If you smell something, call 311, they urge
By Luis M. Mostacero
luismartinnyc@gmail.com
While they wait for the city Department of Environmental Protection to complete its Hunts Point Peninsula Odor Management Plan, community leaders are urging residents to call the city’s 311 complaint line to report odors.
But, they say, 311 is doing a poor job of handling complaints.
“The people who do call 311 have a hard time communicating their issue,” said Maria Torres, the president of The Point and a member of the Hunts Point Monitoring Committee (HPMC).
“We are trying to educate the people to call 311 and be very clear on what you tell them– what you are smelling and where it is coming from,” said Torres.She said 311 operators fail to transfer calls to the proper agency, and information is either lost or is not recorded.
Although Community Board 2 and local advocates say they hear complaints all the time, city records show few.
From July to January, city agencies recorded only 40 complaints about odors in Hunts Point. Of those, 17 were attributed to the wastewater treatment plant; 14 to idling vehicles; seven to sewer gas during sewer maintenance; and one to “other air problems.”According to the lasts Odor Complaint Call Report the DEP distributed to HPMC, in October 2007, there were just five odor complaints. Three identified the smells as from the NYOFCo fertilizer plant.
In November the city received only one complaint, also about the fertilizer plant. In December, 311 registered one call described as a “Strong Sewage Complaint.”No complaints were registered January 2008.
The DEP said its inspectors who responded to the complaints about NYOFCo detected no odors from the plant.
Mothers on the Move plans a campaign to promote calling 311 with the slogan, “If you smell something, say something.”
The organization plans to distribute instructions about key words that people should use when calling, and urges residents to be specific in describing the location, and to ask the operator for a complaint number.