SamPratt.com

TCI to Coeymans, at least temporarily

Image: Bing Maps

The Albany Times-Union is reporting that TCI of NY, whose PCB-processing facility in Ghent was incinerated in a calamitous fire last August, has “set up temporary shop at the Port of Coeymans.”

Billing itself as “environmentally friendly” (mainly on the basis that barges are less polluting than trucks), the 12-year-old port is roughly 10 miles south of Albany, and directly across the Hudson River from Schodack Landing. As the aerial photograph shows, the Port is also near the Thruway, and located not far from some densely-populated neighborhoods. And it’s barely a half-mile from the Lafarge cement plant in Ravena.

The company told the T-U that they are operating “on a temporary basis in Coeymans while we continue to evaluate our long-term opportunities. A permanent facility in the Port of Coeymans is among the opportunities we are considering, and we have submitted a site plan to the Coeymans Planning Board for its review.” They refused, however, to explain how their operation would compare to their now-scorched Ghent business.

The article lists other sites still on the company’s radar in counties including Saratoga, Washington and Rensselaer (including East Greenbush , Rensselaer and Schodack), and states that returning to Ghent is still a possibility.

Prior to the Ghent fire, accidents at TCI included a worker’s onsite death from freon exposure; a failed incenerator proposal; a transformer explosion at their temporary home in Greenport; and another major fire at their Newburgh plant. At one point between their stints in Newburgh and Greenport, the company tried to move to Athens, but opposition from firefighters and residents squelched that plan.

The Coeymans Planning Board meets next on July 1st at 7 pm at 18 Russell Avenue, according to the Town’s website.

 

The Valley Alliance investigates...

... and turns up some startling information, at this link.

Imagine if someone came into your home and said, “Hey—nice TV. I’ll let you have it if I can hang out, watch hockey and raid your fridge for the next 50 years.” Most people would tell that person to take a hike. 

Yet it appears that’s exactly what Holcim may be doing in this latest Hudson Waterfront mess.

Another TCI debacle: 1987 explosion ‘rocked’ Greenport, injured worker

Not mentioned so far during the debate about TCI’s two fires (and desire to remain) in Ghent isthe company’s brief stay in the Town of Greenport during the late 1980s, after being kicked out of Ulster County.

And, as happened before with its mismanagement in Newburgh and later in Ghent, TCI’s Greenport activities resulted in a major explosion.

A front-page article in the June 22nd, 1987 edition of The Register-Star reported that a transformer blast that day “rocked an area within a half-mile” of TCI’s facility on the Industrial Tract.

The “blast” threw worker Louis Smith of Stuyvesant 20 feet, and landing him in Columbia Memorial Hospital with undisclosed injuries:

The explosion was audible at the Greenport town hall, according to Greenport Officer-in-Charge John Hawks... Greenport firemen were called to the scene [along with] Columbia County Sheriff Paul Proper and Undersheriff James Bertram.

EnCon officials were expected to arrive on the scene later this morning. Some transformers contain levels of PCBs. It was unknown this morning whether the explosion caused any leakage of the suspected carcinogens.

Detail of a Robert Ragaini photo of emergency workers tending to an injured TCI worker on the Industrial Tract in Greenport

A search of seven months of the Register’s back issues found no follow-up report on the cause of the blast or investigation of environmental fallout.

By 1988, TCI was reëstablished on Falls Industrial Road in Ghent, the blast apparently not having given that Town’s planning board any cause for concern. In March 1989, a young TCI worker (also named Smith, but no known relation) died after being overcome by fumes at TCI’s new plant.

The search for this article was prompted by a brief mention in a 1989 report on the fatality, alluding to the earlier Greenport explosion, spotted by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN.

Why this earlier explosion has never come up is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the barrage of major news of 1987—the Wiley Gates trial, a massive October snowstorm, the televised testimony of Philmont native Ollie North, the death of Jackie Gleason?—somehow blotted this event from local memory.

