Mayor Eric Adams famously hates rats and is intent of ridding the city of them. Fine, but not at the expense of wrecking neighborhoods.
Alas, that’s what the Sanitation Department’s humongous “spaceship” bins will do if they’re rolled out en masse as planned these next few months.
As numerous locals in “pilot” neighborhoods tell The Post, the containers are blatant eyesores, grossly mar the streetscape and detract from the quality of life.
They’ll also take up valuable space for people and parking spots for cars.
And where trash now only goes out on sidewalks for a few hours on certain days, the “spaceships” look set to sit 24/7/365.
“They look out of place here,” says Marcus Delgado. “Like a robot sitting there with two arms sticking out.”
One Hamilton Heights woman fumes that the “hideous” contraptions clash with the neighborhood’s aesthetic; another warns, “It’s not the right fit.”
Sure, a Sanitation rep insists a 2023 pilot trial of the bins showed “fantastic results” — with rat sightings reported to 311 “down a staggering 60%.”
Maybe, but the whole city since then has been forced to use individual anti-rat bins and limit hours trash sits out; how can collective ones add much value? (And, no, transforming a block into what looks like an industrial park doesn’t count as added value.)
Plus, the spaceships also follow the new composting mandate, another anti-rat measure.
Sanitation brags that composting’s success is already leading it to open a new “processing” facility in Astoria; care to guess what that’s going to smell like?
All this reeks of Sanitation wonks imposing their long-held dreams under the pretext of forwarding the mayor’s war on rats — in a period when City Hall was distracted and level-headed Commissioner Jessica Tisch had been moved over to the NYPD.
We don’t think the Sanitation Department is trying to make New Yorkers’ lives worse, but it’s lost touch with reality.
Can the composting and beam the spaceships up, Scotty.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
