New York City air quality to be improved by several anti-pollution initiatives

New York has better air quality

New York City is planning to build new solar power plants and eliminate heating oil pollutants in a strong bid to improve air quality, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday.

The environmental plan of New York calls for the phase-out of oils from boilers beginning this year until 2030. Doing so will decrease the amount of suspended particulate matter which is partly blamed for 6,000 asthma cases and 3,000 deaths in New York City every year.

Launched in 2007, PlaNYC originally had a rule that would have charged New York City motorists a fee for driving during peak hours in Manhattan. The proposal was shot down three years ago by lawmakers.

Commissioner Cas Holloway of the Department of Environmental Protection said getting rid of heavily-polluting heating oils will meet the same level of air quality as that envisioned with the botched traffic fee program.

The notorious traffic in New York City remains a tough problem to be tackled according to Mayor Bloomberg.

"The problems of not enough mass transit and too much congestion on our roads and too many pollutants spewed out by combustion engines still persist, and we still have to do something about it," Bloomberg said in a statement.

New York City officials said that two-thirds of the objectives of the city's environmental plan have been realized. Some of them include having 74 percent of residents live 10 minutes from a park, converting 30 percent of yellow cabs to green cars and rezoning efforts to make public transportation more accessible to residents of New York City.

Posted by Sophia Andrews on Monday April 25 2011, 6:52 AM EST. Ref: AP. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Travel. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0