Dust busters

Thanks to the vigilance of Riverkeeper—which filed a complaint about the facility at Cementon across the river from Germantown—Glens Falls Lehigh Cement has been fined $50,000 by the State for allowing leachate to seep into the Hudson River.

The Kingston Daily Freeman reports, however, that the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation will forgive 20% of the fine if Lehigh takes steps to correct the problem within three years. Riverkeeper’s complaint goes all the way back to 2007.

The Lehigh plant no longer manufactures cement from scratch, but rather blends portland cement produced elsewhere with imported slag, a waste from the iron industry. Residents banding together under the rubric of the Germantown Neighbors Association have challenged the facility’s permitting and management over the past decade.

Hard Boyled

The inimitable, irreplaceable, and indispensible Bob Boyle gives testimony on fracking in Albany in the video above, taking the New York State DEC to task as only he can.

Ghent planners to TCI: First, pay your bills

At last night’s meeting of the Ghent Planning Board, it emerged that TCI of NY is behind in payments to the Town of Ghent to cover engineering expenses related to cleanup of its Falls Industrial Road site, according to firsthand reports from attendees.

And until such payments are brought up to date, and until the company also puts $10,000 more in escrow for review, the Ghent planners do not intend to take up an application from the company to rebuild and resume operations.

TCI’s Brian Hemlock arrived with his attorney, Bill Better, as well as an engineer from Crawford & Associates and a representative of architect Dennis Wedlick, in an attempt to present an application—but ran into the stumbling block of past due bills and future escrow requirements. The application materials were dropped off, but not considered.

GhentCANN’s Patti Matheney reports: “It seems they have used up all of the escrow for the Town engineer to oversee the clean-up of the site and there are outstanding bills. The Board and [attorney] Ted Guterman were adamant they will not look at the new plans or ask the town engineer to review them until they put 10K into a new escrow account.”

Matheney also noted that a TCI representative “specifically stated that only non-regulated PCB's were dismantled at the plant and they do not handle any regulated PCB equipment. He made no mention of the DEC permit request from June of this year.”

However, that 2012 application indicated TCI’s plans “to store and consolidate regulated PCB wastes,” preparing them “for shipment to EPA approved and alternate disposition facilities,” an apparent contradiction.

Hemlock also circulated a heavily-massaged p.r. statement [ page 1 | page 2 ]. TCI worked with a public relations firm, Blass Communications, in the wake of August’s catastrophic inferno—its second fire of 2012—but it isn’t clear if they are still in the picture.

Lastly, Matheney writes that Planning Board chairman “Jonathan Walters asked the Board to "do their homework" over the next month and come back to the Jan. meeting with questions for TCI.

Audio of the meeting recorded by another resident is expected to be posted online later today.

TCI pursued expansion permits from State and Feds, leaving Ghent out of the loop

Seeking to signficantly expand its operations, TCI of NY quietly filed hundreds of pages of applications in the past year with State and Federal authorities—without ever applying to agencies of the Town of Ghent to comply with local zoning.

Buried in a 440-page document, revelations of these planned changes by TCI in the year before their catastrophic August fire emerged after a long wait for a response to a Freedom of Information Law request to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

DEC finally coughed up the 440-page document three months after this site placed multiple reminder calls and emails. (FOIL requests are normally dealt with within 5-to-20 days.) The State application, which includes materials submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was finally produced only once this site notified the DEC public relations office that a press release detailing the agency’s non-responsiveness was in the works.

The document obtained is eye-opening to say the least. TCI’s application materials reveal, among other things, that the company sought permission to begin:

• Handling regulated PCB waste of a much higher concentration than non-PCB or unregulated PCB waste;

• Installing a new 8,000-gallon PCB storage tank;

• Storing 280,000 pounds of untested, undrained electrical equipment which are assumed to have under 499 ppm of PCBs;

• Storing 70,000 pounds of undrained PCB-contaminated electrical equipment;

• Storing 60 drums of PCB-contaminated fluid; and

• Storing 40,000 pounds of PCB transformers.

Minutes of the Ghent Planning Board do not indicate that such major changes to the TCI facility were ever brought before them for review and approval.

