SamPratt.com

Mussmann’s Folly

PHOTOILLUSTRATION CONTRIBUTED BY A DOWNTOWN READER

 

To fully unravel Linda Mussmann’s recent rants about trucks and the Waterfront unfortunately requires some frank talk and hard truths. Here’s some of the backstory:

The real reason that Linda’s posturing so aggressively lately about the issue? The TSL director (and newfound downtown real estate speculator) is hoping people in her neighborhood will forget her central role in allowing the trucks to get there in the first place.

This traffic began in earnest on Linda's watch, when she was Waterfront chair. Instead of moving to stop it, she met privately and unpreparedly with lawyers from Holcim (then still called SLC). Though having denounced the company as reckless and untrustworthy for years, she seemed flattered that they’d talk with her.

Shortly thereafter, Hudson was stunned by Linda’s announcement of a sweetheart Waterfront plan for the company—which at the time was actively debating whether to sell their Columbia County properties.

Instead, they were emboldened to stay, and even to push the envelope in the wake of their 2005 Greenport defeat.

In late 2006 before this all went south, I met with Linda, then-Council President Rob O’Brien, and city attorney Cheryl Roberts (now also Linda's real estate lawyer of record) in her office at TSL, where she preferred to do much of her politicking. I had advised Linda that previous summer not to meet with SLC/Holcim without understanding the terrain thoroughly, reasonable advice that she ignored. And as predicted, they ate her alive.

At the time of that meeting at her office, Linda and Cheryl fully recognized that the City had tools to deal with the growing truck issue on Columbia Street. A lawsuit might be threatened by Holcim, but that was probably a bluff, and such a case was winnable. Yet as was so typical of my extensive interactions with Linda whenever an obstacle was encountered, an attitude of defeatism and even victimhood kicked in: It's too hard; Claudia and I are tired; we're too old for this; Quintin [Cross] and Charlie [Butterworth] have the Mayor's ear; I’ll be asked to resign any day now; everyone's against us; and so on.

In another meeting several weeks later at Peter Jung’s house (again with O’Brien present, though not Roberts) Linda yelled and cried and stamped her feet. But by the end she promised to include in the Waterfront Plan two options—one with Holcim, another showing the possibilities without them. Then I had a quiet and amicable dinner with Linda and Claudia across the street at Baba Louie’s.

It was our last real conversion, because “Mussmann” (as Linda often refers to herself, theactrically, in the third person) broke that simple promise, to restore balance and good faith to the process. Rather than embracing a forward-looking vision that would "sunset" the decades of conflict at the Waterfront, she acted to ensure further strife—and to keep herself at center stage.

Her actions since then have been wholly protective of Holcim, the Swiss-owned company which is the sole the cause of this environmental justice problem. She is trying to use the people of downtown Hudson as human shields to cover up her own complicity. The cynicism of such grandstanding is stark indeed.

Get the trucks off Columbia and the Waterfront has been the unified message of thousands of commenters from Allen to State Street for five years now. The Mussmann Plan has stood in the way of that happening. To those who have followed this issue carefully, it looks an awful lot like “Mussmann” doesn't want such a resolution—one which would satisfy 98% of Hudson residents and businesspeople—unless Holcim first gets its pound of flesh.

 

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One last small suggestion for Linda: The next time the Bread & Puppet folks are invited to perform at TSL, please be sure to inform them of your newly-adopted belief that the natural world must be sacrificed to human greed, with no other options either within or outside that constricted, pro-corporate box. The Vermonters will surely be interested in the false choices you have been presenting to the public locally, while keeping up the pretense of red-diaper radicalism at the old Columbia Street bakery.

S.P.ecies

The New York State Department of State (DOS) has proposed upgrading Hudson’s South Bay to a Significant Fish & Wildlife Habitat. The Valley Alliance has created a web tool which allows you to simply and directly send an email to DOS supporting this beneficial idea.

Doing so not only will help protect and restore the ecology of this unique area. It may also lead to Hudson developing a more forward-looking Waterfront plan, one with far more economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits than the current draft.

Attached here are the extensive comments I’ve submitted to the State, documenting numerous rare, threatened, endangered and other species of concern which have been identified in the South Bay area—in many cases, by Holcim itself. But you don’t have to be any kind of expert to participate, so please visit the VA’s action page today...

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part 4)

[ Click for Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 ]

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

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THE CONVERTS • While much of the media and SLC tried to portray opponents as kneejerk reactionaries, for most, the process of opposing the plant involved a slow, steady loss of faith in the company—paired with increased  trust in opponents’ credibility.

Claverack’s Mary Sanchez, who ran a lively and sometimes profane online chat site known as “Red’s Board”, described her change of stance in terms of the patience and decency of opponents’ responses:

People took the time to answer my questions in a civil and thoughtout manner. Their answers made sense—and—they could be verified with facts. I started to look back at my involvement with SLC. After reading all the information I had found (not been given—but found), both good and bad, I asked myself that question that Jesse continuously asks: “Why is SLC good for us?” I could not think of an answer... I got to thinking that big promises don’t always add up to big “keeps.”

It is my hope that some of the “pro-cement” folks will take some time to really really honestly think about this SLC project. Really think about this Santa Claus of a company promising you all you ever wished for. I do not believe that there can be a Santa Claus if there is no heart.

Santa Claus would never use people.

Santa Claus would never hurt people.

St. Lawrence Cement has no heart, and they use people. They prey on their feelings and they are good at bringing out the ugly in everybody.

It was also on Red’s Board that then-State Assemblyman Patrick Manning (R-Hopewell Junction) had his own epiphany about SLC.

Manning had bashed opponents at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Meadowgreens, then got an earful back from disappointed constituents.

He agreed to an hour online chat at Red’s, finally admitting that he would not want a project like SLC in his own town. Gathering his own facts, he consulted closely with doctors such as noted Cornell cancer researcher and Hillsdale resident Mitchell Gaynor, to understand the health implications of living near a major coal-burning facility, and then weighed in regularly and forcefully with State agencies against the plant. Another key public official, Hudson Planning Board chair and later President of the Common Council Michael Vertetis, began as a middle-of-the road plant proponent.

But Vertetis (unlike his former ally, Mayor Rick Scalera) was careful to maintain a civil relationship with plant opponents, and showed an interest in having the City conduct a proper review. At first, many of us assumed that Mike was proceeding cautiously only to ensure that a botched process wouldn’t open the door for a successful lawsuit. But over time, the heavy-handed tactics of SLC (in particular their belligerent attorneys, Bob Alessi and Tom West) tended to alienate more moderate supporters like Mike.

By keeping communication open with folks like Mike, our side maintained the possibility of his voting against SLC’s proposed Host Community Agreement, a package intended to buy the City’s support.

That in fact happened on the same day that Secretary of State Randy Daniels found the project violated New York’s Coastal Policies, dealing a crushing double-whammy to the project on April 19th, 2005.

THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY • Opposition needed to be rooted in more than just environmental arguments.

While some business leaders automatically supported the project without doing any due diligence, others took the time to gather facts and assess the situation. Farmers and realtors (including Steve Kingsley, who generously donated free office space when we were just getting our feet under us) were two early groups with a lot at stake, taking a stand against SLC as a threat to their livelihoods.

