Author: Clean Air Coalition

This week, Coeymans Town Board and Supervisor McHugh, just gave us another example of what is wrong with elected officials in our country.   After the Board denied a petition signed by 254 town residents calling the Board’s attention to concerns raised by residents over the Town’s amendments to the Clean Air Act, Supervisor McHugh called petitioners reckless, irresponsible, and thoughtless.  He then “warned” residents not to do it again.  

McHugh’s indignation is because a group of concerned residents managed to gather 254 signatures, within 10-days, to support a petition for a referendum that would allow the people of the Town of Coeymans to decide the fate of the Clean Air Act.  The petition was rejected because New York law gives the power of making and amending laws exclusively to elected officials, and thus prohibiting modifications by referendum.  But McHugh missed the point.  The point was that 254 people agreed to sign a petition, at the height of a pandemic, to show him and other board members that keeping the air we breathe clean is important to a large segment of Coeymans’ residents.   McHugh missed the point because he is still guided by the form of politics that divides us.  If you are not with him, you are necessarily against him.  This type of political philosophy caused an insurrection in our Capitol building on January 6, 2021. 

But why are McHugh and his Board so upset?  When residents called for more time to review the Comprehensive Plan proposed by the Town, he accused residents of being hypocrites.  He claimed that these same residents who are interested in more time to review this proposed Plan are the same irresponsible people getting signatures during the COVID pandemic.   What is Mr. McHugh suggesting?  Is he suggesting that residents cannot be concerned about both clean air and learning more about the Town’s proposed Comp Plan?  It is possible for responsible citizens to worry about more than one issue that affects them at the same time. 

During the public board meeting, Board member Dan Baker called residents’ efforts to keep our air clean  “false propaganda.”  However, air pollution is real.  Most recently in the United Kingdom, experts found that air pollution was a significant cause of death of a child who suffered from severe allergies.   Rather than calling residents names, shouldn’t responsible politicians welcome constituents’ concerns and suggestions?  We are all currently suffering because elected officials at the highest level of our government felt free to disregard science.  We will also suffer if our local representatives choose the same path.

There are many unanswered questions involving the Town’s motives to amend the Clean Air law after only one public hearing.  For example, why did the Board choose to amend the Clean Air Law when the Town’s professional counsel advised it that the law could be repealed?  How do these amendments make the amended law more enforceable than the original law?  How does the amended law make the residents of Coeymans safer?  No politician should take offense to these legitimate questions.    

Aside from calling the Clean Air Coalition names, Mr. McHugh has yet to respond to any of our concerns.  In the era of social media politics, elected officials can simply label those with different opinions liars and propagandists.  We all know where this type of politics will lead us.  

When the Town of Bethlehem was awarded a multi-million dollar Offshore Wind Tower Manufacturing Facility project, Mr. McHugh was the first one to like it on Facebook.  Bethlehem has shown us that it is possible to achieve economic development and create jobs without neglecting our climate and the health of its residents.  This is exactly what Clean Air Coalition members are striving to do.  Instead, the Town of Coeymans is now known as the only town in the County of Albany where tires and waste can be burned.  Does this sound hypocritical, Mr. McHugh?

Contrary to a Board member’s suggestion, we do not owe you an apology for trying to protect our Town.  Indeed, we have a duty to urge the Town Board to respect the opinions of the residents.  After all, this Town Board and Supervisor’s campaign did not promise to allow the burning of tires and waste in our community.  On the contrary, they promised not to repeal the Clean Air Law.

Our petition failed, but the board will be ultimately held responsible for their choices.  It is true that the ballot box is the best response that Town residents can give Mr. McHugh and his team, now that we know that his agenda involves anything but environmentally responsible economic development.  But until then, Coeymans residents must continue to live in fear of the air we breathe.  Those who can afford it, can simply live upwind of Lafarge or even move to Bethlehem where elected officials understand that it is possible to be business friendly and care for the environment at the same time.   

— The Clean Air Coalition

TWO REQUESTS FROM RESIDENTS

COEYMANS TOWN BOARD REJECTS BOTH

Referendum petition rejected

The petition for a referendum was rejected outright on 31 December.  A referendum can only be held for specific reasons laid out in Town law.  Amendments to a Law are not one of those reasons.  The Board could have allowed further discussion on such an important issue and had the authority to repeal the Clean Air law altogether.  It chose not to do either.

The Board claims they never saw the petition, although every Board member received a copy.  They also said the decision to reject the petition was made by the Town Clerk alone.  In fact, the rejection letter was drafted by the Town’s attorney and sent out in the Town Clerk’s name. 

Comp Plan Hearing will NOT be delayed

Last Thursday, 14 January, the Town Board rejected calls to delay the Public Hearing on the draft Comp Plan, scheduled for January 28th at 6pm.  According to the Town’s announcement on the 14th of January, this hearing will last 30 minutes until the Board holds its regular hearing at 6:30 on January 28th. 

At the Board meeting on January 14th, members of the Town Board said they would keep the public hearing open but did not say for how long.  Given their rush to pass the amendments to the Clean Air Law only FOUR days after that public hearing, it is hard to trust their word.  Watch their performance on Facebook.

CLEAN AIR COALITION CONTINUES!
on Tuesday, February 9th, 7pm-8:30pm
First Coeymans Community Forum
ZOOM link to follow soon
_{This online forum will give everyone a chance to quiz knowledgeable people about clean air in Coeymans.}

Check out the new What’s Up Coeymans Facebook page!

Stay tuned and send us the names & email addresses of people who should be added to our email list.   Please tell us if you live in Coeymans or outside the Town.

Ask for a delayed public hearing on the Coeymans Comprehensive Plan

We would like to send this letter to Supervisor McHugh and the Coeymans Town Board.  One of us will also read it out this Thursday night at the Town Board meeting.

Would you like your name to be added to this letter?  The more of us who ask for a delay, the better.  You can just reply to this email and say ‘Yes! I live in Coeymans and want to add my name to this letter.”

Many thanks!  You can watch the Board’s response on Thursday on the Town’s Facebook page.

Dear Supervisor McHugh and Members of the Town Board:

All of us who have put our names to this letter believe that the Coeymans Comprehensive Plan is too important to be rushed.  

That is why the Town Board must delay the public hearing on the Comp Plan for 60 days, until March 25th, 2021.  The people of Coeymans need more time to digest and debate the contents of this important draft.

Thank you. 

This needs to be done before 4pm Thursday, January 14, 2021.
Add your name to this letter by writing to:  info@cleanairalbanycounty.org

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/)