At an August 1st Planning Board meeting held just hours before the massive fire was discovered, TCI’s representatives from Crawford & Associates presented minor amendments to a site plan for a 650-square-foot office addition, stating that “nothing new will be going on at the plant, only existing work.”

A request by one member to review any DEC permitting was noted in the minutes, but the request was “withdrawn” f0llowing these assurances by TCI as well as from the Planning Board Chair that everything was in order.

Legally, an applicant must seek permission from local authorities for activities covered by local zoning codes, even if they are permitted by other agencies. Indeed, that is just what scuttled TCI’s attempt to build a PCB incinerator in Ghent in the late 1980s; even though NYS DEC casually greenlighted the project, the Town (and neighbors) objected and stopped it from happening based on local rules.

Moreover, under the Ghent Zoning Code new activities and changes in use must be brought before the appropriate board(s) when their scope exceeds their original permit, and/or when changes are proposed after the date of changes to the Code.

The 440-page application submitted to the State and Feds also includes many eyebrow-raising statements. For example, a review of working conditions and worker qualifications concedes that while some employees would be working with materials such as explosives and toxic chemicals, it then goes on to say that these workers will not need any prior experience or training. A young employee died at TCI after exposure to freon gas in 1989.

The Ghent Planning Board meets again tonight at 7 pm at Town Hall, and TCI once again may be on the agenda, seeking to rebuild its facility, which also had a fire in January. NOTE CORRECTED MEETING TIME

A copy of the 440-page application (which is a very large file) is available upon request via email.

Bits & bites

Image from Star Chefs

It’s been a light week for posting here, due to other obligations, and also the fact that I don’t like to post just for the sake of posting... That said, here are a few regional tidbits worth reporting:

• Chef/author Zak Pelaccio’s much-anticipated upstate restaurant with Jori Jayne Emde on South 3rd Street in Hudson reportedly will be called Fish & Game, with renovations continuing at a fever pace in hopes of opening this winter.


• HUMP, a/k/a the Hudson Museum of Photography, opens this Saturday with a solo show by Stephen Johnson entitled Moonman. HUMP is located at 552 Warren Street.


• After a hiatus following the death of Don Blasko, his wife Mady has reopened the Turnpike Inn.


• In other Town of Ghent drinking news, longtime Kozel’s bartender Ned has stepped down to enjoy some well-deserved leisuretime after many years of solid service. It’s rare to find a real oldschool barkeep of Ned’s caliber around here.


• Laetitia Hussain’s recent three-story installation at John Davis Gallery, Sycamorphology has sold and is said to be headed to a publicly-accessible space in New York City.


• According to several sources the Laskin family is no longer involved with the operation of TCI of NY, the PCB waste company David Laskin moved to Ghent from Newburgh after a fire there in the 1980s. It thus presumably was just a coincidence that (as several other sources have pointed out) the 165-acre Laskin family compound in Old Chatham went on the market for $3,200,000 on August 3rd—just two days after the most recent and most catastrophic TCI fire.


• Also regarding TCI, Albany TV stations and other print outlets are reporting that the August 1st fire has been cleared of any suspicion of arson by the New York State Police, though their official report on the cause of the fire is not complete. The August conflagration was TCI’s second fire of 2012, and occurred in the context of a series of other fires in the Route 9H corridor—one of which was affirmatively deemed an arson. (Since the time of this site’s post on that topic, residents have noted several additional fires on roads just slightly off 9H.)


• It’s come to this site’s attention that several Hudson elected officials are unaware that the City has an adopted Comprehensive Plan, which can be downloaded in two parts via this link. The plan straddled the Cranna and Scalera administrations, being developed in 2000-2001 and passed in 2002. Due to the then-raging St. Lawrence Cement controversy, and the City’s decision to hire SLC’s own planning firm as its consultant, the final plan was greatly watered down, but it does include a few useful nuggets; more on that next week, probably.


