NYC NOW - April 23, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

According to a WNYC analysis, the most common ticket issued to New York City’s street vendors is for operating without a license, despite pledges from City Hall to avoid targeting vendors for that offense. Plus, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with reporter Nathan Kensinger about a new plan, by the EPA, to address decades old contamination in northern Brooklyn. And finally, WNYC's Michelle Bocanegra reports on how the Israel-Hamas war is playing out in New York's 16th Congressional district.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WMYC, I'm Jenae Pierre. Most street vending citations issued by New York City sanitation officers are for operating without a proper license or permit. That's despite pledges from City Hall to avoid targeting vendors for that offense. That's based on a WMYC analysis of over 1,400 street vending citations issued in the last year. The number of food vending licenses and permits in New York City has been capped at just a couple thousand. Meanwhile, tens of thousands are on wait lists for the coveted permissions.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has a new plan to address decades-old contamination in northern Brooklyn. It's known as the Meeker Avenue Plume, cancerous toxins being released into homes and businesses across 45 city blocks, thanks to an underground chemical spill. For more, WMYC's Sean Carlson talked with reporter Nathan Kinsinger. Nathan, residents of neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Williamsburg are all too familiar with the environmental concerns in this area. But can you just take a minute to remind our listeners what created the Meeker Avenue plume? Yes, definitely. So according to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the plume was created by a reservoir of chemicals underground that were released by local businesses. the businesses were things like dry cleaners and metalworking shops and foundries. And the chemicals and the plumes are really the same ones that were used in those kinds of businesses,

which have seeped underground into the soil and into the groundwater. And they're releasing vapors from underground into homes and businesses that are coming up through basements and into the lower levels of structures in the footprint. So folks have just been living with this for like 20 years? Well, we've known about the contaminants for almost 20 years now. They were first discovered in 2005 as part of a cleanup of an oil spill in the neighborhood. And the state has been working to map out the pollution since 2007. But really, people potentially could have been living above it for even longer because the contaminants were potentially there for years, you know, for years even before they were discovered.

Okay, so we mentioned there was a new EPA plan here to address it. What is in the plan? The EPA has released an initial plan for the site. The site was declared a federal super fund back in 2022, and they're starting a full-scale investigation that's going to take a really long time, many years, to track down the full extent of the contamination there. But in the short term, they have a plan to really address the immediate health risks that the plume might be posing.

And as part of that, they're going to investigate as many properties as they can and install either a mitigation system to blow the vapors out of the property, and into the air or seal up any kind of cracks that they might find in basements or in floors. They believe that there might be more than a thousand homes or businesses that could be impacted by these vapors. And they are expecting that maybe a hundred of those homes might need some form of mitigation. Now, you just covered a public meeting, right? Nate, what came up there?

Yes. So last week, the EPA held a public meeting to share the details of the plan for the first time with the community. And people were invited to comment on the plan and really address any concerns that they had about the plan. A lot of the comments that people had were about the pollution there and also about how the EPA is planning to test all of the buildings that are potentially impacted. The biggest struggle they've had so far is gaining access to buildings. And the Superfund site covers a lot of territory. So it's going to take a long time to investigate the full extent of the problem. That's reporter Nathan Kinsinger, talking with WMYC's

Sean Carlson. You can read more of Nathan's reporting on this issue at our news website, Gothamist. The primary battle for New York's 16th congressional district is heating up. After the break, we'll discuss how the Israel Hamas War is impacting the race. Stick around. One of the top issues echoing throughout this election year is the Israel Hamas War. Let's zoom in on the Democratic primary battle for New York's 16th Congressional District. The race is between current representative Jamal Bowman and Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Bowman has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Latimer's campaign is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or APEC. WMYC's Michelle Bocanegra reports on how the war in the Middle East is playing out in a district straddling southern Westchester and the northern Bronx. It's Valentine's Day, and I'm in the car with New Rochelle resident David Ripkin. He's out trying to convert and register Republicans and independence as Democrats. Oh, even colder up there. I'm with him because February 14th is also the last day for voters to change their party

affiliation to vote in New York's June 25th primary. So, David, where are we going? We are going to pick up a few registration forms that have been filled out by residents just a couple of miles from here. Rivkin's volunteering with Westchester Unites. The group is trying to boost Jewish turnout in the district's Democratic congressional primary. The neighborhood is teeming with suburban idol and houses are capped with fresh snow. There's no updated data on how many Jewish voters live in the district, but past reports have shown the population to be substantial.

