Evening Roundup: Buying Back Used Needles, A Battle Over a Mountaintop in New Jersey, and a New Exhibit That Transports You to Puerto Rico

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Sean Carlson: A possible rail strike, a needle buyback program, a fight over a mountaintop housing development, and a museum exhibit that transports you to Puerto Rico. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Sean Carlson. Let's start with the developing story that affects hundreds of thousands of commuters in New Jersey. NJ Transit officials and the union representing locomotive engineers and trainmen are still trying to hammer out a deal ahead of a looming Friday strike deadline. The two sides were reportedly making progress, but have yet to reach an agreement. Last month, the union leadership reached a tentative agreement with transit officials that included pay raises, but an overwhelming majority of union members voted it down and are arguing they're not getting a fair shake. It is a fluid situation, so be sure to check out our website Gothamist for the latest.

In New York City neighborhoods with a lot of public drug use, used needles can end up strewn on the ground, creating a hazard for kids and pets. A new city health department pilot program offers New Yorkers a cash incentive to help properly dispose of spent needles. WNYC's Caroline Lewis met up with a nonprofit operating the program outside Echo Park in the Bronx.

Josh DeLisle: Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Caroline Lewis: Josh DeLisle is using a small plastic rake to sweep used needles off the counter window of his van and into a big red bucket waiting inside. DeLisle is the co-founder of Addiction Response Resources. That's the nonprofit the city tapped to operate the buyback program after it launched a similar operation in Boston. It's costing the city $11 million over three years.

Allie Hunter: Some basics, don't recap a used needle, don't break off the tips.

Caroline Lewis: That's Allie Hunter, the other co-founder. After a quick training, New Yorkers over 18 can get 20 cents for each needle they turn in, similar to a bottle return program. There's a limit of 50 per day, which amounts to $10. Zaire Howard, who's staying at a nearby shelter, says he's returned to the van multiple times since the program launched in March.

Zaire Howard: It's a way for people to make money and you're cleaning up the streets, so that's a win win.

Caroline Lewis: Participants can bring in their own needles or ones they find on the ground. Echo Park is one of eight hotspots the van visits around the city where injection drug use and used needles are a common sight. Sanitation and nonprofit workers collect thousands of syringes from city streets each year, yet complaints to 311 keep piling up. Used needles can carry HIV or hepatitis, although the city health department says it's very unlikely to catch one of those diseases from an accidental prick with a discarded syringe, but they're still sharp and tend to put parents of young children on edge.

Jessica De la Cruz: Yes, it is a big problem around here.

Caroline Lewis: Jessica De la Cruz lives near Echo Park and was walking past with her two-year-old.

Jessica De la Cruz: She's a nature baby. She likes the dirt. She likes trees. She likes the sand and everything.

Caroline Lewis: De La Cruz said she doesn't take her daughter to play here or to any parks in the Bronx. She makes the trip south to Central Park instead. After only about an hour outside Echo Park, the buyback crew has filled their bucket to the brim with syringes.

Allie Hunter: Full bucket just from the site, which is about 2,500 syringes.

Caroline Lewis: Wow. The crew packed up the van and headed off to the next syringe hotspot.

Sean Carlson: That's WNYC's Caroline Lewis.

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Sean Carlson: There's a battle unfolding in New Jersey over a proposed housing development on a mountaintop. More of that story after the break.

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Sean Carlson: A billionaire family in New Jersey wants to build a housing development on a mountaintop in West Orange, but some residents are asking the state to suspend their permit to do that. As WNYC's Mike Hayes reports, the two sides are now locked in an environmental battle.

Mike Haye: Overflowing stormwater catch basins, water rushing down the mountain in heavy rain, a raw sewage pipe in the wrong place that could contaminate local groundwater, these are some of the claims in a report from an environmental consulting firm that was hired by a group of residents opposed to the project. The company is called Garden Homes and it's owned by a billionaire family known as the Wilfs. They want to build an apartment complex on a heavily wooded tract of land on the Watchung Mountain Range in West Orange, New Jersey.

The company and the Wilf family declined to comment, but opponents say the company's plan to control flooding from the development contains serious errors and miscalculations, and they've asked the state to suspend Garden Homes's permit. Joe Pannullo is with We Care New Jersey, a grassroots organization of residents that paid for the review.

Joe Pannullo: The data that were used to support the application were not accurate, so the conclusion drawn by issuing the permit cannot be correct.

Mike Haye: Garden Homes has lost a bid to build homes on the site before. 20 years ago, town officials rejected the plan for safety reasons. It's been revived now because Garden Homes has promised a buid 100 affordably priced apartments to the development, at a time when New Jersey is trying to build thousands of new homes for low and middle-income residents over the next 10 years. A spokesperson for the state's Department of Environmental Protection says the agency is reviewing residents' request to suspend the company's permit.

Sean Carlson: That's WNYC's Mike Hayes.

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Sean Carlson: Now to an ongoing exhibit at Manhattan's Poster House Museum, which takes visitors on a trip to Puerto Rico. The work called Puerto Rico in Print: The Posters of Lorenzo Homar has been running for the last month.

Alejandro Anreus: The easiest thing to say about Omar is that he is without a doubt one of the leading printmakers and poster makers of the Americas.

Sean Carlson: That's Alejandro Anreus, emeritus professor of art history and Latin American studies at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He's also the exhibit's curator. He calls Homar a master of the medium.

Alejandro Anreus: There is this precision, there's this balance of shape and color, and there's this extraordinary dynamic elegance to all of his pieces.

Sean Carlson: What does one of Puerto Rico's preeminent poster artists have to do with New York City? It turns out everything.

Alejandro Anreus: He came from a solid middle-class family. His father had a film distribution company. Then the family fell into hard times, so the family ends up emigrating to New York City.

Sean Carlson: New York helped make Homar into an artist.

Alejandro Anreus: He took classes in life drawing at the Art Students League. He took classes at Pratt. He was also a gymnast, so that explains a lot his sense of discipline and rigor.

Sean Carlson: Then Homar landed a job with the jewelry house Cartier in New York. The apprenticeship sharpened his sense of precision and expanded his appreciation of beauty.

Alejandro Anreus: You were constantly sent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a weekly basis to go make drawings of the jewels that you saw in paintings from the Renaissance and the Baroque period.

Sean Carlson: He took all that experience back to Puerto Rico. When he returned in 1950, Homar started making posters for the Commonwealth's graphic arts workshop upon his return.

Alejandro Anreus: His famous line is, "We could do posters that were artistic and beautiful, but could communicate the ideas that we need to communicate to the people."

Sean Carlson: He put those skills to work making posters dealing with themes from literacy to public health to movie promotions.

Alejandro Anreus: He takes an, essentially, utilitarian way of using printmaking and keeps it utilitarian, but it truly becomes an art form.

Sean Carlson: Lorenzo Homar's mixture of art and utilitarianism will be on display at the Poster House Museum through September.

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Sean Carlson: Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back tomorrow.

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