• This Sunday will feature the last farmer’s market of the season in Philmont, according to Sally Baker of PB, Inc. The market’s hours are 10 am to 1 pm.

They’re back

These signs—posted when the Bells’ Pond Hannaford first opened, then removed due to complaints from green-eyed gas guzzlers—have returned to the supermarket’s parking lot—this time in shades of fern instead of fire engine red.

1986: Was Ghent misled about PCBs at TCI?

Click to enlarge 1986 TCI letter

Late ’80s paperwork obtained by this website raises questions about when and how TCI of NY became a processor of PCBs. Company letters, official Town of Ghent correspondence, and media reports dating from 1986-1989 indicate that either TCI’s plans changed, or Town officials were mistaken about the company’s real intentions.

On September 3rd, 1986, David Rivenburgh of Falls Road Industrial Park, Inc. applied for two building permits related to land his corporation was acquiring from William Wiegelt. Rivenburgh indicated that one of the buildings planned for the site would be bought by TCI Incorporated of Hudson. Accompanied by a $50 check, his application didn’t mention the use of PCBs, but alluded to handling “electronic transmission and distribution equipment.”

Plainly, this language set off alarm bells with Ghent Planning Board chairman John Winkler. He wrote back on September 15th asking Rivenburgh to produce a letter from TCI Inc. The letter, Winkler said, should explain among other things “what waste products are produced,” “how is waste matter disposed,” and whether the company deals with “any toxic materials, particularly PCB’s.”

Within four days, David Laskin of TCI Incorporated wrote to Winkler, affirming that:

“We will not accept any material that has been manufactured as Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) equipment.

Laskin then goes onto reassure the Town:

“Any oil-filled electrical equipment we will handle will be tested and drained prior to being received at our operation. The testing is to insure that there is no more than trace amounts (.05% maximum) of Plycholorianted Biphenyls that may have entered this equipment through servicing or repair through the years.” [emphases added]

Later correspondence and official comments suggests that either Laskin was not adequately clear in that last sentence, or the Town failed to grasp a nod-and-a-wink message buried within the letter’s technical language.

Laskin also wrote to the Planning Board chair that its “proposed building is large enough that we do not anticipate a need for any outside storage.” Photographs of the site, as well as published accounts, show that materials were stored outside the building. Indeed, some have suggested that the impact of the fire might have been worse had more transformers and other materials been stored inside instead of out.

 

---

Indications that the Town of Ghent was starting to feel a bit bamboozled emerge from documents and news reports from 1988-89, when TCI applied to the State to add an incinerator to its Ghent facility. That incinerator plan was opposed by neighbors such as Marlene and Jerry Brody of Gallagher’s Stud, as well as by the Town. Legal wrangling dragged into the early ’90s, but the incinerator never came to pass.

The Brodys

The Town of Ghent’s legal correspondence firmly reiterates that TCI’s original application for a local use permit did not include the handling of “PCB equipment,” and that any other equipment would be drained “to insure there were no PCBs. On September 22nd, 1989, Town attorney Ted Guterman, (who is still serving in that capacity today) forwarded the Town’s Position Statement on the project to Planning Board chair Winkler:

 

“When TCI initially applied for a use permit in 1986... It was specifically indicated that the process would not include nor would TCI accept any material that has been manufactured as PCB equipment. It was further indicated that any oil filled electrical equipment would be tested and drained prior to being received at the premises in order to insure that there were no PCBs.”

Guterman’s understanding was echoed in a December 13th, 1989 article in the T-U, which quoted Brody attorney Jason Shaw as saying that “TCI was not forthcoming about the presence of PCBs when it applied three years ago to open its operation.” He added that “I don't think TCI was up-front about the fact that there would be toxic substances at the facility... They did not clarify the definition they used in an attempt to muddy the issue.”

In the same article, Guterman recalled “Laskin telling the Planning Board there would be no PCBs on the property.” Laskin countered that the Board “ knew we'd be handling the material and the amount would be miniscule... I can't remember how many hours we spent going over this.”

