Residents have been promised that they’ll be hearing more from official sources today about Wednesday night’s massive fire at PCB handler TCI. (6 pm update: The day has come and gone with no sign of further test results.) This site is also plowiing through a small mountain of technical documents obtained regarding the company’s materials handling, and will be reporting in greater depth on those once the picture becomes clearer.
In the meantime, here are various comments from people on the ground, culled from emails, Facebook posts, published reports and more:
- Patti Matheney of Ghent CANN circulated the news that the “Town Attorney, Ted Guterman, tells us that TCI has a ‘use permit’ to operate in their current location which would allow them to re-build without further reviews from the Town Board or the Planning Board. In a statement issued from TCI executives, they said they plan to re-build.” That statement, from Brian Hemlock of TCI, can be found here as posted at Fox23 News.
- On Columbia County 911’s Facebook page, Michael Masten posted that “That place is full of pcb's” and “that place is very toxic i worked there and we had to change clothin before going home im sure its even worse when its on fire whats the hold up.”
- A reader emails to say: “Greetings from another local. Thank you for your coverage of this fire. I am concerned about disingenuous statements that everything is fine. ... I used to work for CT corporation and can confirm that they are just a legal services company, hired to track incorporation papers, receive legal correspondence, etc.”
- ColumbiaPage has posted its summary of the event, including links to a large must-see suite of photos by Karen Loeffler.
- Mark Josefsburg of Hudson, who studied Environmental Sciences at SUNY Cobleskill, posted on Facebook these questions: “Exactly what kind of exposure are we looking at? Are vegetables from our gardens tainted now? If so...is it possible to clean them? Is the soil in the immediate area going to be tainted? How about the water table? What about farm animals, orchards, field crops and wild game?”
- Josefsburg added this information on dioxins and furans which are an ongoing concern, and said to be the subject of studies to be released today: “Dioxin is taken to mean the family of compounds comprising polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs). Dioxins have never been intentionally manufactured, but form as unwanted by-products in the manufacture of substances like some pesticides as well as during combustion. Dioxins are known to be highly toxic to animals and humans because they bio-accumulate in the body and can lead to malformations of the fetus, decreased reproduction and growth rates and cause impairment of the immune system among other things.”
Lastly, a longtime Ghent resident with a professional background in similar transfer station work writes:
I’ve carefully read your blog, which is really informative, watched the press conference and read every word of the TCI website. Everything on the website is geared to preparing new customers to filling out manifests on the PPM (parts per million) of PCB concentrations, providing a Chain of Custody, listing the company's methods of handling the PCB material and the oil that used to contain the PCBs once it's separated, which landfills it goes to, and etc.
PCBs are really their majority market, if you can judge by their outreach materials. I find it impossible to believe that there was only 1 small container of PCBs within the facility. One of the state representatives commented that they assumed the PCBs had been incinerated in the fire.
I think State and Federal officials are doing crowd management by their disingenuous claims that there were no PCBs in the fumes. No one mentioned the furans that come from burning plastics (all the containment of the chemicals and the covering that melted from the building's siding at a minimum). Burning gas and diesel are also carcinogens. What about heavy metals?
I don’t think Homeland Security makes an appearance, along with HazMat, and every OEM official locally, and high-up environmental state agencies, and the EPA, unless there is expected to be a significant fumes release.
I hope you are able to find the truth out about this fire and that, as citizens, we can impose a more thorough emergency management plan on this county. By law, a company like TCI, must have a 10-mile evacuation plan and community notification. Were you ever invited to a community informational meeting about TCI?
[...] I think we should have all these same officials (from the press conference) to a Town Meeting in the fall and make them be accountable to the community. I think there may be many Toxic Release Inventories in our area, and it would be good to identify them all, learn their inventories, and at least leave a record of their chemical hazards deposited with each Fire Company (most of whom are volunteers and deserve to know what they're up against when they respond to a fire).
We need to make sure the Emergency Management Committee has the number of citizen representatives it must have by law, and that these kinds of facilities come under the required agency inspections.
