitary problems,
and what the result of such activism means to the future of waste
disposal in the nation's largest city.