[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaronous, and I'm.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Your other co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: And today we're talking about biogas. And, no, that's not a clever way of saying farts. It's an actual method of producing energy, and it's happening here in New York City. But before we get to that, Lonnie, can you share WEAC's mission?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Thank you. So, as always, before we get into our interview with Willis from Newtown Creek alliance, we're going to give a little bit of background about what is biogas, and how is it kind of showing up in New York City just to help you kind of have a little bit of background on what's going on. So what exactly is biogas? Biogas is essentially a renewable energy source produced by the breakdown of organic materials, like agricultural waste, food scraps, sewage, and it's done so in the absence of oxygen. So you hear the term anaerobic digestion. You think back again to science class. We're really getting into all the science terms lately. But anaerobic digestion without oxygen. And so that process creates a mixture of gases, primarily methane and carbon dioxide, that can be used as fuel for heating, electricity generation, or as a substitute for natural gas. And biogas also contributes to the waste management and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by capturing some of that methane that would otherwise be going into the atmosphere through a natural breakdown of materials. And you'll hear a couple different names or types of biogas out there. So parse through them kind of quickly. We won't get into all of them as much in detail, but some of the terms that you might hear thrown around is biomethane, which is essentially just refined biogas with a higher methane concentration. So really methane dominant, plus a landfill gas, which is just biogas produced from decomposing organic matter in landfills. So think of all that organic material, like your food scraps, that are just sitting in a landfill. That's kind of where you get landfill gas. Also sewage gas, which is biogas produced from the anaerobic digestion of sewage, specifically, and then methane gas, which refers to the primary component of biogas, but it also can include fossil based natural gas. So it's kind of a larger umbrella that methane based biogas would fall under the last two that we'll mention really quickly. And we'll say a little bit more about the difference between the two of them is anaerobic digestion gas and renewable natural gas. And those are the two that we'll be talking about with Willis in our interview a little bit more. So, anaerobic digestion gas, as it says in the name, is biogas produced through anaerobic digestion, specifically of organic waste, in specialized facilities. And we'll talk about what those facilities look like here in New York in just a second. But that raw gas is produced through this process and is a mixture of methane in carbon dioxide, whereas renewable natural gas is a biogas that's processed a little bit more is actually interchangeable with natural gas in pipelines and other uses. So renewable natural gas has been processed a little bit more than anaerobic digestion gas. Anaerobic digestion gas. This is kind of the raw gas, which is a fun theorem. And then renewable natural gas is that processed gas that has a little bit higher standard for uses and substitute for natural gas. So hopefully, that's helpful. I think Lonya will tell you a little bit more about what biogas actually looks like here in New York, right?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So here in New York City, we're actually producing biogas. So there's a co digestion plant called Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery facility, where they do the anaerobic digestion. And basically they process food scraps in giant mechanical stomachs or digester eggs alongside sludge. And, yes, sludge means the stuff you flush down the toilet keep it at that. And this biological process produces biosolids and biogas. So how does this all work? So all the food scraps are collected via the brown bins and the orange bins that you see on the street where you can put all your food scraps. And then there's the brown bins that you get from the organics collection that's on the curbside, that's rolling out in October for Manhattan. And those food scraps are then hauled to a waste management facility in Brooklyn. And there your banana peels and your eggshells and all those uneaten veggies are separated from anything that's not food scraps. And then once they're isolated and separated, they're then made into an energy product called EBS.
And EBS is basically a homogenous food based energy product that's designed to have a consistency similar to, like, a thick smoothie. So think about this.
It's quite disgusting looking.
So they make this thick smoothie. And the EPS is transported 2 miles down the road from the facility to Newtown Creek waste water recovery facility. And that sludge, the brown stuff we flush down the toilet and ebs are mixed together, and then they're pumped into those big digester eggs that we talked about. That mixture kind of just hangs out in those digester eggs for about 30 days, and they're mixing and churning while anaerobic microorganisms convert them into biogas. So these little microorganisms eat at. Microorganisms eat at the mixture, and they create biogas, which is methane, and they also produce carbon dioxide.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: We did to the bacteria farts. There are farts in this episode?
