UES residents protest proposed waste transfer station with surgical masks

Some Upper East Side residents — angry about the waste transfer station the city wants to build at 91st Street — plan to hand out surgical masks in protest.

Pledge 2 Protect, a coalition of nonprofits and local businesses which aims to unite locals against the project, hopes the masks will highlight the pollution, vermin and other health hazards the group feels the station will produce. The coalition will set up on Lexington Avenue at the 86th and 96th street subway stations tonight at 5 p.m., DNAinfo reported.

“If you can close Central Park to traffic, why would you build a waste transfer station next to a recreation field?” resident Andrea Jeromos told the website.

Last month, recreation complex Asphalt Green announced it would spend $89,000 to fight the plans in an advertising campaign.

Julie Menin, a candidate for Manhattan Borough President wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News last month defending the controversial station as “the right thing to do,” as previously reported. In the opinion piece, Menin said that “the facility will be visually barricaded from the surrounding residential community by Asphalt Green.” [DNAinfo] – Mark Maurer