New York, among nation’s hardest hit markets, delays commercial waste zone RFP due to pandemic

A momentous policy change will have to wait as companies ranging in size from Waste Connections to a local three truck operator report substantial volume declines due to the novel coronavirus.

Jogger Crosses Empty New York City Street During COVID19 Quarantine – Photo by Anthony Quintano

Cole Rosengren@ColeRosengren reports for Waste Dive

This spring, New York’s commercial waste sector was planning to submit bids for a transformative new franchise zone system. Instead, haulers are now dealing with an even more existential event – the new coronavirus.​

As the epicenter for COVID-19, New York has also been one of the most heavily affected commercial waste markets in the country. The city’s current roster of commercial haulers have no role in the residential sector and a number of them don’t do business outside the five boroughs. Hundreds of workers have been laid off. Dozens or more have become ill with the virus. Companies of all sizes are meanwhile reporting double-digit volume declines, with many unsure how much business will come back.

Recognizing this upheaval, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) has twice delayed the timing of a late spring request for proposals to bid on the new zones. Commissioner Kathryn Garcia announced a one-month delay on March 27, but the pandemic’s effects have become more clear in the weeks since.

Like this? Click to receive free EP Blog updates

The National Waste & Recycling Association’s local chapter (representing companies such as Interstate Waste Services and Waste Connections) subsequently advocated for a one-year delay, saying there is “no constituent that will be well served by a rush to design and implement amidst such uncertainty.”

Last Friday, DSNY told stakeholders the earliest an RFP could be released is this fall. Many people described this as a foregone conclusion beforehand and reacted accordingly.

“DSNY’s decision to delay the issuance of the RFP until the Fall is not surprising, given current public health and economic conditions in New York City and their adverse impact on both the carters and their customers,” said Solid Waste Association of North America David Biderman in a statement, adding the group remains in “close contact” with stakeholders.

The city noted this reality in its own explanation.

“An overwhelming majority of businesses remain closed or operating at a limited capacity, and commercial waste carters continue to endure the suspension of significant shares of their customer accounts and revenue,” wrote Garcia​. “While there is hope that the City and State may begin to lift some restrictions in the coming weeks and months, the economic toll of this crisis will continue for quite some time.”

The new normal

New York commercial waste haulers are well-acquainted with operating amid the obstacle course of city nightlife. Lately, streets have been eerily quiet and routes are going much quicker. Outside of activity around locations such as healthcare facilities, grocery stores, bodegas and some foodservice establishments, there is minimal waste being generated.

“For us, it’s had a material impact on our business, there’s no doubt about that,” Jason Craft, Eastern region vice president for Waste Connections, told Waste Dive. Craft, who called DSNY’s new decision “incredibly prudent​,” reported “Manhattan has been significantly impacted” and volumes are down 30% citywide.

Read the full story

If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.

New York, among nation’s hardest hit markets, delays commercial waste zone RFP due to pandemic Read More »

34 days of pandemic: Inside Trump’s desperate attempts to reopen America

President Trump walks away from the podium to play a video during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the White House on April 13.
President Trump walks away from the podium during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the White House on April 13. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robert Costa and Lena H. Sun 
Washington Post – May 2, 2020

The epidemiological models under review in the White House Situation Room in late March were bracing. In a best-case scenario, they showed the novel coronavirus was likely to kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. President Trump was apprehensive about so much carnage on his watch, yet also impatient to reopen the economy — and he wanted data to justify doing so.

So the White House considered its own analysis. A small team led by Kevin Hassett — a former chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers with no background in infectious diseases — quietly built an econometric model to guide response operations.

Many White House aides interpreted the analysis as predicting that the daily death count would peak in mid-April before dropping off substantially, and that there would be far fewer fatalities than initially foreseen, according to six people briefed on it.

Although Hassett denied that he ever projected the number of dead, other senior administration officials said his presentations characterized the count as lower than commonly forecast — and that it was embraced inside the West Wing by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and other powerful aides helping to oversee the government’s pandemic response. It affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether Trump wins a second term.

