On Earth Day, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a major overhaul of the air pollution control code that will require, among other things, food trucks to switch to battery-powered refrigeration and pretty much all pizzerias with hearth-style ovens to install new emissions-containing equipment. This affects everyone from old-school legends like Totonno’s and Patsy’s to relative newcomers like Table 87, as well as every wood-burning operation in town. (And there are many more coal-fired pizzerias in New York, after all, than most people think.) The Brooklyn Paper estimates that all of the city’s affected pizza places — hundreds in all — will be required to install special air filters, at a cost of $10,000 per pop. For some, like Totonno’s, which struggled to reopen after Hurricane Sandy, this is not an insignificant sum of money to mitigate exhaust fumes. “We’ve been here 90 years,” Louise Ciminieri, Totonno’s co-owner, tells the paper. “We didn’t kill anybody yet.” [Brooklyn Paper, Related]