Germantowners Nancy Gordon and Paul Swedenburg, whose hightech company HAVE, Inc. is located in Hudson’s former Simpsonville neighborhood, were among the first to step out of ranks with those businesses falling in line behind SLC.

Before taking any position, they invited then-project managers Dirk Cox and Phil Lochbrunner to a discussion with me at their offices. They insisted on an open debate, with both sides present. After considering what they’d heard, Nancy and Paul issued a strongly-argued op-ed, setting forth precisely how the project would harm their business, and the commitment they’d made to employing local people. Richard Katzman, then a major employer in Hudson- Greenport, also gathered his own facts, and after losing confidence in the company, came out against it. He proceeded to underwrite the construction of a giant scale model of the plant, quarry and dock facility, and sponsored telephone polls (conducted by the same firm used by President Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) showing that by 2002, plant opponents had outnumbered supporters. 

Toward the end of the fight, many of these same business leaders along with others such as Martina Arfwidson of FACE Stockholm, Don and Marnie MacLean of Thompson- Finch Farm, Deborah Bowen of The Inn at Green River, and David Rubel of Agincourt Press, worked with us to craft a Statement of Values for promoting greener, more sustainable development in the region: To ensure continued growth and stability, we need to protect our high quality of life. This includes a healthy environment and workforce, clean air and water, scenic and historic resources, and public enjoyment of our unique natural surroundings. [We conclude] that the overall scale, design, location and impacts of the St. Lawrence Cement facility proposed for Hudson and Greenport pose too great a risk of harming the health, quality of life, and economic viabililty of our region, and therefore it is not the right fit for our communities.

By the time this letter was presented to the State, more than 200 businesses representing over 1,150 full-time and another 450 part-time jobs in the area, had signed on. Their message was clear: in the mid-Hudson Valley, the fate of the environment and the economy are inextricably linked. We were fighting not only to stop something, but also to preserve the possibility of a brighter future.

THE EXPERTS • Citizens’ groups always are held to a higher standard of accuracy than slippery politicians. We knew we had to be painstakingly accurate in our public statements, and to back them up with full documentation and professional confirmations by independent experts.

One such expert was living right under our noses in Claverack: toxicologist and EPA consultant Travis Kline (son of Pamela Kline, founder of Traditions). Kline was asked to speak at an SLC forum, set up by the company in hopes that they’d control the dialogue and make opponents appear marginal and ill-informed.

But the opposite occurred, as major public attendance forced the events to move to a large Columbia-Greene Community College auditorium. As panelists were peppered with tough questions from the well-prepared audience, they were emboldened to step outside the limited scripts SLC expected they’d stick to. Much to the company’s chagrin, Travis made a devastating presentation about the health risks of volatile organic compounds and products of incomplete combustion resulting from the burning of impurity-laden limestone and coal. Calling for a multi-disciplinary risk assessment and test burns, he warned that the existing regulatory process was inadequate to protect residents from harm. By his second forum appearance, SLC had lost control of the dialogue, causing some of its supporters to lose their cool. Four “young guys feeling their oats,” sporting the company’s free blue tshirts, attempted to menace Travis, who was escorted out of the hall for his own safety by State Police Investigator and forum member Gary Mazzacano. These occasional and pathetic attempts at intimidation only made SLC look worse.

While SLC expected opponents to bring nothing to the table, impressive experts were retained to back up our positions during official reviews.

One day in 1999, Hudson art dealer John Davis had a visit from a loyal client named Gabe Miller. Gabe spotted one of our flyers on John’s desk and said: “You really don’t want something like this in your community. I know, because I build these things.” An NYU chemistry professor and senior engineer at Camp Dresser & McKee, among the largest international industrial consultants based in the Northeast, John arranged for Gabe to meet me for lunch at the St. Charles Hotel, whereupon we became the first environmental group ever represented by CDM. His firm’s work was supplemented by Dr.

Alex Sagady, a pit bull of an engineer from Michigan, who represents citizens groups at discount rates. Alex’s preferred method of working was to file Freedom of Information requests with State agencies, then fly to Albany to camp out in the offices of the Department of Environmental Conservation, where he’d invariably find lots of useful information that bureaucrats, such as Project Manager Michael Higgins, had previously “overlooked”.

As our network expanded, similar finds began emerging on a regular basis. One after another, experts came to Hudson to educate our membership in public presentations: Neil Carman of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, Florida kiln activist and elected official Penny Wheat, Downwinders at Risk leaders Jim Schermbeck and Katy Hubener, Bonnie Sanders of South Camden Citizens in Action. Sanders, who died the following year, was particularly moving as she talked about her neighborhood’s experience with SLC: “They spread around a lot of promises of jobs and grants for local organizations. They led our church pastors to think that this company would do good for minority residents.

Once they had their permits, we learned that all they cared about was making money. We only gained a very small number of jobs. What we ended up with was pollution that made my grandchild, other kids and our seniors fight for breath, and truck traffic so heavy it shook house foundations. [But] even if SLC stood behind their promises, the hardships wouldn't have been worth it. You can't trust this company, and you don't want them in your area.” The Allies From the start, we knew we couldn’t go it alone. The fight had to be expanded to the whole Valley and into the downwind states of New England. After a lonely couple of years, one by one, more than three dozen groups stood with us—some contributing just their names, others biting off major pieces of the legal fight. 

During one difficult winter meeting at City Hall in Hudson, a group of about five young, purposeful people in outdoor gear strode into the Council Chambers: Alex Matthiessen and his Riverkeeper crew had docked their boat and come up Warren Street like the cavalry to save the day.

Meanwhile, at his office in Pittsfield, my all-time favorite conservation activist George Wislocki, founder of the Berkshire Natural Resource Council, used his decades of contacts and stockpile of credibility to convince EPA’s New England Regional Administrator to issue a stern letter against SLC—and her support was echoed by the Massachusetts DEP and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Across the river, Athens officials such as Andrea Smallwood and Chris Pfister opened up a western front against SLC by passing a Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and submitting strong letters cautioning against Hudson impairing the State’s investment in the Village’s newly-restored park and docks along the Hudson. 

THE GO-TO GUYS & GALS • But for all the specialized skills and thoughtful analysis that go into long grassroots battles, possibly the most valuable asset of a citizens’ organization is to have plenty of worker bees ready to swarm out of the hive at a moment’s notice. We weren’t lacking in that department. Whether it was an urgent mailing to get stuffed and stamped, or rounding up auction items for our next benefit party, or needing a small crowd to assemble for an unexpected meeting, or volunteers to help set up for an event, people gave generously and endlessly of their time: Warren Collins, Fran DeGrazia, Bob and Monica Mechling, Diana Jelinek, Dick Donovan, Claire Oravec, Chloe Zerwick, Jennifer Arenskjold, Marty Davidson, Martha Lane, Carole Clark, Hillary Hillman... This list could go on forever, and still be missing important contributions.

