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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Katie Walsh, Transportation Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 7, on Air Quality and Last Mile Deliveries
3:23:13
·
3 min
Katie Walsh, Transportation Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 7, testified in support of Intro 1130 (Indirect Source Rule) and Intro 107 (air quality monitoring expansion). She shared her personal experience with childhood asthma in Sunset Park and highlighted the community's long-standing efforts to address issues related to last mile trucking and air quality.
- Emphasized the need for more comprehensive air quality monitoring, as current NICAS monitors are insufficient for local communities
- Discussed the formation of a special subcommittee in 2021 to address last mile facilities' impact on health and safety
- Mentioned her involvement in the air quality monitoring advisory committee organized by the Brooklyn borough president, which will recommend local air quality monitoring for New York State legislation
Katie Walsh
3:23:13
Thanks.
3:23:14
My name is Katie Walsh, and I am the transportation chair of community board seven, which represents Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace.
3:23:21
Born and raised in Sunset Park, and, also have childhood asthma because of growing up in our community and the air quality issues related to it.
3:23:30
I've worked tirelessly alongside neighbors in Sunset Park and neighboring Red Hook with representatives from local schools and faith groups and business and senior centers and community based organizations specifically to catalyze, convene, and work to change the status quo on the issues related to last mile trucking and the air quality, transportation, and traffic problems that we have specifically related to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and Third Avenue under the BQE, which is inherently treated like an urban highway by, drivers.
3:24:01
Many of us started organizing on this issue on last mile trucking in 2018, hosting community meetings with local elected officials because we know firsthand that these facilities unfairly burden our neighborhood and others, throughout New York City with traffic congestion, dangerous streets, poor air quality, and really increasing already elevated asthma rates.
3:24:23
In 2021, the community board organized a whole special subcommittee specifically to address these issues of last mile facilities and the impact on health and safety.
3:24:32
In the last four years, we've held dozens of meetings with several hundred people and heard over and over about impacts.
3:24:38
We've shared information and attempting to really catalyze, action and legislation that we could see at the city and the state level.
3:24:46
Because we know, especially that, you know, we're feeling these impacts and the local air quality, monitors, like what was cited earlier, these the NICAS eighty five sites, don't don't cut it in terms of the scale and magnitude of the issue.
3:25:01
So the first, point to to make is that we are cons we've been consistent in calling for a solution, to the problems from last mile trucking, and so we, support legislation.
3:25:14
I'd like to represent to support the bill eleven thirty on the indirect source rule because it is a clear step in addressing the burden, placed on communities like ours.
3:25:25
Can I keep going?
Alexa Avilés
3:25:27
Yes.
3:25:27
You can.
Katie Walsh
3:25:28
I just wanna also register, support, personally support for Intro Bill one zero seven, which designates the high traffic thoroughfares along the roadways.
3:25:37
And we need this legislation again because the current NICAS, these 85 monitors, do not respond to the needs of local communities like ours or prepare us for the scale and magnitude of the issues that, we are facing and will continue to face, from extreme weather events, the air quality, that results from things like wildfires, which New York has has already felt.
3:25:59
I I know that, you know, cited specifically the New York State, DC work that was happening on air quality.
3:26:05
That was a moment in time that ACLEMA was was working on this.
3:26:08
I serve on the air quality monitoring advisory committee that the Brooklyn borough president has been organizing to think about outreach and and mitigation actions, and we are being tasked with making recommendations to this New York State air quality, legislation.
3:26:24
And, specifically, one of those is going to be on needing local air quality.
3:26:29
So I just wanna come back that one of the key recommendations that is gonna arise from the New York State work, on air quality is coming back to this issue of the city being able to have local air quality and monitoring.
3:26:41
So we absolutely need bill one zero seven.
3:26:44
The whole point of this additional monitoring is because the world around us is changing, and we really need to be able to see these changes and, use the data to predict future regulation that we need.
3:26:55
Thank you.
Alexa Avilés
3:26:56
Thank you so much, Katie, for all your work and advocacy.