Burgio Tackles Tough Sustainability Challenges in New York City

Kathryn Burgio, deputy director of Sustainability Programs at New York City Housing Authority, has her work cut out for her. The agency, North America’s largest public housing authority, has an ambitious and full sustainability agenda. As Burgio and the team she leads work toward the agenda’s goals, they tackle multiple challenges, all requiring creative solutions.

In this Q&A the Waste360 40 Under 40 Award recipient discusses problem solving for waste management in aging communities not designed to accommodate today’s volumes and types of materials. She visits onsite stormwater management techniques to compensate for municipal sewer systems strained to handle rapidly increasing precipitation. And she shares insight on engaging residents and working with partners to manage tremendous loads of organic waste in the country’s most densely populated city.

Waste360: What are main goals of the NYCHA Sustainability Agenda?

Burgio: NYCHA’s Sustainability Agenda has five main goals:

1)Reduce greenhouse gas emissions;

2)cultivate healthy and resilient communities;

3)empower residents through activation and workforce development;

4)ensure efficient operations and resource management; and

5)leverage all funding and financing toward healthier and decarbonized buildings.

A lot of the waste-focused work falls under efficient operations and resource management. Anecdotally, our staff spend more than 60 percent of their time moving trash throughout our properties in addition to their many other daily responsibilities. Our work focuses on infrastructural solutions to minimize that time, maximize efficiency, make it safer for them, and also make it so that we are diverting as much material from the landfill as possible.

Workforce development for our residents is also a critical focus for my team. We want to enable pathways for NYCHA residents to be trained in maintaining the new assets we are installing, which will prepare them to potentially be hired into this evolving career landscape.

Waste360: What are unique housing issues in New York City and how do you address them?

Burgio: NYCHA’s aging housing stock is a unique challenge. The majority of our buildings are 60 to 80 years old and were not designed to accommodate the types and volumes of refuse we are experiencing today. Trash used to be burned inside incinerators in some of our buildings. It can be difficult to retrofit our buildings to accommodate the materials being generated today, so we have to leverage other assets and capital renovation opportunities at our disposal when problem-solving.

Waste360: I understand stormwater management is a major focus of the Authority. What are unique stormwater challenges in New York City, and how do you approach them?

Burgio: In my new role as Deputy Director, I get to work on mitigating the impacts of stormwater at NYCHA firsthand with our Resilience team. Due to climate change, both the frequency and intensity of rain events is increasing every year.

The sewer systems in many geographic regions of NYC are not designed to handle more than 1.75 inches of rain an hour. So, NYCHA is working to have on-site interventions that will detain and/or retain this stormwater on-site, rather than simply rely on our sewer systems. That could look like underground detention or retention tanks. Detention tanks hold the water and then slowly siphon it back into the sewer system at a much slower rate than it would naturally. Retention tanks percolate the water back into the ground. In terms of soil-engineering, retention practices can't be used across the portfolio, and detention can be much more costly, so balancing the two strategies is key.

NYCHA is looking to other cities and to subject matter experts to help us determine the best solutions that leverage NYCHA’s abundance of available open space to alleviate strain on the city’s storm and sewer systems. I think what's really interesting about this is that it uses our grounds in a way that is more holistic. So, we’re thinking about how we can use our grounds to provide amenities for residents while simultaneously using the space to mitigate stormwater.

We are integrating other core functions in our planning, like the movement of trash and recyclables. For example, we have containers to store trash and recycling on the campuses. They can be in areas that could flood and could be prime locations for a cloudburst intervention, so, we’re factoring this into our designs.

Waste360: How do you manage organic waste? 

Burgio: NYCHA is interested in pursuing on-site management and processing of organics. Compared to other New York City landlords, we have a lot of open green space to manage. NYCHA has over 1,000 acres of tree canopy, so in addition to food waste, we manage a huge volume of yard waste, including leaves.

Being able to process our organics on-site is important for diverting organics from landfills, and working with community-based organizations is really how we see this being successful and providing the most benefit to people.

We work with community-based organizations who visit our developments and work with residents and staff to process our organics. Our primary partners in organics management are Green City Force and Compost Power. They have eight compost sites at NYCHA developments, and they have been really successful in their community outreach efforts and getting residents engaged at each site. It has been really amazing to be able to work with them, learn about organics management from them, and I look forward to working with them and other community-based organizations to meet our goals of diverting material from landfill and providing organics diversion options for residents.

Waste360: What were you doing before you came to NYCHA, and what led you to your current work?

Burgio: Before starting at NYCHA, I worked at the NYC Department of Design and Construction, supporting project teams in delivering huge capital improvement projects across the city. I learned so much about capital construction and city processes there, but I always wanted to work on projects and policies related to climate change, preferably while addressing environmental justice disparities in the city.

I had taken a civil engineering class in college about solid waste management that was literally about the engineering of landfills. I was so excited about that class and so interested in the engineering behind this type of infrastructure that most people don’t think about but takes up so much physical space. Since then, I’ve been deeply interested in waste management.

I got involved in composting in a community garden, did cleanups in my neighborhood, attended Brooklyn solid waste advisory board meetings, and was staying involved in the industry as much as I could. So, after applying to NYCHA’s Sustainability team, and receiving a call asking me whether I wanted to work on solar or in waste management, the answer seemed like a no-brainer.

I wound up starting at NYCHA right before we published the 2019 Waste Management Plan. The first thing I did was review the document and provide some final input before it was published. Since then, I have been growing a team and working on implementing the waste management plan, of which many goals are carried through into our 2021 Sustainability Agenda.