Many of the houses have yard signs saying, I stand with Israel. And Rivkin says a lot of the district's Jewish residents don't like what they're hearing from Congressman Jamal Bowman. There's times where I've been told not to use the word blockade, not to use the word cleansing. I sat down with Bowman last month at a cafe in Yonkers. Not to use the word apartheid. Well, if 18 human rights organizations have referred to Israel's an apartheid state, that's not Jamal Bowman saying that.

And are we not going to talk about this? Bowman is a former middle school principal. He was elected to Congress in 2020 when he was. He pulled off a primary upset against 32-year incumbent Elliott Engle and became the first black person to represent the district in Washington. He's since gone on to become a national progressive figure and conservative foil. The war in Gaza divides Democratic voters, and in an election year, most elected officials are trying to walk a thin line when they talk about the issue. Bowman isn't one of them. Rifkin says Jewish voters have noticed.

Even before October 70, he sought to interject race into the... Israel-Palestinian situation. And that had a profound impact and really put Jewish communities in this district and elsewhere at risk. Rifkin was an anti-Trump Republican. But he so disliked Bowman, he registered as a Democrat to vote against him in the 2022 primary. This year, Rifkin says he has a clear choice, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He's been everywhere in our community since, you know, probably for the last decade or so.

He's at school events. He stops by a synagogue. The pro-Israel Democrat announced his campaign after a trip to Israel late last year. Unfortunately, instead of working for us, our congressman is making news for all the wrong reasons. He's criticized Bowman's use of the term genocide to describe the death toll in Gaza.

A genocide is when you create gas chambers and you force people into them to kill them. He says his messaging is resonating with more middle-of-the-road voters. The folks who are saying, and they are the minority of the Democratic Party. There may be the majority of people who shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and the majority of the people that shut down Grand Central Station. But the majority of Democrats in Washington,

along with the majority of the Republicans, have said basically the same thing I'm saying. But Latimer's being targeted by the political left. The New York Working Families Party is aggressively backing Bowman. Co-director Jasmine Gripper has no qualms about laying into his challenger. I think, you know, the APEC money is horrible and is just outsides in this district. Latimer has roughly doubled Bowman's fundraising

in the past two quarters, pulling in more than $2 million in the first quarter of this year, compared to $1.3 million for Bowman. Bowman's predecessor, Elliot Engel, says his former rival's comments are alarming the Jewish community. He knew what he was doing with his anti-Ismorphins. They were bordering on anti-Semitism, and we're very sensitive about that these days.

And he has to understand. If you're going to be a bomb thrower, then it's going to come back to hit you. Bowman says the idea that he's an anti-Semite is absurd. I'm not anti-Israel. I'm anti-collective punishment. I'm anti-war. I'm anti-occupation. I'm anti-suffering.

Jamal Bowman's supporters are crammed into the back of a fissionhip restaurant in Yonkers for his campaign launch. It's January and dark and drizzly outside. But inside, people are crammed. are fired up. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks to the crowd. She poses a question that gets to the heart of Bowman's

2024 campaign. So we prove the first point that you can get in the door. The question now is can you survive? Can you stay? Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez have been allies since his 2020 election.

They share similar progressive wishlists and have become symbols of the parties left for return. They've each earned enemies for that. But at Bowman's Congressional Black History Month event, Yonker's African American Heritage Committee president, Robert Winston, says Bowman is targeted for having principles. So to be honest and truthful in this day and age, you're going to seem to be a bit radical, a bit out of touch, because you're just too dead on honest. And they said that about Malcolm, they said that about Martin. Black Westchester editor-in-chief A. J. Woodson says one-third of the district's residents who were black

will lose something without Bowman in Congress. He can relate to the dangers of being a black man and being stopped by and having a police confrontation. Sometimes you don't survive. We haven't had that kind of representation in this district ever. Back at Bowman's Black History Month event, rows of chairs are empty.

A table of free food outside the door isn't doing much to fill out the auditorium. Marion Archer says she's undecided in the primary because she hasn't done her research yet. She likes both candidates, but her eyes light up when she's asked about Bowman. Do I love him? Yes, I do. Because he's just, like, so down to earth and he's real. He's honest. He's really honest.

Bowman's critics say the writing is on the wall. Latimer is running laps around the incumbent in fundraising. But Bowman is catching up. His supporters are hoping this won't be another tale in American politics of an insurgent who flew too close to the sun. That's WNYC's Michelle Bocanegra. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day.

I'm Jenei Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.