By The TimeslEdger
Congratulations to all parties involved in the decision to shut down the Poletti Power Plant in Astoria. Although the Power Authority will not close the plant for another eight years, the people of Astoria and Long Island City now have a firm and, we hope, irreversible commitment that this plant, one of the worst sources of pollution in the city, will be closed forever.
The controversy pitted the Power Authority, which feared a power shortage like the one that nearly brought California to its knees, against environmentalists who at times seemed indifferent to the power needs of New York City.
The Poletti plant spewed 263,376 pounds of pollutants into the air in the year 2000, exceeding the combined total of power plant and industrial emissions from the city’s four other boroughs. It will be replaced by a “state-of-the-art 500-megawatt plant that will be environmentally friendly.”
The target date for the shutdown is Feb. 1, 2008. However, the plant may continue operating until a drop-dead date of Jan. 1, 2010 if the city’s power supply is deemed too low to handle Poletti’s closure.
Critics of Gov. Pataki question the timing of the announcement just weeks before the gubernatorial election. The governor said the decision was only reached once the state was convinced that closing the plant would not compromise the reliability of the power supply. OK, nobody believes that. But there is nothing terribly wrong with a politician taking credit for a job well done.
Amazingly, it appears that Pataki has won the support, at least on this issue, of the environmental activists who were once his most vocal enemies. The real winners here are the residents of western Queens who can now look forward to the day when the pollution spewing forth from this plant will be gone forever.
you can't get
there from here?
We’re guessing that it will come as no surprise to New York City commuters that the signs in the subway system leave a great deal to be desired. A survey by the New York City Transit Riders Council claims hundreds of the signs that tell straphangers where to go in the city’s hundreds of stations are inadequate, incomplete, misleading or missing.
How bad is it? According to the survey, in Queens 88 percent of the signs intended to help riders find their way underground are either missing or at best inadequate. The problem is especially acute in the underground passageways linking one train line to another.
According to the survey, 26 percent of the colored globes that are supposed to tell people walking down the street if an entrance is open are missing. What commuter hasn’t experienced the frustration of walking down a flight of stairs only to find that the gate is closed?
In another example, the 75th Avenue station has a sign showing that E and F trains stop there, but it fails to mention that the E is available only nights and weekends. You can’t get there from here if you are counting on taking the E train, not during the day.
Fortunately, this is not a problem that will cost millions to fix. We hope the Transit Authority will take the findings of this survey seriously.