For Trump — whose decision-making has been guided largely by his reelection prospects — the analysis, coupled with Hassett’s grim predictions of economic calamity, provided justification to pivot to where he preferred to be: cheering an economic revival rather than managing a catastrophic health crisis.

Trump directed his coronavirus task force to issue guidelines for reopening businesses, encouraged “LIBERATE” protests to apply pressure on governors and proclaimed that “the cure can’t be worse than the problem itself” — even as polls showed that Americans were far more concerned about their personal safety.

Don’t miss stories like this Click for free updates

By the end of April — with more Americans dying in the month than in all of the Vietnam War — it became clear that the Hassett model was too good to be true. “A catastrophic miss,” as a former senior administration official briefed on the data described it. The president’s course would not be changed, however. Trump and Kushner began to declare a great victory against the virus, while urging America to start reopening businesses and schools.

“It’s going to go. It’s going to leave. It’s going to be gone. It’s going to be eradicated,” the president said Wednesday, hours after his son-in-law claimed the administration’s response had been “a great success story.”

The span of 34 days between March 29, when Trump agreed to extend strict social-distancing guidelines, and this past week, when he celebrated the reopening of some states as a harbinger of economic revival, tells a story of desperation and dysfunction.AD

So determined was Trump to extinguish the deadly virus that he repeatedly embraced fantasy cure-alls and tuned out both the reality that the first wave has yet to significantly recede and the possibility of a potentially worse second wave in the fall.13 times Trump said the coronavirus would go awaySince the start of the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump has repeatedly said that the virus will disappear. (Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The president sought to obscure major problems by trying to recast them as triumphs. He repeatedly boasted, for instance, that the United States has conducted more tests than any other country, even though the total of 6.75 million is a fraction of the 2 million to 3 million tests per day that many experts say is needed to safely reopen.

And though Trump was fixated on reopening the economy, he and his administration fell far short of making that a reality. The factors that health and business leaders say are critical to a speedy and effective reopening — widespread testing, contact tracing and coordinated efforts between Washington and the states — remain lacking.

“We wasted two months denying it. We’re now wasting another two months by just dithering around,” said Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor and health secretary in the Obama administration. “The administration seems to have washed their hands of it and said [to governors], we’re out of it. You’re on your own. Figure it out.”

“That’s really the story of all this,” agreed one outside adviser to the Trump administration. “The states are just doing everything on their own.”

Try our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics, free for a full month!

This story documenting Trump’s month-long struggle to reopen America is based on interviews with 82 administration officials, outside advisers and experts with detailed knowledge of the White House’s handling of the pandemic. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount internal discussions or share candid assessments without risk of retribution.

Some of Trump’s closest advisers rebutted on the record the suggestion that the pandemic response has been anything but successful.

“This is a historically new challenge, and we’ve really risen to the occasion,” Kushner said in an interview. “When history looks back on this, they’ll say, man, the federal government acted really quickly and creatively, they threw a lot at the problem and saved a lot of lives.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany agreed. “President Trump’s swift and unprecedented action has saved American lives,” she said, pointing out that governors from both parties have praised some of the administration’s work.

Read the full story

EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free EP Blog updates and please tell your friends about us.

34 days of pandemic: Inside Trump’s desperate attempts to reopen America Read More »

N.J. coronavirus deaths increase to 7,871 with 126,744 total cases. Officials announce another 3K positive tests.

By Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The coronavirus death toll in New Jersey increased Sunday to 7,871 with 126,744 total cases as the outbreak continues to spread, though officials say weeks of near-lockdown restrictions have slowed the pandemic in the state.

The latest numbers, which include about 3,000 new cases and more than 120 new deaths, were released Sunday, the second day of parks and golf courses reopening in New Jersey. As has been his practice on Sundays, Gov. Phil Murphy did not host an in-person briefing and the update was posted on the state Department of Health website.

