Joy Iafallo wants to make a difference, a big difference in the town she grew up in. With spackle and putty in hand, she sees the potential of what a little sweat equity can do for Main Street, Ravena. But, one thing stands in her way: big trucks and lots of them! Iafallo was in the process of rehabbing an abandoned building into a coffee shop when the CAC (Clean Air Coalition) caught up with her vision.
Riverkeeper and Jon Bowermaster visit Coeymans
World-renowned writer, filmmaker, and editor Jon Bowermaster along with VP of Patrol Program, John Lipscomb of Hudson Riverkeeper were kind enough to share this incredibly important message about the Coeymans shoreline with cameos made by our own, CAC director, Barbara Heinzen. Others interviewed for the story include Riverkeeper director, Rebecca Martin, and Riverkeeper staff attorney, Victoria Leung.
Riverkeeper’s mission is to protect and restore the Hudson River through advocacy rooted in community partnerships, science, and law. The organization focuses on three overarching problems facing Hudson River communities like Coeymans: Restoration of the Hudson River ecosystem, protection of New York City’s drinking water supply and improving public access to the Hudson River.
The Hudson River is not your typical river. In fact, most of the Hudson is actually a tidal estuary where saltwater from the ocean combines with freshwater from northern tributaries. This “brackish”, or mixing, water extends from the mouth of the Hudson in NY Harbor to Poughkeepsie, approximately 100 miles.
Because the Hudson River is a tidal estuary, meaning it ebbs and flows with the ocean tide, it supports a biologically rich environment, making it an important ecosystem for various species of aquatic life. For many key species, it provides critical habitats and essential spawning and breeding grounds.
It’s World Environment Day, make it count!
Today is World Environment Day! A day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment.
We all agree that we need to reduce the emissions of CO2 and we agree that cement and concrete account for a major share of carbon pollution globally. We want to see these emissions reduced, but believe that LECCLA needs to be much more specific in what it seeks to achieve and how that is done.
LECCLA, in ‘bill speak’ is an act to amend the state finance law, in relation to provisions in state procurement contracts involving the use of low embodied carbon concrete. What the law would actually do is allow industries to avoid substantive change and encourage the use of solid waste as fuel in cement plants.
Please share your thoughts on Senate Bill S542A with the 63 N.Y. State Senators voting on it as early as this Monday. If you live in Albany, call Senator Neil Breslin at 518.455.2225. Leave a voice mail message urging him that this bill needs substantial improvement before it can come to a vote.
Read our FACT SHEET to learn more.
Read our PROPOSED CHANGES to LECCLA.
Thank you for your support!
Friends in Switzerland, headquarters of LafargeHolcim, publish their findings
We at the CAC are incredibly proud to have friends in Switzerland; writers by the name of Daniel Stern and Ursula Häne, both of who have agreed to let us share their findings in an article published in a weekly newspaper called WOZ in Switzerland last week – home of LafargeHolcim, also known as Holcim. Because the article was written in German, an online service called Deepl was used to translate it into English and reviewed for accuracy. Our many thanks to both writers for helping us in our efforts for clean air here in upstate New York.
PLEASE READ ARTICLE HERE: https://cleanairalbanycounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ClimateChange_Daniel_Stern.pdf
Funding for Article Research
This article was made possible by the research fund of the ProWOZ association. This fund supports research and reporting that exceeds the financial possibilities of WOZ. It is fed by donations from WOZ readers.
Three Plants in Switzerland
Holcim employs 70,000 people worldwide and operates around 270 cement plants and 1,300 concrete plants around the globe. Until recently, the group was called Lafarge-Holcim but the name was simplified at the beginning of May. Sales fell by 13.4 percent last year due to the pandemic, but still, amounted to over 23 billion Swiss francs with a net profit of 1.9 billion. In Switzerland, Holcim operates 36 concrete plants and one cement plant each in Siggenthal AG, Untervaz GR, and Eclépens VD. Last October, climate activists occupied a piece of land near the latter where the company wants to expand its quarry. Police cleared the occupation at the end of March.
A Most Welcome NYS DEC Decision – A Victory for Public Health and the Environment
In early May, the state Department of Environmental Conservation modified the air permit of the LafargeHolcim cement plant in Coeymans (southern Albany County) to prevent it from burning tires. (There are currently only two cement plants operating in New York State, the one in Coeymans and Lehigh Hanson in Glens Falls. Both have demonstrated their interest in burning waste products a strong interest in burning waste products as they are much cheaper than fossil fuels.)
Reportedly, the Lafarge cement plant planned to burn one million tires annually. A local businessman has been collecting tires for that purpose and was actively enlarging the Port of Coeymans on the Hudson River in order to facilitate tire collection.
DEC justified its very welcome decision on the grounds that LafargeHolcim lacks the equipment and infrastructure to burn tires safely. Burning tires is extremely polluting and the cement plant is located across the street from the local public middle school and high school.
Concerned Coeymans residents have waged a valiant struggle to prevent the cement kiln from burning tires. The commitment and vigilance of these residents has been absolutely critical in preventing Lafarge from burning tires.
But tire burning was not the only threat posed by LafargeHolcim. Four and a half years ago around Christmas, environmentalists discovered that Lafarge was in discussion with the state of Connecticut about importing that state’s garbage to burn in its cement kiln. Environmental activists sounded the alarm and Lafarge issued a public denial that it planned to burn waste. However evidence later emerged that the company had lied and was looking into it.
In 2019, the Coeymans Town Board responded to the local outcry against the cement plant’s plan to burn tires, by passing a local clean air law prohibiting the burning of waste. However, later that year, a Lafarge-supported slate of candidates was elected to the town board and supervisor position.
Realizing that the town’s clean air law was not secure, the concerned citizens of Coeymans led a couple campaigns to get the Albany County legislature to pass a county-wide clean air law designed to prevent industrial facilities from burning waste. The County enacted such a law the second time around. However, when the new majority on the Coeymans town board took office in 2020, they took advantage of a loophouse that exempted towns that had their own local clean air laws from the Albany County law. Even though the new administration in Coeymans weakened the local law in order to allow the cement plant to burn waste, such as tires, the County clean air law no longer covered the Coeymans facility.