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Air quality monitor awaits activation
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| An air monitor belonging to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation awaits electrical connection recently in its position adjacent to the Stuyvesant Town Hall. The unit will monitor particulate matter in the air emanating from the Lafarge Cement Plant in Ravena. (Robert Ragaini/Hudson-Catskill Newspapers) |
By Bob Green
STUYVESANT — After nearly three weeks on a palette in the parking lot of Stuyvesant Town Hall, an ambient air quality monitor belonging to the Department of Environmental Conservation is expected to receive electrical service this week.
“We are currently waiting for National Grid,” said Town Supervisor Valerie Bertram, who added that the time lag was not entirely unexpected.
Following installation and calibration by technicians, a period of at least 60 days will be required before meaningful results can be acquired from the device. “Then we’ll see what happens,” Bertram said.
The monitor was requested from DEC by the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, Assemblyman Tim Gordon and others after statistics released last year showed the Lafarge Cement Plant in Ravena to be near the top of the list of sources in the state of airborne mercury, a known neurotoxin.
The first hints that DEC had a unit in mind for deployment in this area came last June, when Donald H. Spencer, regional air pollution control engineer for DEC Region 4, talked about the history and current practice of testing for air pollution with the county Environmental Management Commission.
Columbia County’s last air monitor had been removed from Germantown in the 1990s. Spencer said repeatedly that monitoring was expensive and that monitors had to be placed only where they could be expected to add value. “The reason the monitors were taken out is because they were reading so low. We did it with a clear conscience,” he said of the Germantown site.
Communities compete for DEC’s four “temporary” units, which can cost $100,000 per year to operate, Spencer said. He described a unit that was located in Cohoes. It acquired four seasons of readings and found no smoking gun. “The readings track closely with Albany, they aren’t that far apart,” he said at the time.
Spencer said the unit in question is a particulate monitor and “does not do mercury.” The DEC was experimenting with two leased ambient mercury analyzers, sited in New York City and Rochester, he said.
That is likely to leave many people unsatisfied. After years of pressure from states and environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency recently agreed to begin regulating mercury emissions from large cement plants, and mercury is likely to loom large in negotiations for renewal of the plant’s already-expired Title V Air Permit, as well as in the SEQRA process connected to Lafarge’s proposal to modernize the plant to a “dry” manufacturing process. The new design is intended to cut energy use and emissions at the plant in half.
Airborne mercury becomes concentrated in fish, resulting in health advisories against consumption of certain species by children and women of child-bearing age in many of the state’s waterways. Noting the toxicity of mercury in even the tiniest doses, Gordon challenged Lafarge to go much further.
In a meeting with company officials at the legislative offices last year, he implored them to “cut in half, and then in half again,” and at least some of the plant’s neighbors have said that is also not enough.
“We are currently waiting for National Grid,” said Town Supervisor Valerie Bertram, who added that the time lag was not entirely unexpected.
Following installation and calibration by technicians, a period of at least 60 days will be required before meaningful results can be acquired from the device. “Then we’ll see what happens,” Bertram said.
The monitor was requested from DEC by the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, Assemblyman Tim Gordon and others after statistics released last year showed the Lafarge Cement Plant in Ravena to be near the top of the list of sources in the state of airborne mercury, a known neurotoxin.
The first hints that DEC had a unit in mind for deployment in this area came last June, when Donald H. Spencer, regional air pollution control engineer for DEC Region 4, talked about the history and current practice of testing for air pollution with the county Environmental Management Commission.
Columbia County’s last air monitor had been removed from Germantown in the 1990s. Spencer said repeatedly that monitoring was expensive and that monitors had to be placed only where they could be expected to add value. “The reason the monitors were taken out is because they were reading so low. We did it with a clear conscience,” he said of the Germantown site.
Communities compete for DEC’s four “temporary” units, which can cost $100,000 per year to operate, Spencer said. He described a unit that was located in Cohoes. It acquired four seasons of readings and found no smoking gun. “The readings track closely with Albany, they aren’t that far apart,” he said at the time.
Spencer said the unit in question is a particulate monitor and “does not do mercury.” The DEC was experimenting with two leased ambient mercury analyzers, sited in New York City and Rochester, he said.
That is likely to leave many people unsatisfied. After years of pressure from states and environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency recently agreed to begin regulating mercury emissions from large cement plants, and mercury is likely to loom large in negotiations for renewal of the plant’s already-expired Title V Air Permit, as well as in the SEQRA process connected to Lafarge’s proposal to modernize the plant to a “dry” manufacturing process. The new design is intended to cut energy use and emissions at the plant in half.
Airborne mercury becomes concentrated in fish, resulting in health advisories against consumption of certain species by children and women of child-bearing age in many of the state’s waterways. Noting the toxicity of mercury in even the tiniest doses, Gordon challenged Lafarge to go much further.
In a meeting with company officials at the legislative offices last year, he implored them to “cut in half, and then in half again,” and at least some of the plant’s neighbors have said that is also not enough.
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