Sandy Nurse and Eddie Bautista make the case for turning Rikers into a renewable energy hub
Sandy Nurse and Eddie Bautista make the case that closing Rikers Island is environmental justice and urge passage of a Renewable Rikers master plan bill.
Sandy Nurse and Eddie Bautista make the case for turning Rikers into a renewable energy hub
Sandy Nurse and Eddie Bautista make the case that closing Rikers Island is environmental justice and urge passage of a Renewable Rikers master plan bill.
Bushwick’s own City Council member wants to close Rikers Island and then turn the 400-acre jail complex into a solar-powered, sewage-treating, compost-making climate hub. And she just co-signed a public argument that doing it is not only criminal justice, it’s environmental justice.
In an opinion piece published in City Limits on July 1, Council Member Sandy Nurse, who represents Brooklyn’s District 37, and Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, laid out the case for finishing the job the city legally committed to years ago: shutting the jail and building the “Renewable Rikers” vision in its place.
“Rikers is not only a criminal justice crisis,” Nurse and Bautista wrote. “It is also an environmental failure that demands urgency. Closing it is not just about decarceration, it’s about repairing harm, restoring communities, and reimagining our city’s future resilience.”
In 2019, after years of organizing led largely by people who survived incarceration and their families, the City Council voted to close the Rikers jail complex by August 2027. Two…