The Position Statement forwarded by Guterman also flagged the Town’s concern that TCI’s activities

“not result in any toxic waste generated or disposed of on the property or through the air, including PCBs. It should be noted that the Town of Ghent Zoning Ordinance contains a provision specifically prohibiting storage collection, retention or utilization of toxic waste or by-products or other similar toxic chemicals in any district.”

23 years later, the Town experienced what many residents now view as an uncontrolled incineration of materials which may never be authoritatively inventoried.

---

Whoever one chooses to believe as to TCI’s original intent, clearly PCBs at some point began passing through the facility in both lower and higher concentrations than 50 parts per million.

For example, as reported previously at this site, a March 2012 TCI manifest shows roughly 2,000 pounds (901 kilos) of liquid PCBs with a concentration of 50-499 ppm (parts per million), along with 350 pounds of solid PCB debris, was shipped from TCI in Ghent to their sister company in Alabama. The Albany Times-Union for its part has obtained records “that showed some 50,000 pounds of PCB-containing materials and oils moving from the Ghent complex this year.”

It remains to be seen if, when and how TCI modified its original application materials to secure permission for such use—or if the Town let this unintended use slide. With TCI saying it plans to rebuild, and many residents calling for a full site plan review if it really does, it becomes all the more essential to determine what precisely the company has been permitted to do locally.

Cancer expert discusses health risks of burning PCBs

 

In the 15-minute video above, renowned cancer expert Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor discusses the science and health risks associated with the burning of PCBs. 

Speaking at his Columbia County home, Dr. Gaynor first reviews the fundamentals of environmental carcinogenesis: how environmental exposures contribute to cancer. He then discusses how the uncontrolled incineration of PCBs leads to the formation of even more toxic dioxins and furans.

The former Medical Director at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Gaynor proceeds to explain why he has found the official reassurances and limited testing done to assess the risks of TCI of NY’s recent inferno in Ghent to be inadequate thus far.

The founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology, Dr. Gaynor’s extensive resumé includes four books, and countless appearances in national media, from Good Morning America to Martha Stewart to Newsweek. He has also published numerous “studies on oncology and the effects of environmental toxins on health in peer review journals such as The American Journal of Clinical Oncology and The Proceedings of the American Society for Clinical Oncology.

He has been honored for his environmental advocacy by  the New York State Assembly—whose Committee on Environmental Conservation oversees the work of some of the officials responsible for the testing which is called into question in this video.

Radical leftist newspaper covers TCI fire

Ralph Gardner, Jr., who has house near Ghent, has an excellent column today in that notorious left-wing publication, The Wall Street Journal, about the August 1st TCI inferno.

In his usual fluid and droll prose, Ralph likens the official reassurances about the TCI fire to those issued by EPA and NYC after 9/11—and also to the plot of a Don Delillo novel (such as White Noise, whose Airborne Toxic Event many immediately thought of when the PCB handler’s plant exploded).

Meanwhile, The Albany Times Union’s James Odato reports that EPA in Massachusetts performed some of the testing across the Berkshire County line that New York State officials have been refusing to do here in Columbia County.

NYS DEC spokesperson Charsleissa King even goes so far as to suggest that samples taken in the Berkshires are adequate justification for not doing the same in the neighborhood of the fire.

Perhaps Ms. King needs to be reminded that this inferno took place in Ghent, New York, not Pittsfield, Massachusetts... Or that National Weather data shows thawinds were less than 1 mph from the start of the fire around 10 pm until dawn, meaning that the most intense impacts would likely occur locally, not across the border.

This makes it all the more eyebrow-raising that Berkshire and Rensselaer counties got timely notifications to close their windows, turn off air conditioners, and stay inside, while Columbians did not. (Maybe that name has DEC thinking we’re a Third World country?)

More likely, the State just doesn't want to know, and doesn't want to spend the money to test properly—even when they can charge it back to TCI... or especially when they can do so. DEC Region 4 has consistently been protective of corporate interests in our region for the past few decades, regularly taking the side of mining interests, coal-burners, tire-burners, and now waste handlers.