YouTube video posted by firefighters onscene
Reports from the TCI of NY fire have repeated the reassuring claim that only one small drum of PCBs and a limited quantity of mineral oil were onsite at the time of the massive blaze.
Previously, report such as Tuesday’s Catskill Daily Mail article stated that “officials said the blaze began when a drum of PCBs, about 20,000 gallons of mineral oil and trucks somehow caught fire.” Other assurances from officials and the company have characterized the amount of PCBs onsite as small, and in low concentrations of 50 parts per million (ppm) or less.
But news reports from the past 24 hours paint a different picture. The Columbia Paper on Thursday includes an inventory said to have been supplied by TCI to the New York State DEC of “materials that may be present” in the building in their Falls Industrial Park Road facility in Ghent. That inventory includes:
- “9 drums of PCB debris/oil”
- “2 drums of PCB containing oily water”
- “Hazardous waste PCB oils (50-449 ppm PCBs)” [quantity unspecified]
- “6 PCB bushings with oil”
- “10 55-gallon drums of non-hazardous PCB mineral oil (<50 ppm PCB)”
- “127,000 gallons of non-hazardous PCB containing oil (less than 50 ppm PCB within 16 large tanks”
Also inventoried are “60+ full transformers” and a “500-galon diesel fuel tank.” The Columbia Paper also says that a second company, Power Substation Solutions (PSS) was storing sodium, oil, nitrogen tanks and diesel on site, but the company has not yet been reached by EPA.
All told, that’s a great deal more than one small drum of PCBs and 20,000 gallons of mineral oil.
Meanwhile, The Albany Times-Union’s James Odato has obtained “records that showed some 50,000 pounds of PCB-containing materials and oils moving from the Ghent complex this year… The regulatory reports for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation show that TCI reported eight transactions involving about 50,000 pounds of transformers, fluids and other materials containing PCBs, including big shipments of petroleum oil or other liquid containing levels of 50 parts per million to 500 ppm, which is considered a hazardous concentration.”
The T-U article includes the same inventory as The Columbia Paper, but adds that “the company also reported having transported 2,700 pounds of ‘solid waste that exhibits the characteristics of ignitability’ this year.” A former company employee, Fran Vecellio of Kinderhook, is quoted at length in the article downplaying the severity of the fire.
Walter Hang, a prominent opponent of hydrofracking who also runs an environmental assessment firm, calls in the article “for a study of the toxic components in the soot because of the potential that PCBs went up in flames.” Neighbors of the facility interviewed by this site say that a visiting DEC official declined to take samples of oily clumps of material which fell on their decks, cars, lawns and into their pools—and were told instead to just wash or scoop these up. More on that soon.
