Campaign Against Fresh Direct
In 2012, under the Bloomberg and Cuomo administrations, the City and State offered to grant FreshDirect a $130 million taxpayer subsidy to relocate its diesel trucking operation to the South Bronx, on public land owned by the State of New York - a 94 acre waterfront lot known as Harlem River Yards. South Bronx Unite formed as a diverse coalition of neighborhood residents, community organizations, religious groups, and many others to challenge the subsidy and plan.
We argued that the relocation would further increase air pollution in a neighborhood that already has the highest rate of asthma in the country. We also realized that the jobs that were promised would pay low wages and not prioritize local residents. And, as South Bronx Unite co-founder Mychal Johnson put it, “Of course we want jobs, but we should not have to choose between having a job and having clean air. If you can’t breathe, you can’t work.”
In 2013, we attempted to stop the plan by filing a lawsuit against the City and State because of their failure to conduct an adequate environmental review of the site, choosing instead to use a 21 year old environmental impact statement (from a study conducted in 1993). We asserted that the relocation would increase traffic, and, with it, asthma rates, and that the project was ineligible for the excessive subsidies promised by the City and State. In addition to the lawsuit, we conducted outreach in our community to increase awareness about the issue, we organized demonstrations and marches, engaged in direct actions, attracted media attention, wrote op-eds, offered testimonies, and reached out to our local legislators.
Unfortunately, our lawsuit and appeal were dismissed and FreshDirect was allowed to move forward with their plan, opening its facility in 2018, subsidized by our taxpayer dollars. Since then, we have seen traffic and air quality worsen, with 1,000 Fresh Direct diesel truck trips running through our neighborhood every day. A study conducted by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health between June 2017 and May 2020 revealed an increase in truck and vehicle traffic between 10 and 40 percent, especially during overnight hours.
Mark Hilpert, Ph.D., an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia and a senior author of the study, noted, "Even small increases in air pollution are a concern to this community which is already overburdened by high levels of air pollution and related health risks. In most New York City neighborhoods, air pollution levels have been in decline, and air pollution sources have been reduced or removed, not added. Mott Haven, which had higher than average amounts of pollutants from traffic and other sources even before the opening of this warehouse, is an exception."