As part of the mayor's PlaNYC 2.0, the Bloomberg administration is once again looking at turning the massive Fresh Kills Park into a power plant. Once the city's largest landfill, Fresh Kills in in the process of becoming the city's largest park, and it could go green in another way, as well.

When the mayor unveiled the latest iteration of the sustainability plan on Earth Day, one of the marquee talking points was solar panels for the park, but now the administration is also considering installing a wind farm in the park, according to the Daily News. Borough President James Molinaro has been calling for a wind farm for the past three years, and now the city is prepared to "fast track" the plan, the News reports:

The answer, [DEP Commissioner Cass] Holloway said, will come from private energy companies that will soon be invited to submit proposals to generate solar or wind power on city land - at Fresh Kills and at other sites around the city.

"Our goal is to get a solicitation out to private developers and we're going to ask them," Holloway said. "We're going to let the market tell us - solar? wind? What is a carbon-neutral way to generate energy there that we think can work?"

To The Observer's pink eye, wind turbines might make more sense, from a recreational perspective, because they take up less space. But we're no rocket scientists, nor energery market analysts, so who knows.

Meanwhile, the Journal reports the city is looking to partner with private companies to install solar panels on city buildings. Take that, Berkeley.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

But what has really inflamed tenants and even some landlords is a first-ever fuel surcharge, which would levy a 1 percent hike on rents in all buildings using heating oil. Landlords of such buildings argue that this one-time tariff--which could of course become a regular thing if approved--is needed to offset the 23 percent spike in fuel prices. 

But the landlords may have only themselves to blame.  

Joseph Strasburg, president of the 25,000-landlord-strong Rent Stabilization Association, tell the Post that a fuel surcharge would cause confusion, and "errors are going to be made." And then there is the matter of messing with market forces!

Tenant leaders fumed over the proposal, saying the board was rewarding landlords who hadn't made the switch to cleaner and cheaper fuels. "They're just encouraging waste," said longtime tenant spokesman Michael McKee. 

Indeed, one of the marquee pieces of the Bloomberg administration's updated PlaNYC 2030 from this past Earth Day is an eventual ban on heating oil in the city's apartment buildings, which are responsible for up to 80 percent of the city's air pollution. 

To interfere with the vaunted market--which rent regs opponents and the mayor are fond of worshipping--by passing on the cost of oily boilers would seem to fly in the face of the city's sustainability initiatives.  Not to mention addressing perhaps the city's biggest sustainability problem--not air pollution or waste disposal but affordabile housing. 

Just think, two birds with one boiler.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The event, at Harlem Stage, gave away free reusable water bottles to the media, and distributed press releases on individual flash drives rather than on paper. A high-definition slideshow of natural and city scenes played as the mayor spoke about the updates to the plan to make New York "the most environmentally sustainable 21^st-century city."

"The earth was not given to you by your parents," said Bloomberg, recalling an old proverb. "It was loaned to you by your children."

The clean heat campaign is a public/private initiative that will phase out low-grade heating oils, which contribute to air pollution, in city buildings. The mayor also hopes to install solar panels over landfills, and potentially on some city rooftops as well. He also announced that the city will use $40 million in federal stimulus funds to help property owners make energy-efficient upgrades.

PlaNYC was launched in 2007 to increase the city's long-term sustainability, and specifically aims to have one million trees growing in the city by 2017 and reduce carbon emissions 30% by 2030. The mayor must update the plan every four years.

In the past fifty years, New York City has been a city transformed. Where this was once a manufacturing hub with a range of factories located throughout Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, today it is a thriving post-industrial city. The docks on the west side of Manhattan have been replaced by containerized port facilities on the Jersey side of the river. In West Harlem, a vertical auto factory that once manufactured Studebaker cars now houses the offices of Columbia University's human resources, finance and information technology staff. 

New York's land use plans have been adjusted to fit the city that we have become. Since we no longer do much manufacturing here, what kind of work do we do in New York City? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in September 2009 nearly 3,700,000 people in New York were employed. Only 200,000 of those jobs were in manufacturing and construction. We have about 725,000 people working in education and health care, about a half a million in trade, transportation and utilities, and 580,000 jobs in professional and business services. About 560,000 New Yorkers work in government, 430,000 have jobs in the finance industry and 311,000 work in leisure and hospitality businesses. New Yorkers think, teach, design and do things, but for the most part we no longer make things.  Although the Meatpacking District no longer packs much meat, you can eat plenty of meat in the District's fancy restaurants. The High Line doesn't move freight anymore, but it does provide breathtaking views of the post-industrial cityscape. The physical fabric of the city has adapted itself to a new economy, and one of the Bloomberg Administration's lasting accomplishments will be its effort to steer the city's development patterns with their new zoning rules.

What have these rules actually done? According the Mayor's press release:            

"City Planning's 100 re-zonings have created a blueprint for sustainable development. Together, they offer new housing and job opportunities near transit hubs while maintaining the diverse character of New York City's many residential neighborhoods by updating decades-old zoning to protect the scale of lower density and auto-dependent neighborhoods... Approximately 2.1 million people live in areas touched by re-zonings."

Developers sometimes complain about Commissioner Burden's "intrusive" involvement in their development projects, and a fair amount of public attention has been devoted to her decisions to reduce the size of some building projects. Still, I think the most important impact of her work has been to increase population density in areas convenient to mass transit and preserve low density neighborhoods in the outer boroughs.

New York is a city of often startlingly diverse neighborhoods. Manhattanites may be surprised to learn what outer-borough folks rarely forget: that most of the land in New York City sits beneath single family homes. While most New Yorkers live in apartments, parts of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx are as auto-dependent and low density as much of Long Island, Westchester and New Jersey. Burden's zoning decisions discourage increased population density in the parts of New York City that are dominated by single family homes while encouraging efforts to increase density in the city's many commercial hubs located near subway stops.

In addition, the new zoning rules recognize the importance of greening our neighborhoods to improve the city's attractiveness to new residents and businesses. As Commissioner Burden notes on her agency's website :

"As a result of new zoning regulations, new developments must plant street trees to green and beautify our city as Mayor Bloomberg envisioned in PlaNYC2030. This initiative will result in as many as 10,000 street trees a year. Along with our green zoning requirements for landscaping parking lots and planting front yards, it will reduce storm water runoff, tame the urban heat island effect, and create a more pedestrian-friendly environment."

Moreover, the Commission is now working on a zoning rule that would encourage the development of neighborhood grocery stores in low income sections of the city. There are parts of New York City where it is a lot easier to find a beer that "tastes great and is less filling" than a piece of fresh fruit for your daughter's lunch bag.

When you look closely at the accomplishments of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Burden, it is easier to explain the Mayor's 70% approval rating than his meager electoral victory. Zoning reform of the type we have had in New York City these past eight years typically has a profound and long lasting impact on the physical contours of the city. There is little doubt in my mind that the impact of this visionary zoning reform will be felt in New York for decades to come. It will make the city a better place to live-especially when the economy picks up and the million new New Yorkers predicted by the City's PLANYC 2030 start to settle in. The large scale of New York City makes this city the ultimate "big tent." This place has just about everything. Riverdale, Forest Hills and Mill Basin may not look like Harlem, East New York and Times Square, but they are all neighborhoods of New York City. Mike Bloomberg and Amanda Burden deserve our praise for increasing the odds that these neighborhoods will be preserved well into the 21st century.