We also lost some of our most valued soldiers over the years: the hilariously wise Cassandra Danz (a/k/a Mrs. Greenthumbs); the fearless Bud Mann; artist Hannah Williamson; Phyllis Herbert, who never threw out a single article about the plant; and the ever-ready Vinny DeGrazia, our favorite bartender and raconteur. Their contributions live on each time anyone looks toward Becraft and still sees a hill, rather than a 1,200-acre hole in the landscape.

NEXT UP: The conclusion of this five-part series.

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* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant.com.

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part 3)

[ Click for Part 1 or Part 2 ]

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

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THE HISTORIANS • Willard Place resident Don Christensen came to Hudson in the 1980s with no intention of getting involved in local affairs.

Relentlessly curious, and with fine radar for irony, Don had always wondered how the once-fabled South Bay, which he could see from his back window, had been transformed from a stunning and economically productive inlet, into a degraded, polluted, landfilled swamp. Now the threat of SLC turned this casual question into a matter of fight-or-flight urgency.

Going through old deeds at the Columbia County Real Property Department, dusty files at the County Historical Society, spinning through acres of microfilm in area libraries, checking the archives of historic sites and museums, and quizzing astonished bureaucrats at obscure agencies such as the NYS Office of General Services, Bureau of Land Management, Division of Lands Underwater, Don unearthed the true history of the Bay. His research raised serious questions about the SLC’s title to illegally-filled acres along the river, and resulted in a major exhibit at the Hudson Opera House—Seeing South Bay. Don became keenly aware of the tendency of the past to repeat itself in Hudson. For one example, in the 19th Century, quarrier Fred Jones convinced Hudson officials to let him trash the Bay by running a railroad trestle across it by first threatening to lay the tracks on Allen Street—a strategy we’re now seeing deployed again by Holcim in 2010.

Don’s solitary work was performed against a more communal backdrop of interest in local history led by residents such as Carole Osterink, Ellen Thurston, David Kermani and others at Historic Hudson. Their keen interest in preservation was complemented by that of Kinderhook’s Ruth Piwonka, responsible for most of the nominations of Columbia sites to the State Register of Historic Places, who spotted many holes in SLC’s inventories of historic resources threatened by the plant. Groups such as Hudson River Heritage in Red Hook (then headed by Kate Kerin) and The Olana Partnership (led by Sarah Griffen), collaborated to make preservation another key reason to stop the plant.

THE GO-GETTERS • While some preferred parsing the SLC application, or searching the internet for the company’s latest environmental atrocities, others knew that the war could not be waged solely at our keyboards. It was essential for the opposition to have a human face, and to reach people who, at the turn of the 20th century, might not yet have email.

One method devised for this purpose was leafletting and buttonholing neighbors on Saturday mornings at busy post offices around the region. Each week, I’d arrange to meet residents of a specific town— say, Cyndy Hall in Claverack, or Joan Hintermeister and Sally Drummond in Germantown—to meet me at their local PO, Our non-confrontational presence reached out to new constituents, showed our commitment to the cause, and put a human, recognizable face on the movement. It became a lot more difficult to believe the company’s smears about opponents if you’d actually met one.

Opponents eventually gathered over 16,000 petition signatures, which were patiently transcribed back at the office after each weekend’s haul, by volunteers such as Gabi Hermann, Chet Stark and Alice Platt. The signer’s name would be hand-written on an envelope containing a bumper sticker, a flyer, a donation form, and a copy of the petition for the signer to circulate as well. Before mailing, an employee such as Ann Birckmayer or Maiysha Kramer would enter the name and contact info into the database for future follow-ups.

Meanwhile, Jock Spivy and Ally Anderson-Spivy of Kinderhook were rounding up signatures on a separate National Cultural Petition supported by artists, historians, curators and others alarmed by SLC’s threat to the Valley’s “spectacular scenery and its seminal role in the development of America’s culture and ideology.” The signatories ranged from locallybased but internationally known figures such as poet John Ashbery and painter Ellsworth Kelly, to celebrity  Uma Thurman.

Activist clichés about “taking it to the streets” meant more than marching down Warren Street. Working with members of Columbia Action Now (an allied group in the northern part of the County) such as Spencertown's Hannah Hanani, we took our fight to the sidewalks of Manhattan for a 2001 protest outside the Swiss consulate. Armed with proof that the proposal would not be allowed in the home country of SLC's owners, residents held signs with humorous slogans like “Build it in the Alps” and "Chocolate, yes. Mercury, no,” provoking a panicked meeting with consulate staff and a great deal of exposure in the European press. Similarly, with the help of Jay Rasku of New England's Toxics Action Network, Hudson residents like Leo Carlin stormed the belly of the SLC beast, delivering thousands of petitions by hand to chilly staffers at Holcim headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Both actions were intended not merely as good political theater, but were part of an overall campaign to influence the company's leadership to withdraw. Self-professed capitalists such as Dick Jenrette of DLJ, Christopher Burge of Christie's and Craig Fitt of UBS, wrote jointly to Holcim board members calling the Hudson Valley a bad business bet.

THE CREATIVES • Aiding in the Spivys’ effort were photographer Lynn Davis and screenwriter/ novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, who constantly lent their creative talents and connections to the cause. The pair must have turned a few heads when they traveled to places like Midlothian, Texas and Devil’s Slide, Utah, cameras in hand—Lynn with her black leather jacket and long white tresses, Rudy with his shambling gait and radical sense of humor—bringing back proof of what life was really like in cement towns.

They returned with photos of monstrous cement blight, and videos of downwind residents sharing stories of sick cattle and cancer-stricken relatives.

Many of Rudy and Lynn’s friends, such as photographers William Wegman and Annie Leibovitz, and musicians Philip Glass and Patti Smith, donated their talents to billboard campaigns and benefit concerts.

The arts were also enlisted at more grassroots levels. Photos of the Hudson River by Freehold’s Thomas Teich were exhibited to help opponents pay to open a storefront office.

Aerial shots of the local quarries and waterfront, as well as existing blight in Catskill and Ravena, were taken by B. Docktor. Opponents circulated blank plywood signs and stakes and Lisa Durfee, Alan Hamilton, Bridget Rockwell and two dozen others handpainted their own “Stop the Plant” signs, which were then bid on by other members. These contrasted strongly with the mass-produced signage underwritten by a company that had to pay people to distribute and display its PR materials.

THE MARKETEERS • In the first months after announcing the project, SLC’s launched media onslaught was intended to make resistance seem futile. But with the help of the many advertising and design professionals hiding out in the nearby hills, opponents were able to start to level the PR playing field.

St. Lawrence outspent opponents by millions, but fortunately, their materials were both clumsy and insulting to viewers’ intelligence. One early pro-plant TV ad seemed to have been recycled from the 1950s, starring a housewife removing a sheet of chocolate- chip cookies from the oven and exclaiming, “I just don’t know how anyone can oppose it!” Our side received key early assistance from marketing guru Ken McCarthy in Tivoli, and graphic designer Frank Aultman. Separately, the pair convinced us to be more ambitious than passing out a few hundred flyers here and there. Ken pointed out that so long as each mailing paid for the next one, it was free publicity. His experience in direct mail also suggested, contrary to conventional wisdom, that we should err on the side of more information, not less—an approach which proved effective, since many were craving detailed rebuttals of the company’s ubiquitous slogans.

