Smoke from boilers burning No. 6 oil rises above Washington Heights (Photo by Matthew Gallaway)

Wood-burning fireplaces have long been obsolete in New York City, but as winter hits in Washington Heights, many chimneys still discharge dark smoke, dotting the skyline with smudgy clouds.

“About once every two hours or so, a great deal of black smoke comes out of a chimney on the roof of a neighboring building,” a resident wrote on Washington Heights and Inwood Online Community Forum. “Does anyone know if this is normal or if it’s something I should report?”

“Is this building near 186th and Bennett? If so, I’ve seen that too,” another member replied. “Huge puff of black smoke.”

Later, a third resident complained about a neighboring building: “They extended their chimney which now pumps black, noxious smoke directly into my apt.”

The smoke in question was likely emitted by boilers burning No. 6 heating oil, used in many Washington Heights and Inwood buildings. New legislation banning its use will make this sight a thing of the past by 2015.

No. 6 heating oil, also known as residual oil, is a byproduct of the distillation of crude oil, and contains high amounts of dirt and sediment.

“I still regularly see black smoke pouring out of apartment buildings in the 160s where I live, and have no doubt that it contributes significantly to poor air quality in the neighborhood,” Washington Heights resident Matthew Gallaway said via email.

Such complaints date back years. In May 2009, Gallaway posted to his blog a video titled “A Note To WaHi Landlords: Fix Your &$! Boilers.” It showed black smoke pouring from a chimney across from his apartment.

In April, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced New York City Clean Heat, a plan to eliminate heavy heating oils in New York City buildings. It’s a response to the 2009 New York City Community Air Survey stating that heating oil emissions account for much of the city’s air pollution. By July 2012, building owners will no longer be able secure a permit to use No. 6 heating oil and must convert their heating systems to use lighter fuels such as No. 4 oil, No. 2 oil or natural gas. By 2015, No. 6 oil will be prohibited.

Among city neighborhoods, Washington Heights has the sixth highest number of buildings using heavy heating oil. About 110 buildings burn No. 6  oil, according to a 2009 report by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Urban Green Council.  These buildings can be identified on an Environmental Defense Fund map, where buildings using No. 6 oil are marked with red dots. Several Washington Heights streets, like Bennett Avenue, Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, are lined with dots.

The use of heavy heating oil is blamed for much of the air pollution in Inwood and Washington Heights. Eliminating its use is the “single highest impact strategy we can have” to reduce pollution, Steve Caputo of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Sustainability and Planning said at a September town hall meeting. He referred to No. 6 oil as “really dirty stuff.”

During the winter of 2008 and 2009, the New York City Community Air Survey discovered high levels of pollutants associated with heavy heating oil in Washington Heights and Inwood. The survey detected fine particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, at concentrations 33 percent greater than the citywide average and sulfur dioxide levels 75 percent greater than the citywide average.

The survey will continue monitoring air quality until June 2014, said Professor Holger Eisl of Queens College. Eisl expects to see improvement in air quality after reducing heavy oil use. “How dramatic it will be, I don’t know,” Eisl said, but “air will be cleaner, no question about it.”

Poor air quality has had health consequences in northern Manhattan.  Asthma has been a longstanding concern, although asthma hospitalization rates have decreased in recent years. One in 20 adults in Inwood and Washington Heights has asthma, the New York City Community Health Survey reported in 2002.

Members of the New York City Clean Heat Task Force admit that phasing out No. 6 oil will not be easy for building owners. Owners will have to bear internal conversion costs, and according to this fall’s New York Energy Consumers Council newsletter, they will likely have to replace much of their heating equipment, which could cost more than $1 million in some buildings

New York City Clean Heat is encouraging building owners to convert to natural gas, which is demonstrably cleaner, cheaper and more efficient. In a case study by Cooper Square Realty, a Queens condominium reported annual savings of more than $98,000 after converting to natural gas.

Con Edison, the natural gas provider for Manhattan, is attempting to provide natural gas lines to as many interested building owners as possible. “We’re working with different stakeholders such as the New York City Mayor’s Office, the Real Estate Board of New York and the Environmental Defense Fund,” said Joe McGowan of ConEdison.

However, ConEdison cannot guarantee that all building owners will have access to natural gas by 2015. “What drives the installation of gas is the demand and commitments of customers,” McGowan said. “We don’t do speculative building.” McGowan said that ConEdison is urging building owners to first assess whether they can afford the conversion costs of switching to natural gas. “Gas may have significant up-front costs,” he said. “If it doesn’t make sense to go to gas, that’s OK.”

McGowan explained that ConEdison was encouraging building owners to join forces. If many neighborhood buildings want access to natural gas lines, the company is more likely to consider their application, because it will minimize construction costs and disruptions.

If Con Edison is unable to install natural gas lines for a building before its No. 6 oil permit expires, the building owner must substitute No. 2 or No. 4 heating oil. This transition could cost the owners of 550 Fort Washington Ave. in Washington Heights up to $150,000 up front, said James Maistre of Veritas Property Management. Maistre said the building, an affordable housing co-op, will likely not have natural gas lines by 2015 and is exploring transitioning to No. 2 oil. He says that the board will hire an engineer to evaluate the cheapest way to proceed. “It is a burden,” he said, adding, “It’s been on the wish list to upgrade.”