More than 246,000 residents have been tested for the coronavirus in New Jersey and about 40% have been confirmed as positive cases. State health officials did not have complete information about hospitalizations to report Sunday as two hospitals did not provide the information. The number has been touted as the best real-time indication of the status of the outbreak and has been declining since a peak in mid-April.

The county-by-county breakdown of cases and deaths include:

  • Bergen County: 16,185 with 1,210 deaths
  • Hudson County: 15,769 with 845 deaths
  • Essex County: 14,521 with 1,282 deaths
  • Passaic County: 13,364 with 632 deaths
  • Union County: 13,225 with 738 deaths
  • Middlesex County: 12,597 with 639 deaths
  • Ocean County: 6,871 with 440 deaths
  • Monmouth County: 6,290 with 382 deaths
  • Morris County: 5,517 with 449 deaths
  • Mercer County: 4,504 with 255 deaths
  • Camden County: 3,973 with 163 deaths
  • Somerset County: 3,703 with 295 deaths
  • Burlington County: 3,043 with 149 deaths
  • Gloucester County: 1,384 with 51 deaths
  • Atlantic County: 1,075 with 49 deaths
  • Sussex County: 969 with 115 deaths
  • Warren County: 957 with 86 deaths
  • Cumberland County: 881 with 17 deaths
  • Hunterdon County: 661 with 37 deaths
  • Cape May County: 344 with 24 deaths
  • Salem County: 270 with 13 deaths

Another 676 cases are under investigation to determine where the person resides.

Don’t miss stories like this Click for EP Blog updates

N.J. coronavirus deaths increase to 7,871 with 126,744 total cases. Officials announce another 3K positive tests. Read More »

In pandemic’s early days, U.S. saw an estimated 37,100 more deaths than would normally be expected during that time period, analysis shows

By Emma Brown, Andrew Ba Tran and Reis Thebault 
Washington Post, May 2 at 4:15 PM

The United States recorded an estimated 37,100 excess deaths as the novel coronavirus spread across the country in March and the first two weeks of April, nearly 13,500 more than are now attributed to covid-19 for that same period, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The Yale team’s analysis suggests that the number of excess deaths accelerated as the pandemic took hold. There were 16,600 estimated excess deaths just in the week of April 5 to April 11, compared with 20,500 over the prior five weeks.

Though the team’s estimate of the impact early in the outbreak already paints a picture of unusually high mortality, the number is certain to grow as more deaths are reported to the federal government on a rolling basis.

“I think people need to be aware that the data they’re seeing on deaths is very incomplete,” said Dan Weinberger, a Yale professor of epidemiology who led the analysis for The Post.

Those excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people with unrelated maladies who avoided hospitals for fear of being exposed or who couldn’t get the care they needed from overwhelmed health systems, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The number is affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as traffic fatalities and homicides.

But excess deaths are a starting point for scientists to assess the overall impact of the pandemic.

Don’t miss stories like this Click for EP Blog updates

The nation surpassed 64,000 coronavirus deaths on Friday, according to The Post’s compilation of state health department data. Weinberger said his team’s estimates of excess deaths indicate that the pandemic’s true toll to date is likely substantially higher.

“It’s hard to say how much higher, but our best guess might be it’s in the range of one and a half times higher,” he said.

The analysis is based on death certificate data that states compile and send to the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It often takes weeks for a death to be counted in these federal numbers, so tallies for the most recent weeks are provisional and inevitably missing many deaths. As time passes and more information becomes available, NCHS backfills data for those weeks — and the death totals grow.

Read the full story

EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing,
Click to receive free updates and please tell your friends about us.

In pandemic’s early days, U.S. saw an estimated 37,100 more deaths than would normally be expected during that time period, analysis shows Read More »

N.J. coronavirus death toll jumps to 7,742 with 123,717 total cases. Officials report 205 new deaths, 2,912 new positive tests.