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Their bacteria is farting? Yes. Essentially, with what's going on, the natural grid then converts that biogas into heat for some of its customers. So kind of the heating system that we use in the winter, it's able to take that biogas and turn it to the renewable natural gas that's then put through the pipelines for heat. And then there's another product that's created as well out of this process called biosolids. And they have some slightly different end uses. And so 2022, 43% of those, unfortunately, had to go to landfill. A lot of the biosolids are, they're not able to make any chemical contaminants go away, so they can't really be used for anything else other than going into landfill. And another 44% in is used for what's called beneficial use. So that's includes some of the direct land application kind of like fertilizer, and then also going into composting, there's another 14% that's going to what's called productive reuse.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: So hopefully, that's some helpful context that really get an understanding of what is biogas at a really basic level. How does it work? That will help you kind of understand some of our conversation with Willis about these facilities at Newtown Creek and what they're trying to address. So we'll get into some of those community concerns and environmental impacts of producing biogas. With Willis, I said we go ahead and get to that interview.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Please introduce yourself and just give us a bit of background about the work that you do.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah. So my name is Willis Elkins. I'm the executive director at the Newtown Creek Alliance. Newtown Creek alliance is community based organization that's established in 2002 dedicated to restoring, revealing, and revitalizing Newtown Creek. Newtown Creek is an industrial, super fun waterway almost in the heart of New York City. The border between northern Brooklyn and western Queens drains out to the East river. It's about 4 miles long, and it was one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution, which always had a lot of influence on how the city grew and how the country grew and the modern world that we inhabit here, but also with a lot of industrial growth and production of materials, left a huge wake of environmental harm. And so we're still cleaning up a lot of the mess that was made by companies like Standard Oil, Brooklyn Union gas, et cetera. And so that's why it's a federal superfund site. It's also been completely sort of transformed physically from a salt marsh area that, of course, originally was. Was a resource for the people that originally inhabited New York City. The Lenape was used for hunting and fishing, was very clean until the mid 18 hundreds when industries basically set up and was transformed into a canal. And so water is very stagnant, really, not a clean waterway at all. And so a lot of our work is focused specifically on the waterway and writing these environmental harms that have presented significant, you know, human health risk to the surrounding communities. But we're also focused on reengaging the surrounding communities with this waterway that's in their backyard, but has been largely fenced off and left inaccessible. So a lot of the work we do is focused on the creek itself, but also reconnecting people. A lot of educational work, a lot of advocacy work, and then also that our vision is for the waterway to remain an industrial manufacturing space, but one that is not presenting environmental or community human health harms. And so what that looks like is cleaner industry, cleaner manufacturing, more public access, more ecological restoration blended into one. Thank you for that.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: That's super helpful. I feel like I was in my brain priming to ask you about some of the history of that area, and you beat me to it.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, maybe a long answer, but.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: No, it was perfect. You got me two questions in one. I'll never argue for a bargain, so thank you for that.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to imagine when you go there. I mean, like a lot of New York City, right? It's just hard to imagine what this. What these areas look like, not even that long ago, a few hundred years, completely transformed.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: I think it's always fascinating to, when you think about some of these kind of historic neighborhoods and kind of the industrialization aspect of everything. And like you just said, not really understanding or realizing some of the environmental health impacts that they have on nearby communities. And now we're in a space, a modern space where we don't really have that heavy industry the same way that we did in the past, but yet there's still a need for, for growth and more housing. And so we just start building even closer and more on top of and around these industrial spaces. But today we really want to talk about one particular site, and that is the new town Creek waste water resource recovery facility.
Is there a shortened version of.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: We just call it the treatment plant. The treatment plant, it has been rebranded about three times in the past 20 years. So we just call that with the treatment plan.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: We can go with the treatment plan since it's a lot easier to say that treatment plan has been around for a while. Do you have like a brief history of the treatment plan itself? And then can you talk a little bit about. The main reason why we're here to talk about is kind of that partnership with national grid to use biogas that's produced at the facility?
