Bus Depot Asbestos Problem Needs Immediate Fix, Pols Tell MTA

EAST NEW YORK, NY — Local politicians and union officials on Wednesday blasted the MTA for what they said was the authority's turning a blind eye to asbestos contamination at a bus facility in East New York.

“One-thousand men and women who turn out at this depot should not have to experience the dangers that are associated with asbestos,” Borough President Eric Adams, a mayoral candidate, said at a press conference outside the bus depot. “We want all of the asbestos removed from the property and remobed from transit facilities. It should be done in an expeditious fashion. We want to have air-quality tests around this depot.

"These members should not have to endure an environment that is unhealthy.”

Wednesday morning's press conference comes after the Daily News reported on Monday that for decades potentially cancer-causing asbestos-laced cloth had lined the vents at the MTA's four-story East New York bus depot, where roughly 1,000 people work. On Wednesday, the News reported that vents with the asbestos-laced cloth had on Tuesday been shut off.

But an MTA spokesperson denied they had done any such thing.

"NYCT Transit did not shut down a single vent, nor do we have plans to do so," said the spokesperson, Tim Minton.

For the Transport Worker Union (TWU) and local elected officials, the workers at the facility are now grappling with a situation that they should never been in the first place , due to the MTA's failure to mitigate the problem over the decades.

“We shouldn’t be here for asbestos. We shouldn’t be here talking about the health of our workers," said Council Member Rafael Espinal, who is running for borough president. "That should be a given.”

“We stand here to support the workers, calling on the MTA to do right and clean up the asbestos,” he added.

"This problem should have been fixed many, many years ago," said Earl Phillips, Transport Workers Union secretary-treasurer. “We are not in a fight with the transit authority, but we are going to ask them questions and pressure them to fix this situation here."

J.P. Patafio, leader of the surface transit division at TWU, claimed the MTA has misplaced priorities.

“If there was ‘fraud,’ they’d have 100 people here investigating everyone," he said. "Well, this is workers’ health and safety. They’ve got to get off their ass, and they’ve got to fix it.”