Frank similarly urged that we leave behind the bake sale mentality common to grassroots groups, and make two big leaps forward in awareness- raising. He designed an attention- grabbing flyer featuring a map showing where pollution from the proposed plant would likely fall, paired with detailed info about the potential health risks and the company’s track record. The investment in this 5,000-piece mailer, paid dividends for years to come, catapulting the group’s membership from double- to quadruple-digits, and providing supporters with a new sense of momentum. Frank also designed a series of billboards strategically located at all the major entrances to Hudson, one of which was vandalized on Thanksgiving morning.

OurTown’s Enid Futterman worked closely with Tom Mabley and filmmaker Tarquin Cardona to craft a second image campaign for the battle’s next phase. Enid expanded the slogan to: “Tell the Truth. Stop the Plant,” words which thereafter appeared on all of our materials and paraphernalia. The team produced two powerful TV ads to complement the print campaign, focused on children living with asthma and the lack of projected jobs. While the budget was a tiny fraction of SLC’s, the ads gave supporters a sense of empowerment, reached new constituents, and freaked the company out enough to compel them to produce a limp parody.

John Isaacs designed the graphics for the TV campaign, billboards and “Stop the Plant” lawn signs incorporating the new slogan.

In 2003, Germantown-based filmmakers Barbara Ettinger and Sven Huseby began making a documentary about Hudson, eventually shown on PBS under the title Two Square Miles. While they set out to make a portrait of Hudson without reference to SLC, they soon discovered it was impossible to interview anyone for more than 20 seconds before the cement plant came up. While their approach was carefully neutral, the presence of film crews all over town, had an interesting effect: People tended to behave a bit better when cameras were rolling.

NEXT UP: Converts, businesspeople, experts and go-to-guys and gals join the fight, as plant opponents gain the critical mass necesssary to stop the plant.

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* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant.com.

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part I)

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

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At the post office not so long ago, I ran into the internationally-respected lighting engineer Howard Brandston. We hadn’t seen each other much since the end of the cement fight, and embraced like soldiers who once had fought side-by-side in the trenches of World War I.

Like thousands of others, Howard and his wife Melanie had given themselves selflessly to the cement plant fight—passing out signs and gathering signatures, holding meetings at their home, speaking at public meetings, writing detailed and forceful letters to the papers and agencies, raising and donating money to a legal defense fund, helping to craft our strategy, getting their friends involved, and much more.

Seeing Howard again made me consider forming an organization called the VLW—for Veterans of Local Wars, to gather the survivors of the pitched battles which consume this part of the Hudson Valley every decade or so:

• In the 1970s, citizens on both sides of the river challenged a nuclear plant proposed across the river in Cementon.


• In the ’80s, members of SHOW (Save Hudson’s Only Waterfront) questioned the wisdom of letting Octane Petroleum build a vast refinery at the river’s edge. During that same decade, other activists were busy investigating solid waste incinerators slated for Stockport and Stuyvesant.


• In the ’90s, concerned residents exposed a plan for a toxic waste processing plant at the site of the old glue factory in Hudson’s South Bay—since redeveloped as the Basilica.


• And between 1998 and 2005, first residents from Hudson, then from Columbia County, then from all over the Hudson Valley, and eventually countless downwind neighbors from the Berkshires to Maine, all mobilized to challenge the massive, coal-burning, $300 million St. Lawrence Cement “Greenport project.” 

During that nearly seven-year period, it became almost impossible to have a conversation that did not turn eventually to the dryest topic on earth—cement. Two documentary filmmakers who wanted to make a movie about Hudson during this time without mentioning “the plant” gave in, since everyone they interviewed wanted to talk about SLC. Soon enough, they made the cement war the focus of their PBS film, Two Square Miles.

Still, those who moved to the area after April 19th, 2005 may wonder why the plant was so controversial, and considered such a massive threat—not just to Hudson, but to the entire Northeast.

Dubbed “a new industrial city” by Moisha Blechman, the vast, sprawling complex would have featured a skyscraper-sized 40- story tower and a dozen other structures between 10 and 20 stories tall, atop Becraft Mountain, within a mile of the hospital, cemetery and thickly-settled neighborhoods.

From that 406-foot stack would have belched a pollution-laden plume extending as long as six miles, roughly the distance from Greenport to Philmont in a direct line.

This gun to our collective heads would have been loaded with 500 million pounds of coal annually, to pulverize limestone blasted from a 1,200-acre quarry nearly as large as the entire City of Hudson. “Alternative” fuels such as garbage, tires and hazardous waste could have been added to the cauldron— a side of incinerator to go with your cement plant.

The behemoth would have been connected to the Hudson waterfront by two miles of conveyor belts, through wetlands and across three major City entrances. At the waterfront, 700-foot-long Titanic-scaled HudsonMax barges would have constantly offloaded coal, slag, and gypsum, while onloading two million tons of finished cement each year.

Their wakes, fumes and noise would have endangered smaller craft on the river, and chased away residents trying to enjoy the adjacent public park. Meanwhile, back in Greenport, as many as 265 daily truck trips** would have serviced the main facility.

By SLC’s own admission, the plant sought permits to emit up to 20 million pounds of pollutants per year, including greenhouse gases such as nitrogen and sulfur dioxides, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds: arsenic, benzene, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and more.

The medical staff of Columbia Memorial Hospital, following the lead of Drs. Jeff Monkash, Ira Marks, Michael Brown, Steve Kaufman and Stu Kaufman, concluded that emissions of fine particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5) would result in more asthma among local kids, more premature heart attacks among older residents, and higher incidences of cancer among the general population. The American Lung Association concurred, stating that:

The pollution belched by this coal-burning plant would not only trigger asthma attacks in children and cause serious respiratory problems in seniors with lung disease, it would put at risk the health of those of us who do not currently suffer from respiratory problems.

Worse still, citizens discovered that SLC and its Swiss-owned parent company Holderbank—now called Holcim—had an appalling track record of fines for pollution and price-fixing violations. Whatever promises the company was making, it had broken similar promises to other communities worldwide. (The company had also used slave labor in Europe during World War II, and actively profited in South Africa during Apartheid.)

Indeed, the plant wasn’t opposed only on environmental grounds. Over time, many business leaders and workers alike realized that the project would be the death of any sustainable local or regional economy. By the end, over 200 businesses representing over 1,000 jobs had signed on to the fight with a Statement of Values  [PDF] explaining both their positive vision for a greeneer economy, and how SLC would that economy at risk.

To those who weren’t here, it must seem odd, even bizarre, that this colossally foolish idea wasn’t just dismissed out of hand. Yet when first proposed, the cement plant was considered a “done deal.” And none of the above details would have become known in time to stop the plant, if it hadn’t been for a cluster of fewer than 40 residents, who started to ask the tough questions avoided by the powers that be.

Before it was over, SLC had spent $58 million—over $1,000 per adult in Columbia County—to no avail. In the next installment of this piece on Monday, I’ll take a look at some history of local activism, and begin to explore how this massive industrial proposal was stopped against such long odds.