[00:11:37] Speaker C: Sure, yeah, I'll try to keep it brief. But essentially the treatment plant was built in the mid 1960s, and it's the largest of 14 wastewater treatment plants in the city. So it handles sewage from over a million people every single day. Huge section of Manhattan. All the toilets, sinks and showers flush there. Huge section of northern Brooklyn and even parts of Queens. What's interesting about the treatment plant is that when it was finished in the mid sixties, 1972 comes along in the Clean Water act. And the Clean Water act basically put parameters onto how clean treated sewage needed to be. And so even though this massive facility was just built, it was out of compliance with this new regulation. And that was the case for a lot of New York City's wastewater treatment plants that existed at that time. Also at that time, New York City didn't have, you know, up here in Harlem, there was no sewage treatment plant in the 1960s, and all the sewage was going directly to the Hudson river up until the eighties. So what happened is they needed to do big upgrade and they waited until the nineties to start this upgrade. And it was a massive project because it's the largest treatment plant the city. And so it took about 15 years cost, multi billion dollar upgrade because they had to keep the sewage system online while putting in a new one. And the city, there was a lot of, it was a big project. And I would say one positive thing that happened with that is that there was a group that was established under charter of the city called the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee. And it was community representatives, elected leaders, and also had funding for community liaison, technical advisors. So that the people in Greenpoint could understand exactly what was happening with this upgrade because it was massive and there was impacts, smells and odors and traffic and yada yada, and met on a monthly basis for 15 years. And it was a really great resource to get information from an agency to the local impacted people. And so that was a really successful model, we felt, and I'll reference that in a little bit. So anyway, so the treatment plant was completed in 2012. As part of that, they built these eight large anaerobic digesters to break down the sewage sludge, essentially. And part of that process is creating. Creates methane on the facility. DEP, the city is able to use some of that methane to run things like boilers and on site energy needs, but they were still flaring off the excess methane. And so the city worked with national grid to implement this project called renewable natural gas, where they would take that excess methane that was being burned, basically, purify it a little bit, and put it into national grid system. So it's just natural, quote unquote, natural gas that people use for, you know, cooking food and heating their buildings. The additional component of the renewable natural gas, or RNG, project is the city realized there was extra capacity in these eight digester eggs. It can handle the million people's sewage, but it also had extra capacity. And so they said, what if we put more organic waste in here so we can actually generate more gas for a national grid? And that's what the city has done. So most of the organics collection, the brown bin program, that's been rolled out over the past decade, the vast majority of that brown bin collection. Brooklyn, Queens. Do you have it up here? I'm not sure where it is exactly in the city.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: It's actually going to be rolling out in October.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: In October? Okay. So the vast majority of that brown bend organic collection is now going basically directly to the eggs to generate more gas. So I'll just say we have some concerns with that basic model, because, for one, a lot of people, they're using brown bins, which is great, right? We want to divert organic material from our landfills. But the city's been advertising that it's a composting program. And like I said, the vast majority of it is not actually becoming compost. It's becoming a product for a very large multinational corporation that has also caused incredible environmental harm in our communities directly, which is national grid. So we're very concerned with this basic model as it exists. But also there's been issues with how the system's rolled out.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of our first, well, our first episode ever for this podcast, we had Nando Rodriguez talk about composting. And it's interesting that you say that it's like using that term composting, because I think it's familiar with people, but that's not actually what's happening with those organic collection compared to what we were talking about for soil amendments and, and kind of soil enrichment as well, so.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we're not, we're not a composting organization. We love compost. We work with a lot of groups that make compost, but it's not, again, this is not a, it's not compost. And they keep using that word. It's organics collection and it's diversion of creating a material to put in the digester eggs.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: That's helpful. Yeah, I feel like at some point compost becomes like a catch all term.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: It's interesting to hear some of that, I guess, rationale for wanting to add more capacity. We have this extra capacity. Let's use it. And you kind of touched on this a little bit in some of your previous answers. Just talking about community engagement in the past and what that had looked like during this process as these upgrades were being made. And what did the community engagement look like throughout that process?
