NYC NOW - September 28, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Governor Hochul has signed a new set of human trafficking bills into law during a visit to Flushing Queens. Meanwhile, David Jakubonis, the 44-year-old man who attacked former Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event last year, has agreed to a plea deal. Finally, starting next week New York City will begin expanding its curbside composting program to Brooklyn, joining Queens, with the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan to follow next year. Jessica Tisch, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation joins us to talk about what this means for Brooklyn and the rest of the city.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, September 28th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. New York State has a new set of laws to combat human trafficking. Governor Hokel signed the bills into law in flushing, considered a hotbed for trafficking. One new law requires transit facilities and rest stops to post information about victim services in restrooms. Sometimes a restroom is the only safe place someone can call from if they're trying to

escape an individual and the phone number is right there. Imagine that. That could be the difference between a life in bondage or freedom. Another law will extend the state's human trafficking task force for another four years. The 44-year-old man who attacked former Republican gubernator candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event last year has agreed to a plea deal that could lead to probation instead of prison, David Jacobonus approached Zeldon with a pointed key chain and wrestled him to the stage last July near Rochester. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty in federal court to misdemeanor assault of a federal agent. 62 and cloudy now, slim chance of afternoon showers, mostly cloudy in 64 with a breeze, and then we're in for a lot of rain tomorrow all the way

into Saturday with the potential for flooding. New York City is expanding its curbside composting program to Brooklyn. Starting next week, weekly pickup of food scraps and yardways will start in the borough. It's already in place in Queens. The Bronx and Staten Island will see it roll out in March, and curbside collection comes to Manhattan, October of next year. Here to tell us what this means for Brooklyn nights and what the remaining boroughs can expect is Jessica Tish. She's the commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation. Commissioner Tis, thanks for coming on this morning. Thanks for having me, Michael. You're welcome. What exactly will sanitation accept under this program? And where should people put them until the pickup

time? So this is the easiest curbside organics program the city has ever rolled out. New Yorkers can set out anything from their kitchen, anything from their yard. So any food waste, any paper napkins that have food on it or paper plates that have food on it, and anything from their yard. So So any weeds, any branches, kitchen, yard, you can put it in your compost bin, and you have to set it out each week on your recycling day. What happens with the food scraps after sanitation collects them? Where do they go? So we do two different things with them. Some of the food scraps we send to our compost facility, where we turn them into soil. and other food scraps we send to one of our anaerobic digesters, where we turn it into renewable energy, for example, to heat homes.

So either way, it's a win. And I just want to make clear we're making soil or renewable energy instead of having these food scraps sit in landfill for decades where they release methane, which is terrible for the environment. And so the whole thought behind rolling out this universal, curbside composting program is to divert as much material from landfill as possible. And the early results are great. We recently released in the mayor's management report for last year that we diverted 200 million

pounds of food scraps from landfill last year. And that's what the program working only in one borough. Okay. And how much energy? What will that energy power, for instance? It powers, for example, heating homes in New York City. And we have finally, New York City has connected our anaerobic digesters onto the power grid. And so we are able to send the energy that we produce directly out onto the grid.

Brooklyn has a lot of residential buildings. What do you tell supers and management companies who may be nervous about making sure their buildings are compliant when there are so many individual apartments? So this is no different than setting out the trash or setting out the recycling as supers are used to doing. It's another source that has to be set out. It goes out on the recycling day. So as the supers are bringing out the metal glass plastic and the paper and cardboard, they can also bring out the food scraps and the yard waste.

One important thing for Brooklynites to know is that this material has got to be placed in a bin. And any residents or building can order a bin for free from the city of New York. NYC.gov slash curbside composting. They should order between now and October 13th

for guaranteed free delivery. And if not, if they don't order the bin, you can use any bin you want as long as it has a label on it that says organics. And to be clear, separating out the food scraps is not mandatory yet, but it will be in the

near future, what would be the penalty of someone or an entire building is in violation of that? So there are no penalties contemplated for at least a year and a half. We want to make sure that all New Yorkers have an opportunity to develop the muscle memory of separating out food scraps. We know that this can be a really big change for certain households and buildings. And so we don't want a punitive system in place before New Yorkers have ample opportunity to learn how to do this. But it's very straightforward. It's easy to gather the food scraps in an apartment or in a house. But what do you advise people so that it doesn't attract roaches or rodents or anything like that?

So that's a great question. And the single, in my opinion, one of the best features of, this curbside composting program is that it is the greatest anti-rat program we could put out there. Because a third of the material that sits in the black bags, which sit all over New York City's streets every day, is human food waste. And unfortunately, human food is also rat food. So by getting that food waste out of the black bags and into containers, we really are bringing the fight to the Betz. Jessica Tisch is the commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation. Commissioner, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.