[ Click here for Part 2 ]

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* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant... I’m currently working on another article for the next issue of Our Town, on the topic of the local media.

**  This number is not much different than the traffic now proposed through Hudson’s South Bay, which certain local leaders now say would require no permits; the Greenport proposal was subject to weeks of grueling hearings on traffic impacts, despite that Town having no zoning.

Predictable

There’s a curious letter in today’s Register-Star from Pierre Gontier, the former chair of the Columbia County Environmental Management Council (EMC). The letter praises Hilary Hawke for her reporting on the Harvard study of mercury levels among residents downwind of Lafarge.

Gontier coyly avoids saying what exactly he likes about the substance of the article, except that he found it more balanced, somehow, than other reports. But it’s not hard to guess what he’s driving at... Unlike most other articles on the topic, Hawke’s report for the Register repeatedly focuses on the notion that the Harvard report was “inconclusive.”

Other papers, such as the The Albany Times-Union, came away from the Harvard presentation with a very different impression: that the report had indeed found elevated mercury levels among residents of Ravena, which plays host to the Lafarge plant. By contrast with the Register’s insistent focus on doubts (which so delighted Gontier), the T-U’s headline and subhead read:

Town sees mercury spike

Blood, hair samples of people who live near the Lafarge plant raise health, safety concerns

Naturally, credible scientific researchers will always be careful to note that there are uncertainties in any topic of study more controversial than whether the earth orbits the sun. As such, the Harvard researchers clearly suggested that these elevated mercury levels have been pinpointed, more study to identify the source(s) should be done. Whether the culprit is the Lafarge stack—already acknowledged as one of the largest industrial emitters of mercury in all of New York State—is something that folks like Gontier probably would rather not find out.

Now, given his history of cheerleading for the cement industry in our area, Gontier’s praise for the Register’s preferred spin isn’t terribly surprising. During his tenure as EMC chair, the volunteer committee rarely met, and was made up almost entirely of representatives unlikely to question industry.

Gontier got himself in a bit of a tangle during the SLC review, when he sent a letter on Management Council stationery to Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger, endorsing the Greenport project in terms lifted pretty much verbatim from the company's own literature. Among his more absurd reasons for supporting the project? Because he was glad that the location would not result in a loss of "greenspace," even though the mining plan would result in turning hundreds of forested acres into vast, open pits.

But more than the absurdity of Gontier's arguments or the lack of originality in his wording, the main problem was that he'd never actually had the EMC research or vote upon taking a position on the project prior to sending his endorsement to the Judge. Indeed, during the course of the nearly seven-year controversy, the three dozen groups challenging the project were never invited by Gontier to present their research (which ultimately was ratified by State officials) to him or the EMC as a group.

When the provenance of this letter was then challenged in 2001, SLC’s attorney's hurriedly relayed a statement from Gontier to the Judge, saying that this endorsement was his own opinion, not that of the EMC—though without ever acknowledging the sleight-of-hand of submitting such puffery on official letterhead. (He was not heard from again in the remainder of the process, which lasted into 2005.)

On a slightly happier note, the EMC has become relatively more active and balanced since Gontier’s departure, for example issuing a 2009 report expressing concern about the increased use of outdoor wood boilers for heating.

The force of habit

I’m at the counter of a local thrift shop, buying three vintage t-shirts.

“No bag, please,” I request.

—“No bag?” repeats the nice lady at the register.

“Nah, I can just carry those.”

—“Saves the environment, right?”

“Yeah... There are whole islands of plastic floating around the oceans.”

—“I know, it’s a shame.”

I hand over a bill, and she gives me back the change.

... Then grabs a plastic bag from the dispenser, and starts bagging up my three tees.

“Wait, the bag!” I exclaim.

—“Oh geez, right. And we we just talking about that! Sorry. You get in the habit.”

She throws the unwanted bag in the garbage with a sigh.

“But... Maybe the next customer will want it?”

—“I’m not supposed to use it if it’s already out of the thing,” she says apologetically.

I start to go, but turn back.

“OK, I'll take the bag from the garbage” I say, rueful. “I’ll try to use it for... something.”

Making change is hard.

Letter to the Editor

The following “Our View” column was submmitted today by The Valley Alliance, in response to recent attacks by Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera and former Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee chair Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Ltd.

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It’s the people’s waterfront,

not a political football

by Sam Pratt & Peter Jung
Co-directors, The Valley Alliance

For the Valley Alliance, the future of the Waterfront isn't about personalities, or who wins and loses. That future should be all about securing the most economic, social, educational, cultural and ecological benefits for a broad spectrum of residents. The Waterfront has terrific potential to be the prime vehicle for spreading prosperity to all segments of the community.

Compared with the draft now on the table, the Waterfront plan we favor would create many more jobs, local tax relief, recreational and commercial opportunities. It would foster more cohesion among divided groups, and also eliminate the heavy truck traffic which Holcim has imposed on our downtown. Plus, a more community-minded approach could be enacted both efficiently and legally.

Our singular goal is to ensure an outcome that will stand Hudson and the region in good stead for decades to come, long after the current personalities and politics are forgotten. We have openly set forth these principles at our website:

www.hudsonwaterfront.org

Meanwhile, the Valley Alliance is just one of many who have participated in good faith in the Waterfront process. Others, from the Village of Athens to the Olana Partnership to the LWRP Task Force to nearly 900 residents have expressed concerns about where the draft plan is headed. Also this week, the Greenport Planning Board asked tough questions and insisted on more information from Swiss-owned Holcim and Connecticut-based O&G, the two companies at the center of all the ruckus. (Both have had major recent worker safety problems, by the way.) It’s not so easy to accuse the Greenport board of either delaying tactics or being “newcomers.”

But lately, readers don't hear much about all those other groups and peoples’ concerns. Instead, the pages of the Register-Star and the halls of government have become the scene of outbursts from Rick Scalera and Linda Mussmann, each in a personal rage against "Peter and Sam" or "Pratt and Jung."

Unfortunately, these explosions of anger suggest that they consider the Waterfront only good for one thing: settling political scores. Their motivation to personalize the issue are obvious. Scalera failed to site both a toxic waste operation and a massive cement operation in South Bay. Mussmann betrayed her own principles to cozy up to the cement folks, wrongly imagining this would help her third attempt to become Mayor turn out differently from the previous two. So both have seized on the Waterfront as their best chance to get even, all at the expense of the people.

That’s not a sensible approach to public policy. Readers are free to take Scalera and Mussmann's outbursts at face value, though it defies reason how a group formed several months ago could have delayed a plan that's been in the works for 23 years. And of course, it was politicos like Scalera who didn't want the LWRP to move forward an inch from 1998-2005, as it might have hurt campaign contributors at St. Lawrence Cement.

For those who like to make up their own minds based on first-hand information, Mid-Hudson Media’s Rob Johanson has documented our half-hour presentation to Hudson business leaders last month. These online videos also include a frank, hourlong question-and-answer session:

www.midhudsonmedia.com/clients/valleyalliance

One key question from that session was asked by local mortgage broker Seth Rapport, who wondered how the public might acquire the remainder of the waterfront for more beneficial uses. We clearly discuss how this can be done without any use of eminent domain, through a partnership of City, State, Federal, nonprofit, and private funding.

