Summary
On March 17, 2026, Rockaways Neighbors Helping Neighbors (“RNHN”) and TakeRoot Justice released Let Us Breathe! The Dust Is Everywhere: Our Call to End the Inwood Material Terminal’s Contamination of Our Homes in Far Rockaway Public Housing. Our new report highlights a facet of environmental racism faced by public housing residents living in the Redfern Houses in Far Rockaway: the effects of living across the street from the Inwood Material Terminal (“IMT”), a full-scale facility that crushes construction materials for recycling and stores the crushed debris in open-air dust piles on their site.
The report reveals the physical and emotional impacts of the endless industrial waste that blows from IMT’s piles into residents’ homes, cars and outdoor spaces. The presence of IMT across the street from the Redfern Houses demonstrates how environmental racism manifests and persists systemically: a combination of the limited regulation of facilities like IMT and the lack of enforcement by City and State agencies even when regulations exist. Adding to the complexity and fight for accountability are the facts that IMT is located in a different municipality than the residences impacted by the waste, and that a current loophole in state law allows IMT to continue its operations while applying for a permit under new regulations that finally take into consideration the environmental pollutants of facilities like IMT.
Our research, which was based on 436 surveys administered by RNHN, found that dirt particles are a nearly universal problem for residents, there is overwhelming concern about air quality and its impact on residents’ health, and that residents dealt with medical conditions linked to and/or exacerbated by environmental pollutants.
Rockaways Neighbors Helping Neighbors is calling for urgent and systemic policy changes, including the permanent closure of the Inwood Material Terminal. In the meantime, the community is calling for the immediate implementation of dust containment and a change in regulations which currently allow the site to continue operations while their permit application is still pending.
Read the full report here.
Press
City Limits: NYCHA Residents Say Nearby Industrial Site is Covering Their Homes in Dust | March 9, 2026
Indypendent: Far Rockaway Residents Say Local Waste Facility Poses Severe Health Hazard | March 11, 2026