This year, outdoor air pollution will kill an estimated 3,000 New Yorkers — six percent of all premature deaths in the city — cause 2,000 hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular distress, and send 6,000 children and adults with asthma to the emergency room. Although everyone is hurt by air pollution, children, the elderly, and low-income, Black, and Hispanic New Yorkers suffer disproportionately.
Walk a couple of blocks in any borough and the major source of deadly air particles is clear: motor vehicle engines, including exhaust from idling trucks and buses.
The Citizens Air Complaint Program, which was first established in 1972, but only actively promoted by the City starting in 2019, is one very effective tool to hold illegal commercial idling to account. However, Intro 941, which is scheduled to be heard on Wednesday by the Committee on Environmental Protection, Resiliency, and Waterfronts, threatens to upend it by discouraging and outright banning participation. This dangerous bill would make it easier to pollute New York City’s air.
Until recently, everyday New Yorkers had little recourse to address unnecessary commercial vehicle exhaust. Responses to 311 calls often take weeks or months — my complaint in 2017 about a tow truck that idled outside my window every evening for weeks provided no remedy — by which time the polluter is likely long gone. City agencies like NYPD, the Parks Department, and the Department of Environmental Protection rarely cite vehicles for illegally polluting our air on their own; in 2023, excluding citizen enforcement, city agencies issued a total of 358 idling violations — fewer than one violation per day in a city with about 6,300 miles of streets.
The CACP provides members of the public the opportunity to reduce illegal commercial idling. It is the only program like it in the world, and it is a resounding success: In 2023, citizens submitted over 86,000 commercial truck and bus idling complaints – an average of 235 per day.
Still, understanding the current idling rules and how to submit complaints is neither intuitive nor straightforward. DEP rejected 10 of the first 11 complaints that I submitted. The agency’s instructions can be obtuse, subject to arbitrary change without notice, and difficult to navigate. DEP did provide me some initial feedback, but, thankfully, I found other citizen reporters who took me under their wings to share their hard-won knowledge.
To give you a sense of the system’s opaqueness and the hurdles citizens already face submitting complaints, consider, for example:
- Shockingly, DEP does not check its own records for prior idling offenses, which determine the appropriate penalties for recidivist companies. Instead, civilian complainants must look up that information themselves. DEP offers no guidance on how the public can do this research.
- In a city where one in four residents is not English proficient, the complaint submission portal is English only.
- For idling offenses in school zones, citizens must submit information about school start and dismissal times, even though this information is rarely posted online for safety reasons.
- For complaints against vehicles with refrigeration units, citizens must submit documentation that proves the vehicle engine does not need to idle.
- DEP-approved has no tutorial videos showing how to “correctly” capture an idling vehicle or demonstrating recording angles and required engine noise levels.
- DEP will not pursue complaints against commercial vehicles that lack a “commercial” license plate.
In my neighborhood, where several citizens report illegally idling vehicles, I have seen a marked difference in commercial idling in the last two years. Major bus companies, an e-commerce behemoth, several international shipping fleets and numerous others have stopped or significantly curtailed their idling because of our collective efforts. As much as I would like to think that these big companies share my desire for cleaner air and healthier neighborhoods, I have to be realistic — it was citizen reports and the resulting fines that did the trick.
Intro 941 jeopardizes these hard-won clean air improvements in several ways.
First, citizen involvement in the program would plummet if Intro 941 passes. The bill would require citizens to submit complaints within five days, yet extend the time DEP is permitted to serve a violation to 90 days. This double standard ignores the time citizens, who have other real-world commitments like work and childcare, need to prepare claims for submission, including familiarizing themselves with the overcomplicated DEP rules and looking up material that DEP can readily access on its own.
The bill threatens the free speech rights of members of the public who complain about air pollution or DEP or the companies responsible for the idling pollution. Intro 941 lets DEP ban any citizen it doesn’t like from filing complaints — as long as the agency claims the individual did not act in a “dignified, orderly, and decorous manner” or failed to “demonstrate familiarity with [DEP’s] rules.” Public questioning or critique of DEP — such as this op-ed — would face scrutiny based on DEP’s interpretation of this overly broad, downright Orwellian language. This is not an exaggeration: As Curbed recently documented, DEP has prosecuted members of the public for things as simple as a single mistake in a single submission .
Currently, DEP must bring their allegations against citizens before a neutral hearing officer from the city’s Office of Administrative and Trial Hearings, a separate agency from DEP. These judges regularly toss out DEP’s vindictive charges against individuals it doesn’t like. Under Intro 941, the DEP Commissioner alone would be judge, jury and executioner.
Second, Intro 941 would permit buses to idle unnecessarily adjacent to a school for 16 to 18 minutes. This undermines existing law passed by the Council to limit school bus idling to no more than one minute on a school block. It also ignores common sense: children are especially vulnerable to air pollution — one out of every nine New York City children has asthma, the highest rate in the nation; DEP’s proposal would subject those kids to even more fumes
Finally, Intro 941 provides a loophole to polluters that is at odds with the DEP’s mandate to protect our air. Specifically, the proposed bill retroactively cuts in half any imposed fines if the polluter later installs “anti-idling technology” in the vehicle. The bill gives DEP the power to “promulgate rules relating to the requirements” of what is deemed acceptable anti-idling technology and the documentation required, if any, to certify its installation — effectively ceding the City Council’s legislative power to define the scope of idling violations.
This proposal is problematic because “anti-idling technology” already is installed in every vehicle — it’s called the ignition switch. The more advanced technology DEP wants rolled out is easily overridden. I have witnessed a well-known armored truck company do this on multiple occasions. Companies can easily falsify paperwork to claim the tech has been installed. DEP claims to be overwhelmed by the recent spike in citizen idling complaints — imagine the massive administrative burden reviewing anti-idling paperwork would create for the city. I support providing additional resources to the DEP and its citizen idling enforcement program if it is good for public and environmental health, but not if it benefits polluters.
All New Yorkers deserve to live, work, and play in a healthy environment. The Citizen Air Complaint Program is a key mechanism for citizens to reduce unnecessary commercial idling and protect public health. But it is under attack. Don’t hold your breath – email Speaker Adams and your City Council member to demand they oppose Intro 941.
