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New Developments in the News

DECEMBER 28, 2009




Oil-burning buildings mar the city’s environmental report card and Hell’s Kitchen gets a welcome touch of green.

A report issued by the Environmental Defense Fund has maintained that 87 percent of the city’s heating oil soot pollution is the result of the toxic sludge created by burning No. 4 and 6 oil, which New York uses more than any other large city. According to the report, the worst air pollution of this type is on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, where a majority of the sludge-burning buildings are. Some of the city’s most iconic structures–the Flatiron Building, for example–burn No. 6 oil in their boilers.

The city is footing the bill to make the stretch of Dyer Avenue from 34th to 41st Street in Midtown Manhattan both safe and green. To create a much-needed open space, the 2005 Hudson Yards rezoning plan had envisioned bridges or platforms supporting green spaces and a ribbon of parks. Next month, the first phase of the new plan–tree planting–will be implemented, after which the 36th Street Greenstreet Island Park will get a new plaza.