Assembly members from around the Big Apple criticized three of their colleagues who are blocking the creation of a recycling facility planned for Manhattan's West Side.

The critics' fury was directed towards Assembly members Deborah Glick [1], Richard Gottfried [2] and Linda Rosenthal [3], the New York Times reported. [4] The three represent areas including and around the planned station, which would be on the Hudson River near Gansevoort Street, just south of West 14th Street.

"We have some of the highest rates of asthma, which is no surprise," Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV of East Harlem told the Times. "Some people call this environmental injustice. I call it racism."

Currently, Manhattan's waste is shipped off to working-class neighborhoods in other boroughs, where the majority of residents are people of color. These communities often have high asthma rates, which many believe may be linked to the long-haul waste trucks that service the waste transfer stations.

Legislation in the Assembly would approve the city's Solid Waste Management Plan and create the Gansevoort station in Manhattan, which would finally allow the borough to handle its own waste.