December 22, 2020 – Referendum petition: The Clean Air Coalition submitted a petition with 254 signatures to Town Hall requesting a Permissive Referendum on November amendments which gutted the Coeymans Clean Air Law. The referendum would allow people to vote on the amendments. The revised Coeymans Clean Air Law now permits tire burning at Lafarge and overrides the Albany County Clean Air Law.
January 14, 2021 – Delay public hearing on the draft Comp Plan. Over twenty people wrote to the Town Board asking them to delay the start of the public hearing on the draft Coeymans Comprehensive Plan set to be held at 6pm on January 28th for half an hour before the Town Board meets at 6:30. The letters said the Comp Plan is too important to be rushed and needs a full debate.
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.
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.
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
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.
This short video, shot and edited by a volunteer sheds light on the determination and support that the residents of Coeymans have to stop tire-burning at a local cement plant. These efforts and that of hundreds of residents will continue throughout the New Year and for as long as it takes to ensure clean air for all who live in Albany County. Please watch and share this video with as many people as you can. If hindsight is 2020, then let’s build on our efforts from last year and continue this fight in 2021~
“I got about 34 signatures. Some people came to my house so it was nice to see so many people wanting to make a difference,” said Sara Pruiksma. In the photo: Concerned resident Joe Tracey waits for his turn to sign the petition.Locals appreciated the Coalition’s care and dedication to secure a healthy environment in a small, hardworking town with a population of only about 7000.
Activism paves the way for a chance to stop tire burning at a local cement plant
They said it couldn’t be done. Between a pandemic, a record-setting nor’easter, and a busy holiday season, the odds were stacked against them. But advocates for clean air were able to secure more than enough signatures to, hopefully, stop tire burning at the Lafarge cement plant.
“Residents we spoke to were a little dismayed to learn that this was still an issue,” said Sara Pruiksma, a new mom inspired to take action on behalf of her baby boy. “We had to explain how their health and that of the environment would be threatened if harmful contaminants were released from burning tires.”
Many neighbors figured that the Albany CountyLocal Law B, the Clean Air Act, that passed with overwhelming support, 32 of 39 legislators in September, was a done deal. They weren’t privy to what the Coeyman’s Town Board had recently passed in November 2020: an amendment to the existing emissions law in Coeymans to free LaFargeHolcim of rules governing the incineration of tires and waste.
“For some of us, this is a matter of life and death.”
That prompted the Clean Air Coalition, a volunteer group of passionate activists, to spring into action. Pruiksma along with local civil rights lawyer, Carlo de Oliveira, Christine Primomo of the League of Women Voters, and several more went to work canvassing the neighborhood.
In less than a week, the group tallied up enough signatures to submit to the Town Clerk the chance at what is called a ‘permissive referendum‘ or the leverage the residents would need to vote for or against the adoption of the town board’s amendments via a special election sometime in the Spring. The law says the special election should happen “not less than 90 days nor more than 105 days after the filing of such petition.”
This permissive referendum will ask all voters in Coeymans if they approve the revised Clean Air law. If the voters say ‘NO” to the revised law, the original, tougher Clean Air Law remains in effect.
“Best gift you can give your lungs this holiday season.”
“We only needed 144 signatures but we got 254. That’s over 100 more signatures than what was needed for a permissive referendum!” said an elated Primomo. “Clearly, people want to know more about how burning waste could affect their health.”
Local videographer Sonja Stark interviewed Christine Primomo in the Village of Ravena parking lot about the petition drive to collect 254 signatures.
Primomo was filmed on camera by a local volunteer delivering the decisive challenge to the Town Clerk’s office two days earlier than expected.
De Oliveira, father of two young girls with a home downwind of the Lafarge smokestacks, urged residents that this matter was one of “life or death” for people with respiratory problems or severe allergies. He said, “if the residents did not act now, it would be too late.”
De Oliveira got 95 people to sign the petition in less than 2 days and quite easily too.
“Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, most people I talked to didn’t even know what the town had done and all were equally concerned.”
Town resident & lawyer, Carlo De Oliveira is concerned about the air quality for his family and the town’s future. He became involved with helping to secure signatures shortly after hearing how the Coeymans Town Board passed amendments to allow waste and tire burning at the nearby Lafarge cement facility. Despite the weather, local artist and new mom of an eight-month-old baby boy, Sara Pruiksma, knocked on dozens of doors securing signatures for a permissive referendum. “We were really overwhelmed by all the positive responses. A few people even gave us treats! That was really sweet – no pun intended!”Christine Primomo and her husband provided their rural home address in Coeymans Hollow as a central location for signers. Grassroots efforts made by Sara Pruiksma and Carlo de Olivera as they reviewed a list of names of residents who voted in the last election.
