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By Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times

NEW YORK, 25 June 2002 -- Turning his attention toward the city's expensive and seemingly intractable garbage problem, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg indicated yesterday that the city might need more than one large transfer station, especially as use of a site in Linden, N.J., has become more and more doubtful.

What to do with New York City's garbage has been a vexing question for years, but especially since the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island closed last year. The city spends $64 a ton to export its garbage to other states, adding up to roughly $36.6 million a year. But a more permanent solution is needed.

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed shipping the garbage on barges to Linden, an idea that has been less acceptable to the Bloomberg administration since New Jersey's attorney general raised ethical questions about the site last fall. "I don't know that it's off the table," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. "But there've been lots of criminal investigations of the goings-on at that facility -- it is becoming more and more problematic."

Nor are Mr. Bloomberg's aides excited about revisiting the idea of a trash transfer station in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, another idea floated by the Giuliani administration that was jettisoned. "I think that you cannot site something in a residential community of this magnitude," Mr. Bloomberg said.

"Having said that," he continued, "we do have to do something with solid waste. It is going to bankrupt us if we don't. Or you're going to find that all of a sudden you can't cart it away fast enough, and we're going to be inundated with it."

Mr. Bloomberg has said that the second 100 days of his administration would be devoted to developing a new solid waste plan; the first 100 were focused on the budget and gaining mayoral control of the public school system.

A select few officials in the administration are quietly pondering options on the garbage problem, and have even discussed seemingly unlikely scenarios like shipping garbage to a willing Caribbean nation, officials say. "It's concepts people are talking about. Could we find an island and do something?" the sanitation commissioner, John J. Doherty, said yesterday.

Among the more probable things the administration is considering are multiple waste-transfer facilities. "We will have to find a place for a transfer facility, period," the mayor said yesterday. "It would be great if Linden worked out, but Linden is also only one. You probably would like to have more than one facility."

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Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company