by Carlo A. C. de Oliveira
It is not uncommon for local residents to get together when faced with the failure of town, state, and federal agencies to protect them. In 2014, residents of Flint, Michigan, a sprawling city, learned that their water supply had been contaminated with harmful pollutants emitted from local industries resulting in the death of many of its residents. In 2015, the problem hit much closer to home. Our neighbors from Hoosick Falls, New York, also learned that their water supply was contaminated with Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), a carcinogenic chemical released by a local manufacturing plant. In Flint and Hoosick Fall, the local residents relied on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect them, and when the EPA failed to protect them, it was already too late.
A similar trend is developing in the Town of Coeymans, New York. However, the residents want to make sure that they don’t have the same fate as Flint and Hoosick Falls. In order to understand what is happening in the Town of Coeymans, it important to discuss the Town’s Clean Air Act passed in 2019.
In late 2017, Town of Coeymans legislators learned that Lafarge/Holcim, a multi-billion dollar international cement manufacturing corporation with a plant located immediately across from the middle and high schools in the Town, planned to burn waste originating from 50-70 towns from Connecticut. Lafarge/Holcim also planned to burn tires as a source of energy for its plant.
Elected officials learned from various experts that burning tires mixed in with coal significantly increased emissions of cancer-causing pollutants, such as Dioxins/Furans (D/F), Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), Lead, PCBs, and Chromium (VI), among other harmful pollutants.
Federal and State laws expressly permit a county, city, town or village to adopt more protective air pollution laws that are not inconsistent with federal and state laws. For example, states and local municipalities may require air pollution to be monitored continuously throughout the year, while federal air pollution regulations only require a once per year pre-scheduled stack air monitoring test. Some experts have criticized federal air monitoring regulations as a “beauty contest,” where the facility being monitored is given advance notice to look the best on the day of its monitoring test.
Backed by the evidence presented to them, Town of Coeymans officials enacted the Clean Air Act in March 2019 in order to create clean air standards to minimize the burning of hazardous waste in the Town of Coeymans. In addition to providing strong pollution protections for the Town, The Clean Air law allowed the Town of Coeymans to generate revenue from fines issued to violators and permitted Town residents to personally sue facilities failing to follow the emission monitoring, disclosure and control requirements. In September 2020, the County of Albany passed its own local clean air law, “Local Law B”, which provided similar environmental protections set forth in the Town of Coeymans law to all county residents.
However, there continues to be those in the Town of Coeymans who believe that it is unfair to burden local industries with measures necessary to protect the environment and the health of its residents. Like officials in Flint and Hoosick Falls, these local officials believe that the EPA and its regulators will protect the residents of every rural town in the United States. In November 2019, backed by local industries such as LafargeHolcim and the Port of Coeymans, these local officials swept the local elections and took control of the Town of Coeymans local government.
These officials campaigned with the promise that they would not repeal the Town’s year-old Clean Air law. However, these officials were well aware of a loophole in New York’s environmental conservation law, which permits cities, town, and villages within the county to be exempt from the County law protections if they pass their own law. These elected officials had the option of repealing, amending, or ignoring the existing law. Repealing or ignoring the law would not have resulted in any adverse change. This is because a repeal of the law would result in the continued protection of residents of the Town under the County’s clean air law. However, these newly elected officials used the loophole in the law to unanimously vote to amend the Clean Air law on November 23, 2020. The amendments removed critical protections in the law against the burning of hazardous waste and tires, which are not permitted in other towns within the County of Albany. These amendments shocked many because they allow industries, such as LafargeHolcim, to profit to the detriment of local residents’ health.
The Board’s decision on November 23, 2020, was done after only one public hearing and very little notice to town residents struggling in the middle of a pandemic. As a matter of comparison, this same Board held four separate public hearing to address the issue of how many chickens and livestock could be raised in the hamlet. Before the vote on the amendments, Supervisor McHugh stated that the public misunderstood the amendments and that only “a handful, less than ten residents of our town” opposed the amendments.
This is where the Town of Coeymans differs from Flint, Michigan and Hoosick Falls, New York. Following the adoption of the law, a group of concerned residents, local professionals, and other concerned citizens from neighboring towns formed the Clean Air Coalition. They decided to petition the Board for a public referendum to allow residents of the Town to vote on whether the amendments to the Clean Air law should remain in place. In a matter of two weeks, the Coalition members and local residents knocked on their neighbors’ doors, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and after an historic snow storm, to collect signatures in support of their petition. The residents were able to gather 254 signatures in support of their petition, which was filed with the Town Clerk on December 22, 2020. The Coalition’s intent was to postpone the amendment to the Clean Air law from going into effect until the residents of the Town could learn more about the consequences of these amendments to them and to vote on whether such amendments should take effect.
Unfortunately, the Town Board rejected their petition for a referendum denying residents the opportunity to decide the fate of the amendments via a special election. As a result, the Town of Coeymans is now the only town within the County of Albany where hazardous waste and tires can be burned in spite of the County’s clean air law prohibitions. Since the amendments to the clean air law went into effect immediately, LafargeHolcim can now add the burning of tires to the waste it is already burning in the town. This is alarming especially because of the data that shows that burning of waste is extremely harmful to Town residents and the environment.
We have all seen the type of irreversible harm that can result when local officials take the interests of industries ahead of the interests of the people they are supposed to protect. The City of Flint, Michigan and Hoosick Falls, New York, are the most recent examples of what happens to local residents when their representatives chose to rely on less restrictive Federal regulations as opposed to creating greater protections for their people. The residents of the Town of Coeymans, through the Clean Air Coalition, have vowed to continue to fight for clean air in our town. We will continue to share information with local residents and work with our local, state, and federal representatives to pass legislation to protect other Towns in New York from becoming the next Flint or Hoosick Falls. The Clean Air Coalition believes that the air we breathe is too important for us not to fight for it. We hope you will join us in our fight.
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1 Frequently Asked Questions: Albany County Clean Air Law (http://www.energyjustice.net/files/ny/AlbanyCountyCleanAirLawFAQ.pdf)
2 42 U.S.C. §7416; see also 42 U.S.C. §6929; New York Conservation Law §19-0709
3 August 13, 2020 (https://coeymans.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-08-13-Public-Hearing-Local-Law-Chickens.pdf)
September 10, 2020 (https://coeymans.org/2020/08/28/notice-public-hearing-on-proposed-local-law-livestock-chickens-in-the-hamlet-sept-10/)
September 24, 2020 (https://coeymans.org/2020/09/15/notice-public-hearing-on-proposed-local-law-livestock-chickens-sept-24/)
October 15, 2020 (https://coeymans.org/2020/10/30/notice-adoption-of-local-law-12-of-2020-farm-animal-and-fowl/)
