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NY Waterway Ferry Exhaust Has Battery Park Residents Seeing Red

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Battery Park residents are fuming over exhaust from the motors of New York Waterway ferries sending plumes of black smoke they say they see on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis.

"We live just up here, and we can't even open the windows because the fumes are absolutely horrendous," resident Daiga Chadha told CBS 2's Ann Mercogliano.

"The black smoke comes right across this playground and comes right across the park and goes into all these windows right here," said resident Jason Miller.

Residents say it's the black smoke from boats that's stinking up their neighborhood.

"It's disgusting, and disruptive and it smells," Miller said.

"It is sometimes ... it's scary, like really, really black," another resident said.

New York Waterway runs the ferries and admitted there's a problem, adding it has been working on reducing emissions for some time.

"We tell guys to limit RPMs, watch their acceleration leaving the dock and that helps the problem," said VP of Operations Alan Warren. "It's usually just one puff of black smoke, then it clears up right after that."

Warren claims the problem arises from just one older boat, and that by the end of the year motors on the entire fleet will begin to be replaced.

"Beginning Dec. 1, the motors will arrive, and we'll take one to two boats out at a time until the whole fleet is completed," he said.

A potential solution to their black cloud? That's what battery park city residents are hoping for.

State authorities said tests have been done on the new ferry equipment, and that it does work to reduce ferry emissions.

How serious a problem is the ferry emission? Sound off in our comments section below...

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