(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
Town of Moreau Planning Board acting Chair John Arnold, left, discusses the Biochar proposal with Ann Purdue, right, Aug. 25.
The Town of Moreau Planning Board passed the Saratoga Biochar site plan in 4 to 2 vote after a marathon meeting that ran nearly four hours. Ann Purdue and Mike Shaver voted against the plan. About 200 people came to the meeting to voice opposition; 100 of them crammed into the board meeting room during the deliberations.
The approval came with 15 conditions that the board considered and revised individually throughout the night.
The crowd that had been mostly courteous and quiet throughout the entire night yelled at the final vote and told the board they should be ashamed of themselves. One man called the Biochar team “clowns” as they sat against the wall after the vote.
“We still have a long way to go. This is still going to be a challenge,” said Raymond Apy, CEO of Biochar after the meeting. The company still must secure two permits from the Department of Environmental Conservation, and people who are fighting the project have said they will focus their fight there.
“As long as we don’t get stopped somewhere else along the way in this process, we’ll continue with our project,” Apy said.
[Read our coverage of the Biochar debates here.]
The planning board approved a new, $44 million, 34,100 square foot carbon fertilizer manufacturing plant on 5.9 acres at the Moreau Industrial Park at 2 Electric Drive. The facility would be among the first in the nation of this type.
Before the meeting, most people interviewed said they were OK with Biochar itself, so long the original State Environmental Quality Review Act assessment that passed earlier this year was rescinded and a new SEQR review could be made.
"There's a lot of unknowns," about the environmental impact of the facility, said Maureen Jackson echoing what others in the crowd said. "I don't think the town of Moreau should be a testing area."
Near the start of the meeting, board member Ann Purdue moved to rescind the review and drew a second “for discussion purposes only” from board member Meredithe Mathias.
In her rebuke of the original, Pudue focused on the fact that biosolids — the dried product of a wastewater treatment plant that is “fed” into the facility — carry with them potentially hazardous chemicals such as PFAS, a family of tough-to-destroy chemical compounds considered carcinogens. Transporting hazardous materials into the town is against town law.
She argued that the board should redo the review with the help of an independent expert to determine the health effects and other environmental concerns.
However, she received pushback, especially from acting Chair John Arnold and Zoning Administrator Jim Martin.
“They have to meet DEC standards to transport [hazardous materials]. That was made clear from the very beginning,” Martin said, referring to the Department of Environmental Conservation. The DEC allows transport of the chemicals at certain levels.
Beyond the particulars of any single point that Purdue made, Arnold countered that the way to win a second SEQR review would be to show that new information had come to light, that something now available had not been included in the original application. He pushed back on Purdue’s arguments saying that she was not bringing new information to the argument.
“It’s new knowledge, not new to the application,” Arnold told Purdue at one point.
The motion to rescind failed with Purdue the only “yes” vote.
Erik Bergman then moved to accept the site plan with conditions. The board considered all 16 conditions listed on a document shared on the planning board’s website. They included conditions on noise, smell, the exhaust from the factory, truck routes, restrictions on idling trucks and insurance.
[See the documents on the agenda page here.]
The board took each condition individually and kept most. However, Purdue pushed against some of the conditions as unenforceable, and the board at times agreed or made changes. Biochar wanted some of the changes themselves. It was unclear in some cases just what type of testing the company would have to do or what they were testing for.
Clearly, Purdue and many in the audience did not trust Biochar to follow the conditions on their own, nor did they trust the DEC to defend the residents. Purdue’s attempts to put more teeth into the conditions by including outside experts paid for by the company were largely shot down. More than once Arnold told her she was trying to create an independent environmental agency inside the county, and that was “beyond the purview” of the planning board.
“They are the agency we depend on,” Arnold said of the DEC, “They are the go-to government agency.”
A condition that the company carry a $1 billion insurance policy was considered at a lower face value and again shot down because it was not in the purview of the board.
After the meeting, Purdue said she was now a regular citizen who would help others reach the DEC as they consider the two permits they need to proceed: the solid waste management facility permit and the air state facility permit. Still she was disappointed at the outcome.
“We were lead agency,” she said, meaning that the board was the official group to handle the environmental review. “We should have done something more.”
Biochar’s Apy said he felt a little vindicated at the outcome and appreciated the hard work the board did.
“I was impressed with how they managed this meeting and were able to get through it. These conditions are tough. There are difficult and expensive things in there,” Apy said.
Sidebar: The Washington Post ran a story this morning saying that the EPA is now listing PFAS, a broad family of chemical compounds, as “hazardous substances.”