Coronavirus in New Jersey: Update on May 2, 2020


By Brent Johnson and Len Melisurgo for NJ.com

As the state took a big — but cautious — step forward by allowing parks and golf courses to reopen, officials Saturday reported another 2,912 new positive tests for the coronavirus and 205 additional deaths in New Jersey.

That brings the statewide total to at least 123,717 cases, including at least 7,742 deaths attributed to COVID-19, since the outbreak began March 4.

“The new case numbers are starting to rise again,” Gov. Phil Murphy said Saturday afternoon during his daily press briefing in Trenton.

Murphy also said this has been “as tough a week as it relates to fatalities as we have had” in New Jersey, home to the second-most coronavirus cases and deaths among American states, after New York.

During each of the past two days, New Jersey reported more COVID-19 deaths than New York, but on Saturday, the Garden State’s new one-day fatality number was lower than its neighboring state.

Murphy said the uptick in numbers may be because more people are being tested in the state. He and other officials also said the rate of infection continues to slow and the number of hospitalizations has continuously dropped over the last few weeks.

The new numbers were announced as New Jersey enters its seventh week of Murphy’s orders for residents to stay home and for non-essential businesses to close to help fight the virus’ spread. Unemployment and business losses have been widespread in that time.

But Murphy enacted his first major change Saturday morning, bringing a return to some sense of normalcy, as state parks, county parks and golf courses were allowed to reopen at dawn — with some restrictions — for the first time since early April.

Park visitors are still required to practice social distancing to protect against the virus, and the governor said police would be patrolling parks to make sure they comply. If things go poorly, Murphy said, he might close parks and golf courses again. But if the reopening goes well, that could lead to more restrictions being lifted.

Murphy said the reports from parks have been “so far so good.”

“We are smart, we have all followed best practices, and together we are flattening the curves, and we are making progress,” he said. But if we hear reports of people not taking either their health or the health, maybe even more importantly, of other parkgoers more seriously, we will not hesitate — I don’t say this with any joy — to close them again.”

“I want everyone to enjoy this extraordinary weekend,” Murphy added. “But enjoy it responsibly. And if we do this — and I know we can — we’ll be able to move forward.”

EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free updates and please tell your friends about us.

N.J. coronavirus death toll jumps to 7,742 with 123,717 total cases. Officials report 205 new deaths, 2,912 new positive tests. Read More »

Parks opening in NJ today despite the virus. NY cops won’t tolerate social distancing violations

CBS 2 reports

Story below by:

By ANNA SANDERS and ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, NY DAILY NEWS

Wear a mask and stay six feet away from other people during the nice weather this weekend — or find yourself with a summons or even in handcuffs, Mayor de Blasio warned Friday.

Forecast highs in the 70s on Saturday and Sunday present a “danger” if cooped-up New York City residents venture outside without masks, crowd public spaces and ignore social distancing measures meant to stop coronavirus, said the mayor.

Many people in McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on a sunny day in March ignored coronavirus social distancing rules.
Many people in McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on a sunny day in March ignored coronavirus social distancing rules.(Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

“The nice weather is very much a threat to us,” de Blasio said on WNYC Friday.

“There’s nothing wrong with going out and getting some exercise and getting back home,” he added. “Go out for a little bit, but don’t go out for too much. Don’t gather, don’t try and do the things we would normally do on a beautiful spring day.”

A thousand cops will spread out in city parks to enforce what de Blasio called a “no tolerance for gatherings” policy.

“We’re going straight to summons,” de Blasio said. He added: “If someone resists the summons, we’re going to arrest.”

Cops on bicycles and horses will be among the officers enforcing the rules, said NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan.

Officers are under orders not to tolerate organized sports, parties, or other gatherings.

“The days of warnings are over,” Monahan said.

EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free EP Blog updates and please tell your friends about us.

Parks opening in NJ today despite the virus. NY cops won’t tolerate social distancing violations Read More »