Archive

June 2023: With our partner East New York Farms!, OER distributed 204 bags of topsoil to 27 people at the season’s first soil giveaway on Saturday, May 6, 2023.

May 2023: 113 Hamilton Avenue has won the 2023 Big Apple Brownfield Award for Innovative Remediation for its improvement to public health and the environment in the Columbia Street Waterfront District in Brooklyn.

Learn more.

September 2022: Terminal Logistics Center has won the 2022 Big Apple Brownfield Award as the best new development in New York City for Economic Development.

Adjacent to JFK airport, the new facility is the first multistory air-cargo distribution hub on the East Coast.

Learn more.

August 2022: Northeastern Towers Annex has won the 2022 Big Apple Brownfield Award as the best new development in New York City for Community Outreach.

The new building adds 159 apartments for formerly homeless and very low-income seniors to Jamaica, Queens.

Learn more.

May 2022: On May 14, 2022, OER hosted a soil giveaway at its soil stockpile with East New York Farms! and Big Reuse. More than 60 backyard gardeners picked up over 500 bags of topsoil and 300 bags of compost.

April 2022: OER celebrates Earth Day 2022 by offering free delivery of clean soil and topsoil to community and school gardens in Brooklyn and Queens.

November 2021: Combining clean soil and NYC Department of Sanitation compost, OER produced high-quality topsoil for NYC Parks. Learn More.

Photos of Topsoil Making

Topsoil stored at Bridge Park.
Soil From NYC Clean Soil Bank at Bridge Park, before screening.
Screened NYC Clean Soil Bank soil, ready for mixing with DSNY compost.
Finished topsoil, ready to plant street trees in the Bronx.

Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4
Photo Credits: Thomas Leung - NYC DOT (Photo 1) & Savanna Marino - GEI (Photos 2, 3, 4)

October 2021: Nonprofit developer West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing completes OER’s cleanup program and builds new affordable senior housing on NYCHA land in the Bronx. Learn more.

August 2021: Community composting group, BK Rot, expands its Brooklyn composting service onto a vacant City lot where they will make and distribute compost and topsoil, provide composting education, and create a community green space for Bushwick residents. Learn more.

June 2021: The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) offers quality Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA) to private industry and community developments from its yard in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Learn more.

April 2021: OER opens a clean soil stockpile in East New York that expands the capacity of the Clean Soil Bank and advances reuse of clean soil in NYC.

Read OER’s Earth Day 2021 stockpile announcement.

May 2020: In Spring 2020, OER arranged delivery of more than 40,000 cubic yards of soil form the NYC Clean Soil Bank to the Department of Parks & Recreation. Learn more.

April 2020: OER has launched SPEED 2.0, an updated and expanded version of its environmental mapping tool. SPEED is a rich repository of information relevant to the cleanup of land in New York City. Visit SPEED to search for properties in New York City and find information on nearby construction projects, land cleanup efforts, environmental cleanup requirements on rezoned land, and the location of petroleum spills.

SPEED can also be used to create maps of environmental information at a city, borough, neighborhood, or site level. In addition, all of its data layers are regularly updated. Please give us your feedback on SPEED through the Contact page on our website.

July 2019: East New York Farms! has opened New York City’s first stockpile of clean soil in Spring Creek, Brooklyn. Learn More.