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely there were gaps. I mean, as I mentioned, when you had the new town Creek monitoring committee, monthly meetings with DeP national grid, would attend those meetings. That was a great way to get information to ask questions from the electeds, community board members, etcetera. What happened is essentially the city disbanded, said, we're going to not continue meeting with the Newtown Creek monitoring committee. Part. The main person who was the facilitator retired. And they said, we're not going to refill this position. So that left this big void. And so we, our organization, the council members office, were trying to get regular updates, but there was no basically like requirement. There was no schedule for meeting with the city or national grid about it. And so it's been a very frustrating process.
I'm sure the city is pretty annoyed with us over the years of our constant sort of trying to get information and understand what's happening, especially because this is a pilot project. Right? Like, there's a lot to figure out. And in those early conversations that we had when they started, this was very useful. And there was a whole episode where they originally wanted to locate some of the infrastructure near one part of this facility. And someone in the monitoring committee said, that's a really bad idea for this and this reason, it was a local business owner, and then they changed it. And it was good. It was positive back and forth between the people that understand a lot of the local aspects and could weigh in. And so once the sort of Newton Creek monitoring Committee was disbanded, there was a void of how to get information.
And then Covid happened. And that sort of slowed down the process for building out the plant, the operation, but it also just slowed down the communication as well, unfortunately. So the short of it is that there was major delays. Right. The original timeline, they were supposed to be done with this project in January 2016. The ribbon cutting was not until June of 2023. So seven and a half years of delays. And the reason that the delays are significant here is that it's not just that they were burning this sewage gas, waiting for the system to come online. They were adding all this extra organic material to the digesters. So essentially they're flaring, burning off much more potent greenhouse gas than they would have been if they weren't pursuing this system. And so that's something we've really been trying to, you know, trying to nail down with the city and national grid. And, you know, their, their response to that is still that it's like, well, we're just diverting that from a landfill. So it's actually much better in terms of, like, carbon accounting. And it's like, no, that people think that's becoming compost. And if it were becoming compost, then the carbon accounting would be very different.
So that seven and a half year delay was very, very frustrating because we weren't getting updates of what was happening on a regular basis. There wasn't transparency. There weren't forums for communication. A lot of this was sort of like maybe an email back and forth or they have a private meeting with, you know, a council member or one person and try to, like, you know, avoid open transparency. So this process is much more frustrating than other aspects of the wastewater treatment plant upgrade.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: So, you know, you started to touch on this a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit more about what some of those on the ground impacts looked like? So in the process of, you know, evolving this facility, making these changes, and trying to figure out how to actually do this process in a way that they had envisioned?
[00:20:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: And even once it was fully online, what did the impact of those operations look like on the nearby community?
[00:20:52] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great question. In some ways, we still want to understand those better. We know that when there's more flaring, there's more that's burning the methane to turn it to CO2, which is a less potent greenhouse gas than methane. So there's more local emissions and it's obviously documented the impacts of having local emissions, air quality impacts for those that are living nearby. It's about two blocks from residential area, maybe two or three blocks. And it's also, it's an industrial area. And, you know, one of the things that we also work on as an organization is also trying to extend protections for people that are industrial areas, people that are working there, you know, spending 40, 50 hours a week that we feel like, you know, they also need protections from environmental harms in addition to the surrounding residential communities. So air quality impacts first and foremost, obviously climate impacts of burning all this extra gas, but also that the system itself is a little bit more localized. But we experience it because we work literally across the street. So we see the treatment plant, we see the flare. So we know when the system is not operational, but there's significant vibrations at times when the system is not online. And it basically shakes the surrounding block of buildings.
And again, these are industrial buildings. The building we work in is a tv film studio. So they're actually a little more aware of vibrations and sound. But we're next to a recycling yard where there's lots of noise and trucks coming, lots of vibrations, but it shakes their entire building. They notice it. This had been an issue for a very long time and the city kept saying, well, once this RNG project, it'll be online soon, all the vibrations will stop. And so we got basically an extra seven and a half years of these vibrations happening. Some of the building owners concerned about damage to their building and stuff like that. So it's much more localized, like that's not impacting the surrounding community as much, but is an issue that was never really properly addressed. And we can sort of talk about the timeline and how the system's operating now, but there's still literally yesterday vibrations in the building.
