NYC NOW - October 4, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

A New Jersey watchdog agency is criticizing two state-owned veterans homes over their initial response to COVID-19. Plus, some parents and teachers are raising concerns about a new curriculum for students at New York City schools. And, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Jake Bolster about his reporting on the city’s new curbside composting program.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Junae Pierre. We begin in New Jersey, where a watchdog agency is criticizing two state-owned veterans' homes over their initial response to COVID-19. A state commission of investigation report says workers at its Menlo Park and Paramus facilities were overwhelmed in the early months of 2020, as staff levels dwindled. staff reported little to no protective equipment as the virus spread. Communication from state health officials and between homeworkers and families themselves was also found to be poor. The findings echo conclusions drawn by the Department of Justice last month.

Governor Phil Murphy's office says he's considering the report and all options are on the table. It's official. Beginning Wednesday, anyone can apply to start a legal cannabis business in New York State. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more. The general application window is now open to get a license for a dispensary, grow site, wholesale operation, or other type of marijuana business. Anyone interested has two months to file their application. Before now, licensing in the new legal industry was limited. Dispensary licenses were reserved for people with past marijuana convictions and their family members.

And only New Yorkers who previously grew hemp could get a cultivator license. Many New Yorkers who received dispensary licenses under the state's social equity program have been unable to open their shops because of an ongoing lawsuit. They will now have to reapply along with everyone else. For more information, visit cannabis.n.com. As New York City seeks to overhaul its literacy instruction, some parents and teachers are raising concerns about a new curriculum. WNYC's Jessica Gould has the details. All elementary schools have to adopt one of three approved curricula, which officials say are rooted in the science of how children learn to read and will boost literacy.

But some parents say the most widely selected curriculum, called HMH into reading, is dry and relies on excerpts instead of books. Danielle Tarantolo is a parent at Brooklyn School of Inquiry. Our kids hate this curriculum. They're bored. The publisher counters that the curriculum includes a range of texts designed to spur discussion. City officials say teachers can add materials to the new curriculum as they see fit. Stay close. There's more after the break. Brown bins are blanketing Brooklyn, which means curbside compost collection has come to another borough. The city's plan will divert tons of compostable food waste from landfills, where it would otherwise emit potent greenhouse gases.

But while advocates have cheered the move to make food waste collection accessible and available, there are some competing ideas about how the city should handle it once it's gathered. WMYC's Michael Hill talked with Jake Ballster, a freelance reporter who recently wrote all about it for Inside Climate News. Here's their conversation. The city plans for every household in New York City to separate their food scraps by 2025. Would you walk us through where those food scraps will go and what happens to them? Once that plan comes to fruition, everyone's food scraps, the thinking goes,

won't be going to a landfill, which is the big idea behind the program. Because when they get in the landfill, they just release tons of methane gas that's really harmful to the environment. And the way that they're going to do this is by taking some of that material from households and turning it into soil, the traditional outcome of a composting program. And probably what most people think when they hear compost, food to soil. And that'll happen at a DSNY facility, I think on Staten Island. That's the city department of sanitation.

That's right, yes. But only a portion of the material that the DSNY collects is going to go there. The majority is actually heading into some other industrial process called anaerobic digestion. And what happens there is the DSNY, WM, a waste management company, and the DEP that runs the city's wastewater treatment plants all work together to make sure that, this food scrap eventually turns into a form of natural gas that the city can then use to power, you know, nearby homes or businesses in the grid. So, Jake, this place you're talking about is a facility where compost is processed into this bile slurry that you reported about. Tell us what you saw there and what does the city plan to do with it. I took a tour of a facility in New Jersey

that does much the same thing that a facility in Brooklyn will do with all this food, which is It grinds it up into this sort of pulpy material. Organic liquid gets added to that mixture. That all gets pumped into these big containers. And those containers load up on trucks. And those trucks bring that slurry is what it's called to these wastewater treatment plants. But the thinking being, this is basically a sort of gnarly rotten food smoothie that these bacteria, these microbes at wastewater treatment plants. can feed off of. And it helps them boost their production. They naturally produce methane gas. And so that's how that works.

So, Jake, the environmentalist you spoke to, what would they prefer to see instead? Some people I talk to would like to see a more robust composting infrastructure. So I spoke with a woman who suggested that the city look for more sites where they could produce compost, where they could produce large amounts of soil. I could then go back to, you know, sidewalk beds that house trees or into our parks. And that was the main alternate that most people brought up. But, you know, if you look at the EPA's food hierarchy, composting, and anaerobic digestion, sit actually towards the bottom. And I spoke with a few people who mentioned that we need to be feeding people first with excess food. And then if we have any rotten food, actually, we should be giving it to animals instead of throwing it away.

That's reporter Jake Bolster talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So with that in mind, we're talking with people from our region who've been affected by the disease for their insights and inspiration. My name is Anna Krill. I am a two-time breast cancer survivor and a lifelong resident of Queens County. 29 years ago, I founded Sharing and Caring. which is an organization that addresses cancer issues, especially breast cancer.

I was diagnosed in 1993, a young woman with two lovely little girls, and that should have never happened. There was no family history. I fell below all the guidelines of mammography screening. In fact, I even had to pay for my own mammography screening, because in sure, refused to cover it. If we go back to the 90s, at that time, no one spoke about breast cancer. There was a stigma associated to breast cancer.

It was not a topic you discussed. Queens County is a very multi-ethnic community. There are still many communities, and we're seeing more and more influx of new immigrants that still feel that way. And the first fact that we are so open now in discussing breast cancer and urging people to go for mammography screening, doing breast self-examination, I think when they're hearing all of this, it reduces

the barriers that they face. So have a network of other individuals who have survived the experience you're just about to begin to embark on is that ray of hope you need. It provides a you with the strength and encouragement to know, I can get through this. And they also share their experience in a positive way, in a way that helps to guide you, be able to speak about your fears and concern, and they can share their experience so that you are not afraid. And you know what questions to ask your physician when you need to. is a two-time breast cancer survivor and founder of the organization, Sharing and Caring, based in Astoria.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.