“It’s very costly,” said another Washington Heights building owner, who declined to be named. “Economically, it’s not convenient for me.”

The Energy Policy Research Foundation estimates No. 4 oil costs 50 cents more per gallon than No. 6 oil, resulting in a 35 percent increase in heating costs. The report goes on to say, “The transition to No. 4 oil will most dramatically affect lower-income residents whose rents could increase by over 10 percent,” though economic conditions and city regulations may prevent some rent hikes.

“There is only so much you can cut back on your heat,” said Ben Montalbano, an analyst at the Energy Policy Research Foundation who contributed to the report.  “How much that will decrease from quality of life, I don’t know.”

Isabelle Silverman, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund who was instrumental in passing the new legislation, readily acknowledges that the cost of converting to cleaner fuels is significant. But building owners could also save money, she says, explaining that boilers using No. 6 oil require extensive maintenance. “There is a lot of opportunity for efficiency measures,” she added, including thermostatic radiator valves, programmable thermostats and systems that prevent overheating and fuel waste. “If you combine the switch to No. 2 oil with efficiency measures, you will see real savings,” Silverman said.

As New York City buildings begin the transition to cleaner fuels, Washington Heights residents speculate about the day when smoke from No. 6 oil no longer rises above their rooftops. “In the future,”one member of Washington Heights and Inwood Online wrote, ”after all the boilers have been converted to burn Number 2 oil, or natural gas, I wonder if the air in Manhattan will become so clean that mosquitoes will become a big problem.”

City forester Coleman Frick shows a mutilated tree on 137th Street. (Photo by Cecile Dehesdin)

There’s a canine tree killer on the loose in *Harlem.

Forester Coleman Frick is walking along 137th Street in his dark green City Parks poncho on a rainy Wednesday morning, pointing out several mutilated Japanese pagoda and pin oak trees. The city foresters have been planting trees on 137th and Lenox over the past two years. But when they came back to survey the area this summer, they noticed damaged trunks. Asking around, they quickly learned that a resident’s dog was attacking the trees, biting off and sometimes clawing off the bark.

“We could plant so much more trees in this street,” Frick said, touching the harsh scrapes on a tree trunk. “But we won’t if people have dogs attacking them.” A few blocks away, foresters are filling up East Harlem with trees.

The Million Trees Program has targeted El Barrio as one of its “public health neighborhoods.” Launched by the Parks Department and the non-profit New York Restoration Project, the program aims to plant a million trees in the city, 220,000 of which will be street trees, over the next ten years.

The program gave East Harlem priority because of its high asthma rate among children. East Harlem has consistently had the highest rate of asthma hospitalization for children under 14 among all Manhattan neighborhoods, according to data the City Health Department collected from 1994 to 2004.

The other factor was the neighborhood’s low “tree stocking level,” explained senior forester Michael Vacek. The area could accommodate a lot more trees, a characteristic of uptown compared to downtown Manhattan.

Trees absorb a lot of particles, Vacek said, and in doing so “they are sort of cleaning the air so that we are not breathing the pollution.” His team surveyed East Harlem throughout the summer to mark spots for potential trees by painting big white dots on the sidewalks.

The planting process can take weeks. Utilities mark gas and electricity lines to avoid damaging them. Then the contractor cuts the sidewalk, then uses a jackhammer to excavate the pit and put new soil back into it. Finally, the team comes back to actually plant the trees. “There are so many steps in the process that we run into residents several times,” Frick said. He finds it hard, when residents excitedly call to ask when a tree will be planted, to answer, “in the next couple of months…”

Vacek and Frick recently attended a 32nd Precinct community meeting and a meeting held by Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement to educate residents on the benefits of street trees, and to warn them about the dog tree killer. They hoped that the community members would alert the dog owner if they stumbled upon him or her. “Pastors told us they would take that message to their congregation as well,” Vacek said.

While the 137th Street example is extreme, not everyone is delighted by street greenery. Some people are concerned that tree pits will encourage dogs to relieve themselves on their streets, said Frick, or that trees will block sunlight in their apartments. He responds that it’s illegal not to pick up dog waste, and that “this is your community, your neighborhood, so hopefully if you see someone do that, you’ll let them know.” As for other concerns, he argues with them that “it’s for the greater community good,” and that as the street is actually city property, locals can’t stop him from planting.

That doesn’t mean people won’t try. Across Marcus Garvey Park, which separates Harlem from East Harlem, some residents refused to have a tree planted in front of their building. “They protested by getting into the pits,” remembered Vacek, “so we had to stop.” The foresters talked to the protesters, he said, but in the end had to come back another day to plant.

But having spent a lot of time walking the streets of East Harlem, Vacek said, “people are generally excited. They come walk around with me and I tell them what kind of tree we’ll be planting where.” A lot of thought goes into the types of trees, the foresters explain. For example, Frick plans honey locusts and pin oaks in the harshest areas, usually on avenues, because these are some of their toughest species. As Frick watched contractors plant trees on a recent morning, a man walked up and asked why, since there was a park across the street. “I explained to him we were not worried about having too many trees!”

Later in the day another resident who had heard the exchange told Frick he was happy; he hadn’t seen trees planted in his neighborhood since the ‘70s. “I feel like some people see it as ‘We care about their neighborhood’,” Frick said.

*The story originally misstated the location of the mutilated trees. They are in Harlem, not East Harlem.