Like a newer employee who was like, hadn't really experienced it and was like, what is going on? Like the window shaking and noises and stuff. So anyways, I mean, but the air quality stuff, you know, trying to understand and quantify that is a major issue. And it's still an issue going forward because they've also, even though the system is running much, much better now than it was even a year or two ago, they still have to take it offline for maintenance. And when they do that, it means, again, all this extra gas has been being flared, you know, like yesterday, the flames coming out over the top of it. So there's still air quality impacts and vibration impacts during this maintenance period as well.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: I'm curious, were any of these things brought up at all prior to all of the work, before it became online? Was it presented as, like, there's these possibilities that these things would happen, or these might be some of the impacts, or was that never just brought up?
[00:23:59] Speaker C: I would say there wasn't a lot of detail. They said, this is a pilot we're gonna start with bringing in. Well, this is the other thing, too, is that the organic material is trucked into the facility. So the city collects the organics, the brown bins, and they take it to a facility further back on the creek, a waste management facility, and they turn it into this bio slurry. Cause they can't just put, like, direct food in there. So they basically turn it into this, like, big organic smoothie. And then they load up a tanker truck and they drive it 2 miles or something to the plant. So a lot of the original sort of concerns were like, how many trucks are going to be coming to the plant? What are the routes they're taking, air emission impacts, et cetera, from these trucks coming in? That's still a concern. Right. And they're also still talking about, you know, ramping this up in terms of more capacity. So, again, these communities, like many environmental justice communities, but North Brooklyn specifically, has a very long history with truck traffic, not just the proximity to places like the BQE, but high concentrations of waste transfer stations. I know it's a big issue up here as well. And we're trying to do everything we can to minimize truck traffic and truck trips and the burning of, especially of fossil fuels locally.
So that's a big concern as well, is like, how many trucks are coming to the plant? How many are going to be coming in the future?
What are we doing about those air quality environmental community impacts? So that was a lot of the focus originally was about the truck traffic, but there wasn't a lot of detail of like, well, we'll have to take the system offline for 10% of the time to do the XYZ. And that means that the flaring will be going on and the flaring will be more intense or there'll still be vibrations. It was sort of like, no, once it's online, it'll be all good.
So that's been very frustrating.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think one of the things that I'm always curious about is kind of like, we know that all of these things are going on right you've got the vibrations, you've got the increased truck traffic. Has there been any type of communication around potential mitigating some of these, these impacts at all?
[00:26:12] Speaker C: No, I'll say that mostly the answer has been, once a system is online, problem solved. And also we should be excited because it's a reduction of the city's carbon emissions. Again, according to their accounting, if they were actually turning the organics into compost, I feel like that's a very different equation. But, no, there hasn't. And I think originally, a lot of the local people that were involved in this, the first sort of thought was because they're like, we'll provide, it'll be enough gas for 5000 homes. And so people were like, oh, so will people that live near the treatment plant get a discount on their gas because we're hosting the infrastructure? And that seemed like a very, like, reasonable ask has not even come up as an option on behalf of national grid or the city. And so, no, there hasn't been any local mitigation of this. They, you know, we've heard sort of whispers about different ways to transport the material to the treatment plant. They looked at, you know, potentially barging there. You know, somebody was talking about building a pipeline for the, which is kind of crazy pipeline for the organic waste to go from one facility to another. But no, there hasn't been mitigation. Someone who was even like, why don't you run the trucks on like, a much cleaner fuel since this is all fuel based. And, you know, so none of that has really come, has transpired. And I think the, you know, the concern we have is, again, what we have in Newtown Creek is there, but the city and national grid are looking to expand this. And this was just part of the rate case that was unfortunately approved by New York State and the Public Service Commission. And there's a huge chunk of money in that. And just to explain a rate case is because when you have essentially a monopoly like national grid on gas, we don't get to choose who supplies our gas is to our homes or apartments. When they want to charge more, they have to get approval from the state and they have to justify that and say, what do we need them, why we need more money and why we need to charge more for it. So there was a number of things in this rate case, and one was connections to new RNG facilities. And so basically they are now getting us as the customers who, again, have no choice of who we get the gas from to pay more for their infrastructure to basically use in the case of Newtown Creek, they're using city infrastructure paid for by city taxpayers. They're using a fuel source that, of course, it's better than frac gas. But again, this is city infrastructure. The city's collecting organic waste from us. They're putting it into their own facility. And the national grid, not just. It's not only that they sell it back to us, it's also that they charge more. We now are paying more in our rates because of their offsetting their infrastructure costs to make that interconnection. And then the other thing that's really kind of crazy about it is that national grid also gets environmental credits. So they actually make money because it's a clean source of energy. So they're also making money on the clean energy credit, whatever market for this process. So they're basically like, they're winning. I mean, they've obviously, like, they spent a lot of money on the Newtown Creek site because it's been, so far, delays and all this sort of stuff. But the way this is set up, they've now basically, the city and the state have allowed them to profit in multiple ways from this operation.
