Government lawyers yesterday tried to convince a federal appeals court that the city’s plan to build a trash transfer station near La Guardia Airport follows aviation-safety rules.
The building will be sealed so as not to attract plane-endangering birds, said Justice Department lawyer Abby Wright.
“All the trash processing occurs inside the building,” said Wright, and opponents’ claims that the building isn’t enclosed are “baseless.”
A bird-plane collision was blamed for the Hudson River ditching of US Airways Flight 1547 two years ago.
Transfer station opponents say the Federal Aviation Administration ignored the fact that the plant going up on in College Point is in the “protection zone” for La Guardia Runway 31.