Congressional hopeful Steve Harrison blasted a city plan for proposing to put a garbage-transfer station in Gravesend — smack in the middle of the congressional district he wants to represent.
The verbal assault on the transfer station, near the corner of 25th Avenue and Shore Parkway, was also a rebuke of his Democratic primary opponent, Councilman Mike McMahon, who has said that the legislation to overhaul the city’s garbage policy is the capstone of his career in the Council.
“I’m not opposed to the policy, I’m opposed to the location,” Harrison told reporters on Wednesday afternoon in Bensonhurst Park, a few blocks from the site.
Before the waterfront location can be used as a temporary way station for plastic, glass and other solid waste bound for out-of-state landfills, the area around it will need to be dredged. Opponents say that the dredging will stir up old pollutants on the floor of Gravesend Bay.
Harrison did not suggest an alternate venue for the mandated Brooklyn transfer station.
“The purpose here is not to find an alternate site,” he said. Instead, he was focused on keeping the junkyard out of the area, which is also close to a private marina, the Adventurers children’s amusement park and Drier Offerman Park.
The Bloomberg Administration, with the help of McMahon, who represents Staten Island’s North Shore, was forced to create a new solid-waste plan in 2003 when the last city landfill, Fresh Kills in Staten Island, closed.
The solution, brokered this year, required building one waterfront transfer station in each borough. The result is that each borough now has to handle its own trash, and truck traffic will be reduced, supporters say.
A McMahon spokesman said that Harrison’s broadside against the councilman was misdirected because McMahon does not support the Gravesend Bay site for the transfer station.
“Mike continues to work with local leaders … to explore alternative locations,” said McMahon spokesman Anthony Hogrebe. “Steve Harrison continues his relentless mud slinging because he has no record of his own to run on, nothing of substance to add to the discussion, and no vision for addressing the needs of Staten Island or Brooklyn.”