And again, what are, like, what are we getting? And, you know, we're getting increased, like, when the system's offline, increased air emissions, more truck traffic, natural grid's cutting. Three separate checks.
Two of those are coming from us. So we feel it's a very unjust system. And the issue, the reason I bring up the rate case is that it allows for more of this to expand in other parts of the city. So, you know, we were involved in the right case. Very thankful to a lot of allies that were involved in that. Obviously, groups like sane energy and agree that are. That are really outspoken, you know, advocates for transition to clean energy and fighting against fossil fuel infrastructure, but also Earth justice. And we act, were part of that. And it was really, Earth justice really dove into the details because it's very, you know, complicated technical process, these rate cases. So I just want to really give a shout out. Earth justice was amazing in trying to working to push back against this to protect future communities from the same sort of issues. And again, this just sort of unjust system of using city infrastructure, the city and the state signing off on it. And it's mostly benefiting a very large multinational corporation like national grid. And I can talk more about their local impacts as a company around Newtown Creek. But, yeah, it's been very, very difficult in that regard.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: I was going to say this is a reoccurring theme in our miniseries. Honestly, it's something being sold to people as being better for the environment, or somehow they keep talking, but it's reducing emissions, it's reducing emission. But in this case, I'm so glad you brought up the rate case.
Who's benefiting other than national grid, it doesn't seem like anyone in the community is benefiting in any way, shape or form. Again, it also, when you kind of explain it, the way you broke it down, what, that was so eloquent in a way that it just sounds like a con. It's just like they built this, they got someone else to pay for this, built this facility to produce more of their product, to just sell it back to you now at a higher cost. And it's just, I don't know, I just, I don't have anything else to say to that other than it just seems ridiculous.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: I mean, it's exactly what it is and it does sound. But that's exactly what's happening. And I think that, I don't know. I mean, I can't speak for the city. I don't, you know, I think that there's a lot of interest in meeting, obviously, climate goals and targets. And, you know, this is, they feel like this is one way to do it.
You know, it would be very different to, again, it would be very different to use the existing, just focus on the sewage gas and finding, you know, better uses for that. But this fact that the city is also tied in and bringing all this extra organic material and then that's just becoming a fuel source, obviously, we need to transition off of frac gas. The problem with this, though, is that it also justifies future investments in gas infrastructure, generally the same thing with the rate case. And there's a process going on right now called the long term planning process the national grid's doing about looking at, you know, again, under the guidance, quote unquote, from the state, you know, looking at how much fossil fuel infrastructure they're going to need in the coming years and how it factors into facilities like the giant liquefied natural gas facility we have on Newtown Creek. And, you know, and so part of that is that they can, they can transition and take, you know, do less frac gas coming in from Pennsylvania through pipelines, et cetera. But we're still, now this, things like Rng justify more local gas improvements, hookups, etcetera. And so if we're actually serious about doing a transition from natural gas overall, this is part of that. Like, this is a pivot for national grid, but it's the same business model where they're just investing more in fossil fuel infrastructure. And the other thing about it, too, is it's nothing. It's not any cleaner to burn in your own home.