More defeatist voices like those of the Mayor and Ms. Mussmann don't want the public to hear realistic and nuanced solutions. Instead they want to inflame and limit debate by focusing n personal vendettas and extreme either/or options, such as industry vs. recreation or eminent domain vs. property rights. That’s just the usual Hudson divide-and-conquer politics. There are many shades of gray along those spectrums, and also creative solutions which don't fit into their predictable us vs. them pattern.

Meanwhile, falling in line with instructions from their City Hall patrons, the city's attorney and planner (who've just been awarded another $15,000 to grade their own work) have worsened this unhelpful dynamic by repeating these false either/or choices. In over 100 pages of comments, we (like many others) have soberly set forth many omissions and misreprestations in the draft, such the lack of a true Harbor Management Plan necessary to ensure boater safety.

Now the City is in the last stages of the process, when it's required to review and incorporate public input. Legally, that required step can't be skipped over. Yet the City's hired guns spent nearly all of three recent Council meetings lobbying the Aldermen to let them ignore the clear community consensus contained in those comments. The advice received has been both slanted and incomplete.

Residents, taxpayers, businesses, workers, investors and travelers alike can benefit enormously from a better plan which allows many types of positive development alongside well-protected habitats. Unlike Newburgh or Yonkers, Hudson's waterfront is compact, so the key issue is compatibility. The one piece of the puzzle which simply can't coexist with the rest is noisy, dusty, and hazardous activities which harm other legitimate uses and scare away jobs.

On that score we agree 100% with the Secretary of State who set forth in 2005 exactly how to rezone the Waterfront in a more forward-looking, economically-beneficial direction which phases out incompatible uses. The basis for that official finding was, ironically, the 1995 Hudson Vision Plan, which recommended that the City acquire property from the cement company, and zone out harsh impacts. The Mayor opposed and derailed that plan, so it’s astonishing that he would now try to misconstrue and even co-opt it.

It's time to streamline the draft Plan so that it fully reflects the Secretary’s clear recommendations. Finishing the Waterfront process doesn't have to be difficult or lengthy, if it's done right — rather than used as a vehicle for political retribution and community division. This is no longer high school, so the Mayor should stop playing political football with the City's future.

Stone polled

This blog has received two credible reports from entirely separate sources that residents of Bethlehem, Coxsackie, and Hudson have been polled over the phone recently regarding the Lafarge cement plant and mercury pollution—and that the poll included a question about now-embattled State wildlife pathologist Ward Stone.

Stone has been doing independent research into mercury contamination downwind of the coal-fired Lafarge plant, and was the subject of a lengthy exposé in Sunday’s Times-Union. Now he’s also become the subject of a State investigation into alleged misconduct, including apparent charges by former coworkers of misuse of public resources, abuse of staff, abuse of wildlife, and more. It appears the polling calls began 10-14 days before this article was published.

Here is a report from one reader of this blog (who wishes to remain anonymous, but whose identity and bona fides I have verified) who received a call from the unidentified pollster... First, the reader’s comment on my initial blog post:

I’ve listened to Ward Stone and In Our Backyard since moving to this area and I have been impressed, touched even, by his message to appreciate the world in which we live, to get out and enjoy it. Through him I've learned to notice signs in nature I'd not been aware of... it's been an awakening. Truth be told, I've only been mildly aware of his real environmental crusades; I've just not been paying that much attention.

That's why I was surprised his name came up in a phone call I took last weekend. It was a "poll" thing and honed in on the Lafarge mercury emissions events of late. The pollster asked what opinion I had of Ward Stone; solely based on my knowledge of him and the radio program, I said, "Very favorable." I still have a favorable opinion of him, still based solely on his radio program, and though the allegations against him are serious, I'll wait to pass judgment until they are sorted out. I absolutely question the timing of the allegations, as well as the timing of the poll-call, and I'm dying to know who/what was behind it.

Curious, I posted a request for the commenter to provide more details, which s/he did via email.

I’m the person who took the Lafarge "poll call" on [May 1st], then posted about it on your blog. I'll share with you what I remember:

It came around noon Saturday, a man calling said he was not from a political party etc. but would like to ask questions about environmental issues in the area. He may have stated an organization he was representing, but I don't remember (wish I did!). I was happy to respond because I always wonder where poll results come from... I'm rarely asked, nor is anyone I know.

At any rate, at first he asked about my basic awareness of local issues, and one question asked me to choose, in order of importance, two or three issues I felt were most pressing. Slightly aware of the Lafarge situation, as well as the fight in Hudson a few years back to keep out a cement plant (THANK YOU), I included "mercury emissions" in my answer. The man quickly took that answer and honed in on Lafarge. I do think the call was aiming at Lafarge, and my answer about mercury contamination as a local environmental concern was the pollster's go ahead to continue with his script of questions. He did not mention or ask about any other issues once Lafarge was on the table.

He then asked a series of questions about my opinion whether the plant should be shut down, forced to modernize, allowed to continue as is. He asked what importance I place on the jobs at the plant. He asked my opinion of several different people, Ward Stone and Governor Patterson included, others whose names I didn't recognize. I’m quite certain that there was only one question about Ward Stone—just my opinion of him, which as I said is favorable.

At the end of the questions, the man asked my age, income range, level of education, and first name. I hesitated, then gave it, though I wish now that I hadn't.

I paid attention during the call-- and thought a lot afterward-- to try and identify a bias, a clue to which "side" the call might have come from; nothing stood out. Then again, I'm not very well informed about Lafarge, which led me to realize: I want to learn more about the circumstances at there so I will have (if only for myself) a more clearly defined opinion of what needs to happen. 

Let me know if you have further questions, and if I think of anything else of significance, I'll let you know.

I enjoy your blog. Very informative, sophisticated, and fun.

As for my own opinion of this situation, I take a slightly different view of this evolving matter than some of my environmentalist peers (and am waiting to see what further evidence evolves before making a definitive judgement).

This situation strikes me much like The New York Times’ exposure of Eliot Spitzer’s frequenting prostitutes did. Without question, people like Spitzer and Stone had (and still have) enemies eager to find any reason to tear them down. Such people know they are being monitored closely for any mis-step, which will be pounced on. The mystery is why such controversial figures would hand their critics the gasoline with which to immolate them—rather than taking precautionary steps to foil those eager to torch their reputations.

Spitzer knew that Wall Street and the American right-wing were itching to take him down. Furthermore, as someone who had prosecuted both financial fraud and prostitution rings, he knew that if you go into a bank and ask to have a large amount of money wired anonymously, that bank is required to report the transaction to authorities as suspicious. He likewise knew that arranging to transport a prostitute across state lines incurred yet another level of legal jeopardy. And yet he recklessly pursued his (apparent) sex addiction without using his inside knowledge of the legal and financial system to make it harder to catch him.

Indeed, Spitzer made it easy for his enemies. The surprising part is that it took so long to catch him, not that he was caught.

With the Stone situation–in which all the facts have yet to come out—one similarly wonders why a controversial survivor of past bureaucratic and media wars did not take steps to protect his work and legacy.

