Bloomberg has been talking about bringing windmills to the city for ages—let's put them on rooftops! Let's put them off of Rockaway!—and now his dream might finally be coming true. As part of Bloomie's PlaNYC 2.0 hizzoner wants to get a private company to put some sustainable energy sources on top of the former Fresh Kills dump on Staten Island. And though initially the city hyped the sinking soon-to-be park as being perfect for solar power, it now appears that wind turbines might win out.
Which would be nice for Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro as he has been pushing to put a wind farm on the former dump for ages now.
Last night at a town hall meeting city Environmental Protection Commissioner Cas Holloway made it sound like Molinaro's dream could soon be a reality: "You're going to see movement on that pretty fast," he said.
"Our teams were together just two days ago poring over a map of the landfill to identify what are the spaces [where] we think this is feasible to do," he continued. "Our goal is to get a solicitation out to private developers."
But before you environmentalists start tilting at windmills with joy, be warned: State regulations require that the cap over the dump, which was put over it when it was closed, be kept intact—a fact which could derail a plan for wind turbines as they often require deep footings (y'know, so they don't get knocked over by strong winds).
And as we wait for wind power in Richmond County, we're still holding out hope that that new batch of underwater turbines will come to the East River sooner rather than later.