It's a better source. Sure, it's better than again, bringing in frat gas and having all the impacts, how that impacts people in Pennsylvania or whatever, but natural gas is still not a clean source for people to be cooking with and all that. We know the health impacts, our favorite.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Term so far throughout this series is greenwashing. It seems like falling under that umbrella. Well, I know that we're sort of getting near the end of our time together, so I want to pivot to this last question. What do you see as the best path forward for addressing some of those impacts and trying to bring some kind of benefit to the community?
[00:34:38] Speaker C: I think, again, sort of not just transparency but shifting the model between the city and national grid in a situation like this. Or if it's another, doesn't have to be a national grid. It could be another private, if they, the city wants to expand this in other places, another sort of private enterprise that is doing this primarily to create a toxic commodity to sell back to us. And so I think figuring out that relationship in a way that doesn't feel like the city and the communities are suffering or like, you know, doing something basically for the benefit of a company like national Grid, I think the other thing that's really important is like this for our organization, this was like, this wasn't in our 20 year plan. This wasn't when we started where we're going to be. It just popped up and we've become one of the whatever more outspoken voices on it because we see it every single day. I think that it's really important for other folks that are interested or invested in the impacts of things like fossil fuel infrastructure and the, and the state's transition to clean energy.
To learn more about this and to also speak up and get your electeds involved and hold the city and the state accountable for it. The public Service Commission that approved this rate case for national grid that has, basically allows them to do more of these projects.
That's a panel that's appointed by the governor of New York.
Opportunities for more people to speak up and organize around this. And again, it's like we're not, you know, our organization, you know, we're not like we're set up to focus on the transition of fossil fuels. We're second, you know, we're focused on like what's happening in our backyard and on the waterway. And so we want to be able to, like, work with other communities to highlight that. And, you know, we've had really great conversations with, with a lot of EJ groups and Nija and, you know, NRDC, whoever it is that, you know, see this playing out, there has to be a better pathway. And it definitely starts with transparency, but it also is like the accountability of the whole system and the way it's set up.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, just before we wrap up, you know, I want to give you a chance to share any, any plugs or any opportunities you think that you'd like folks to get engaged with.
[00:37:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate that. We do a lot of programming as an organization. We do a lot of, like, hands on educational, community events. We do volunteer events, and we have a ton of that stuff coming up in September and October. So definitely, like, check out our website, social media at Newtown Creek. But we also, one other thing that is important, one I mentioned, this ongoing national grid, long term plan that's a very, again, sort of technical thing, but anybody can join it. So you should definitely look, you know, and again, looking to groups like San energy who've been really involved or agree that's a very technical way to get involved in this local fossil fuel infrastructure battle that's ongoing. And the other main thing I'll mention is I talked about the creek being a federal Superfund site, the largest Superfund site in the city. We got our 2010, our designation. We've been waiting many years for EPA to give us a plan of what the cleanup is going to look like. So we finally, a couple days ago, got the first snapshot of that. So there's an early action plan to clean up a small part of the creek. And the EPA is going to have a meeting on September 18. The EPA is going to have a meeting about this proposed early action plan. And we're going to be doing a lot of work to get people to show up there because it's the first step in, again, remediating Newtown Creek, dealing with the toxic sludge that's been at the bottom of this waterway for, in some cases, like over 150 years. So go to our website, learn more.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: About it, and we'll make sure to include a link to our website in our show notes as well so folks can get there easily. So thank you for that. I appreciate it.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out the next episode in our wrong direction miniseries coming out on September 30. We'll be talking about another waste related energy topic waste incineration. And yes, it's as nasty as it sounds.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: If you liked this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts or topics you want us to cover, we encourage you to reach out to
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[00:38:59] Speaker B: Dot check out weact on Facebook at weact. Four EJ that's w e a c t f o r e J on Instagram, X and YouTube. Exact four EJ that's w e a c t number for EJ. And check out our website, weact.org, for more information about environmental justice.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Until next time.