At the start of his WAMC interview this morning, Stone claimed that he “knew” this was coming because his phone was “tapped,” his computer “entered,” and he had been “watched and followed for some time.” (Unfortunately, his interviewers moved on very quickly from the topic and did not explore such eyebrow-raising and hard-to-credit claims—which frankly seem more suited to a Bourne Identity flick than a DEC feud.)

Either way, Stone not only had more credible reasons to know he was a target, he also had been specifically admonished repeatedly to address the complaints which came, year after year, from supervisors at his agency. Any objective read of the documents posted by the T-U to back up its reporting are a dose of cold reality to those, like me, who would normally be disposed to side with Stone.

This brings us back to the question of the Lafarge poll, which experience would suggest most likely was commissioned by the cement company, in anticipation of an upcoming DEC hearing on its Ravena plant. Did Lafarge ask about Stone’s credibility? And did the results suggest to the company that his strong reputation as a scientist needed tarnishing? I would not be the least bit surprised. But while the answer to that question might well reflect poorly on Lafarge, it also would not excuse Stone if the charges he faces turn out to be true. We can both deplore corporate skulduggery, admire talented and courageous environment work, and distance ourselves from behaviors and practices among “our” people that we would never tolerate from the “other” side.

It is often said that “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” A corollary might be: “Just because they’re out to get you, doesn’t mean you are beyond reproach.” The Times-Union’s editorial this morning makes that point well (though it fails to disclose or acknowledge the source of its leaks, or at least address the questionable timing of its exposé.) In the long run, if we want to fight for environmental and other forms of justice, we can’t hold ourselves to a lower standard of evidence and ethics than the one we tend to apply to those on the other side.

Reactions to the Ward Stone exposé

« UPDATE » WAMC has announced that it’s suspending Stone’s program pending the results of a State investigation into allegations of misconduct:

WAMC believes in the concept that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. We are grateful to Ward Stone for his generous volunteer contribution to WAMC’s “In Our Backyard” program and for his tireless work for the state as Wildlife Pathologist. We hope these allegations prove to be false, nevertheless, we believe it is prudent to suspend production of the program until these charges are resolved. WAMC news will continue to cover this story.

Suspending Stone allows WAMC to more credibly follow the story, and Dave Lucas has indeed now filed a report on the investigation. Joe Donahue and Alan Chartock likewise had a frank discussion of the Times Union’s article on air this morning, a recording of which can be heard here.

« ORIGINAL POST » The Albany Times-Union has published a lengthy article by Capitol correspondent James Odato about alleged personnel issues with State wildlife pathologist Ward Stone, including stark allegations of personal use of State resources, financial woes, abusive behavior to co-workers, and even cruelty to deer.

Naturally, the piece is generating a lot of heat from both longtime supporters and detractors, and Stone—a Hudson native, now 71, and no stranger to controversy—has begun to respond in the broadcast media here and here.

Somewhat defensively, the T-U has also now posted PDF files of various internal personnel documents from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), along with information about Stone’s academic credentials.

Below are two perceptive and balanced reactions to the story from solid sources who have worked and interacted with Stone, but have no direct allegiance to (or stake in the outcome of the complaints against) him. These are shared below without attribution, at the authors’ requests:

An Albany insider writes...

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WAMC was airing this issue for callers on The Roundtable this morning (a good pre-emptive move on their part, given their recent close association with Stone via the radio show). A lot of support for him was being expressed–matching some of the Republican rhetoric on the Bruno sentencing, to a degree.

Ward is an environmental hero and catalyst, and notably, the article does not attack his accomplishments in that context, or his pathology work.

However, he is one self-centered son of a gun, and I’ve never been too impressed during my direct interactions with or around him. Little of the criticism directed at him in the article is surprising–these issues have been swirling around the Albany environmental community for many years.

I think the article ultimately reveals that he is someone with a very strong sense of himself, someone who likely sees himself as essential to “real” environmental work in New York State, and therefore someone who feels they can bend the rules, or is entitled to something more as a result. My read has long been that Stone acts too important for himself and has perhaps become too institutionalized as the renegade, if that is possible. Factor in his age and some tough personal issues, and you’ve got the makings of a difficult character.

I don’t see the T-U at fault in this–they had real issues to work with, and someone like Ward, given his controversial roles in addition to/because of his state employment, should have left far less ammunition around for someone to use against him.

Given that few of the allegations in the article surprised me, the more interesting question is: Why make the move on him now? Who felt this was the time to force him out? I suspect a distinct lack of support from the departing Second Floor may be a key factor in that.

A media expert writes...

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It smacks of a hit to me.

This is a man on a mission, and if he’s taken up residence in his office, that’s why. I don't believe for a second that he’s not working hard. If he’s working on “outside” projects, I’ll bet that it’s stuff he considers important that DEC won’t fund. They’ve tried to push him out for decades, and this is just the latest push.

Far from being “protected from on high,” Ward’s had his staff limited by design, had resources siphoned from his department, and, according to him, has been stuck in the same pay grade since the 1970s. To say his personal finances are in a shambles, then cite income well in excess of his debts, is really cheap, and shows that they’re desperate to discredit him in any way they can, even though they don’t have much—which casts everything they say into suspicion.

Ward has often expressed disgust with the clock punchers in the DEC, and that they lacked real commitment. Maybe his kind of passion offends other state employees. If this stuff were true, and he was just living there, freeloading, it would be contrary to every impression I’ve had of him.

That being said, he does strike me as a Norman Mailer type, so any sort of chauvinism/out of control ego issue would be par for the course.

The key question both commenters ask above—Why now?—is particularly intriguing.

It may simply be that the internal complaints at DEC had reached a point in the bureaucratic food chain where failing to let the news out would play into allegations from Stone’s more conservative critics; so maybe the State decided to leak this info to the press to cover their rumps. But given that most of the complaints are strung out over a period of many years, there doesn't seem to be an obvious catalyst for the story.

The only public controversy of any note over Stone’s recent work was DEC’s refusal to fund his proposed study of downwind mercury impacts from the Lafarge cement plant along the Hudson River—which has an air permit and planned expansion currently under review.

As the comments on the T-U’s articles indicate, the plant’s Ravena neighbors believe that this story was timed to help Lafarge. Barring any hard evidence, that seems something of a stretch, though not out of the realm of possibility. Not every situation like this is a case of follow-the-money or an Insideresque takedown. The paper’s reporters strenuously reject the insinuation that they are being used, but crazier things have been said to happen before, including some involving Odato.

Straightened out?

AFTERNOON UPDATE: The full Stipulation between Scenic Hudson and DEC now can be downloaded by clicking here. An initial reading of the document suggests that many of the settlement’s provisions seem positive as far as the Waterfront planning process goes, as well as any possible future reviews by various agencies (from the Hudson and Greenport planning agencies to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) of a haul road proposal.

However, the document leaves one big question hanging which needs clarification.

On the plus side, the Stipulation states that “the issuance of the Permit was not, and should not be construed to be, an endorsement by DEC of any particular truck route or alternative route to be used by O&G Industries [...] as part of its operations in the Town of Greenport and City of Hudson.” DEC concedes that no coordinated SEQR review occurred related to such a proposal, and that the DEC’s negative declaration “should not be construed to be binding on any other agency with jurisdiction over the activities of the Permittee in or near South Bay, and should not be considered either “a substitute for the permit authority of any other agency.” All of that is excellent.

The one potentially troubling and unclear portion—and this could be a biggie—is a curious statement that the DEC permit “is limited to the pavement of two hundred +/- feet of the causeway in the adjacent area of the South Bay wetland.”

While that provision seems tempered by an acknowledgment that “it does not authorize any other activities in South Bay that would be jurisdictional under the Freshwater Wetlands Act,” it is unclear where this 200-foot stretch of pavement would go, and whether that number refers to the length or the width of the causeway. One assumes it refers to the area near the entrance to Holcim’s desired route off 9G, as evidently was discussed in the original deal with DEC, but that is not spelled out.

(If Scenic Hudson were agreeing to a 200-foot-wide paved area, that would be appalling. But given that such a provision would require extensive filling of the Bay, that seems improbable. The current abandoned railbed is more like 15 feet wide, bordered by some 25-30 or so feet along some stretches of its south side where Holcim carried forth illegal bulldozing, for which it was fined, back in 2004; marshes and open water border much of the remainder.) What’s puzzling is how a 200-foot-length of paving would serve any purpose to either party, as that would extend barely 20% or so across the Bay. Scenic Hudson needs to clarify this matter, as that one line could spoil some very good work on their part to secure an otherwise positive resolution.

The overall effect of the Stipulation would seem to be that the idea of an active industrial haul road is, though not dead, at least on hold pending future decisions and reviews.

ORIGINAL POST: This morning, a State official confirmed a persistent rumor that Scenic Hudson and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation have made a deal concerning the proposed heavy industrial haul road from Becraft Mountain, across routes 9 and 9G, and through the wetlands of South Bay to the Hudson Waterfront.

A representative of the State’s Freshwater Wetlands Appeals Board confirms that the two parties have entered into a “Stipulation of Settlement” which “resolves and terminates the appeal to the Board.” A copy of that document is on its way from the agency.

The big question now is: What were the terms of the settlement?

DEC had issued nebulous “maintenance” permits to O&G and Holcim regarding the proposed haul road. There was little real opportunity for public input, no recognition that there isn’t any pre-existing permitted road in place, and no notice to interested parties that a decision had been reached. Holcim and O&G tried hard to spin this in the press as the final word on the question of bringing hundreds of trucks daily down from the mines and through the Bay.

Scenic Hudson, to its credit, filed an appeal noting that the permits issued were based on false premises and a lack of data about the habitats which would be affected. The DEC tried and failed to have this appeal dismissed.

Now that the mystery Stipulation has been made, it will be fascinating to see the actual terms. Has DEC backed off its hasty and ill-informed decision and voided the permits? Or, have they suspended their endorsement until the resolution of the Hudson waterfront plan contoversy? Or, as happened with the shockingly craven secret deal over the Athens Gemerating plant, have Ned Sullivan and crew sold out the citizenry again?

One hopes that Scenic Hudson learned its well-deserved lesson from Athens, and that this new, quiet agreement will turn out to be a real improvement over the DEC’s reckless behavior up to this point. Word is that the Stipulation will be produced tonight by a Scenic Hudson representative at the Greenport Planning Commission... So stay tuned.

People power

This week, the Columbia County retail landscape will be dotted with stacks of the new environment issue of Our Town, the Claverack-based quarterly. Along with articles by Dave Gargill of Harper’s Magazine and Germantown filmmaker Barbara Ettinger, the issue includes a lengthy piece by Yours Truly, titled “The Bullet We Dodged,” on the occasion of the imminent fifth anniversary of the victory over St. Lawrence Cement.

Rather than delving much into the elaborate strategies, tactics, fundraising, day-to-day labor, organization, legal maneuvering, and other minutiae of this grinding battle, the piece focuses on the role of people power in our against-the-odds success. We were huge underdogs when this began, with most giving us less than a 1% chance of winning. Among those whose contributions are mentioned in the piece are:

Al Cook, Alan Hamilton, Alex Matthiessen, Alex Sagady, Alice Platt, Ally Anderson-Spivy, Andrea Smallwood, Ann Birckmayer, Annie Leibovitz, B. Docktor, Barbara Ettinger, Bob & Monica Mechling, Bonnie Sanders, Bridget Rockwell, Bud Mann, Carole Clark, Carole Osterink, Cassandra Danz, Chet Stark, Chloe Zerwick, Chris Pfister , Christopher Burge, Claire Oravec, Craig Fitt, Cyndy Hall, Cynthia Richardson, Dave Staats, David Kermani, David Rubel, Deb Novack, Deborah Bowen, Diana Jelinek, Dick Donovan, Dick Jenrette, Don & Marnie MacLean, Don Christensen , Elizabeth Nyland, Ellen Thurston, Ellsworth Kelly, Enid Futterman, Fran & Vinny DeGrazia, Frank Aultman, Gabe Miller, Gabi Hermann, George Wislocki, Hannah Hanani, Hannah Williamson, Hillary Hillman, Howard Brandston, Ian Nitschke, Ira Marks, Jay Rasku, Jeff Monkash, Jennifer Arenskjold, Jim Schermbeck, Joan Hintermeister, Jock Spivy, John Ashbery, John Davis, John Isaacs, Kate Kerin, Katy Hubener, Ken McCarthy, Laura Skutch, Lisa Durfee, Lynn Davis, Maiysha Kramer, Martha Lane, Martina Arfwidson, Marty Davidson, Mary Sanchez, Michael Brown, Michael Vertetis, Mitchell Gaynor, Moisha Blechman, Nancy Gordon, Neil Carman, Nicholas Blechman, Pamela Kline, Patrick Manning, Paul Swedenburg, Penny Wheat, Peter Jung, Philip Glass, Phyllis Herbert, Richard Blumenthal, Richard Katzman, Rudy Wurlitzer, Ruth Piwonka, Sally Drummond, Sarah Griffen, Steve Kaufman, Stu Kaufman, Sven Huseby, Tarquin Cardona , Thomas Teich, Tom Mabley, Travis Kline, and Warren Collins.

Though the piece runs well over 7,000 words, this list still barely scratches the surface of the contributions by the thousands of people who took the time to (and the risk of) getting involved, when faced with a fight-or-flight situation, and an adversary prepared to spend nearly $60 million on advertising, astroturfing, consultants, lobbyists, lawyers, payouts and public relations. Frankly it would have been cheaper for them to simply buy the whole City of Hudson, before the controversy spread across the whole Valley and far into New England.

And now five years later, all that herculean effort by so many people has now been put at risk by the likes of Linda Mussmann, Cheryl Roberts and Rick Scalera, with a dangerous plan to reindustrialize the Hudson Waterfront and give SLC’s parent company, Holcim, many of the very same waterfront goodies they were denied back on April 19th, 2005, by the New York State Secretary of State. You can also all about the new struggle at HudsonWaterfront.org.