Posted on 11/06/2005 11:06:17 AM PST by Libloather
Vermont may sue to stop tire burn
November 6, 2005
By Darren M Allen Staff Writer
MONTPELIER — If New York environmental officials choose to disregard Vermont's opposition to plans by International Paper Co. to burn up to 72 tons of shredded tires at its Ticonderoga, N.Y., paper mill for a two-week test, Vermont will likely take the matter to court.
Gov. James Douglas and his administration, in cooperation with the Vermont Attorney General's Office, are prepared to exercise every legal avenue at their disposal, the governor's press secretary said last week.
"Gov. Douglas has asked the Agency of Administration to include a substantial appropriation in the fiscal year 2006 budget act for the sole purpose of pursuing our legal options in opposition to the potentially toxic tire burn," Jason Gibbs said. "The Attorney General's Office is looking into all of our options."
International Paper hopes to burn shredded tires to generate electricity for its manufacturing plant.
The potential legal action is a continuation of Vermont's two-year battle to thwart the company's plan to conduct a two-week test burn. The threat comes as New York environmental regulators anticipate hearing from hundreds of Vermonters opposed to the burn at the first public hearing on Wednesday. New York-based experts, citizens and environmental regulators will also testify.
The potential legal action is a continuation of Vermont's two-year battle to thwart the company's plan to conduct a two-week test burn.
The threat comes as New York environmental regulators anticipate hearing from hundreds of Vermonters opposed to the burn at the first public hearing on Wednesday. New York-based experts, citizens and environmental regulators will also testify.
Vermont has no official standing in the case, even though officials and residents from both sides of Lake Champlain have been weighing in on the matter since fall 2003. There's no guarantee that the 10 busloads of Vermonters who plan to converge on the gym in the Ticonderoga Armory Community Center will sway New York regulators. The officials conducting the hearing don't have to listen to Vermont's point of view even though the tire burn would take place only hundreds of yards across Lake Champlain from Addison County.
"In my mind, the biggest impact will be in the large numbers of people who will show up and miss their dinner hour to be there," said Brennan Michaels, a member of People for Less Pollution, a group that has organized a convoy of five buses to ferry people to the meeting.
Retreading History
International Paper's plan to use tires as fuel for its giant boilers goes back nearly a decade. In 1997, the plant — the largest employer in Essex County, N.Y. — conducted a one-day test burn.
The results weren't satisfactory to the plant managers or opponents, including Vermont's congressional delegation, and plans for another test burn were scrapped.
Company officials in 2003 again applied to conduct another test, this time over two weeks. The plant's managers intend to show during the test that pollution levels will not exceed those set by state and federal laws and that using thousands of tires in their fuel mix won't foul their boilers.
For months, the plant managers insisted the New York Department of Environmental Conservation was about to approve their application. Those months eventually turned into years: A draft permit to conduct the test burn was finally issued last month.
But before the draft can be turned into an actual permit, two public hearings and a federal Environmental Protection Agency comment period must pass. It will be January, at the earliest, before tires can be shredded, shipped to the plant and used as fuel.
But if Vermont officials and ordinary residents living in the counties adjacent to the paper mill have their way, not a single shred of rubber will enter the plant's boilers until the company spends an estimated $8 million to install a so-called electrostatic precipitator, a piece of equipment used at every other International Paper mill that burns tires for fuel.
"We certainly hope that New York will listen," said David Carlson, a director of the Middlebury-based People for Less Pollution. "We're just hoping that if they are going to burn tires they will insist that it is done safely and in an environmentally appropriate manner. The sense I get is if there is a big turnout of people that might have an impact."
Hundreds of Vermonters have turned out to protest the test burns several times in the last two years. The company has invited opponents, including Carlson's group, to meetings, and says it has listened and made changes.
"We have listened to comments from elected officials, from the New York DEC and Vermont's Agency of Natural Resources and from citizens," said plant spokeswoman Donna Wadsworth. "It has brought us to where we are today, with a very vigorous protocol for this test."
But the company says it will not install an electrostatic precipitator before the trial burn, although Wadsworth recently said that if test results show the device is necessary, the company would consider it.
Douglas and other Vermont opponents say the electrostatic preciptator needs to be in place before the test burn. Douglas has written to Gov. George Pataki and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., imploring them to intervene.
Pataki and Clinton both support the plant's testing plans.
Assigned talking points
Wadsworth said representatives from both politicians' offices will testify Wednesday. In addition, officials from the union representing most of the plant's 700 workers will testify, as will some of the mill's employees.
They will be armed with talking points supplied by the company in a memo. "Speakers … please use the following information to develop a statement in your own words," the memo said.
Among the points they have been asked to make:
The project is highly important to the Ticonderoga Mill.
The environmental benefit to the public and the economic importance of this project to International Paper and to the stability of the region make good arguments for proceeding.
Millions of used tires accumulating in every state are a serious health and safety threat.
The Vermont opponents have talking points of their own, and they, too, will be delivering a consistent message.
"We must conduct ourselves in a professional manner. A sort of calm intensity. No shouting. No tempers," said a draft of what People for Less Pollution will be telling the hundreds of Vermonters riding the group's buses to Ticonderoga.
"We must be respectful, as workers of I.P. see our cause as a threat to their jobs. This is, of course, not true. The installation of an electrostatic precipitator would contribute to the longevity of the plant," the draft said.
The group's rationales don't differ greatly from the arguments Douglas has made for two years.
"If IP continues to refuse to install an (electrostatic precipitator), and if the New York Department of Environmental Conservation refuses to require them to do so, I will stand with my fellow Vermonters and explore all available options," Douglas said in his most recent letter to Clinton. "I can assure you that this is a very serious issue for those of us who live downwind of the IP facility.
"The winds blowing east will carry the emissions from the IP plant across beautiful Lake Champlain, over the fertile fields of Addison County, the Green Mountain National Forest, and ultimately the Connecticut River and into New Hampshire."
Hearing Protocol
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation will take comments at the hearing Wednesday, which runs from 3 to 6 p.m. then from 7 to 10 p.m. The department also will accept a transcript of a hearing to be conducted by Vermont officials on Nov. 15 in Middlebury.
New York officials promise that Vermont's input will be considered.
"The department's permit process specifically provides for public comment opportunities," said Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the department. "Any comments will certainly be considered by the department during our review."
For the plant, that review is crucial. International Paper hopes to replace up to 10 percent of its current fuel mix — which is largely No. 6 fuel oil — with shredded tires, a move that could shave as much as $4 million a year off its energy costs. Wadsworth said the company is committed to being environmentally friendly, but is not willing to consider spending millions on pollution control equipment until after the two-week test.
But the review is viewed as crucial for Vermonters living across the lake as well.
"I don't think they can ignore the view of the governor of Vermont and of hundreds of vocal Vermont citizens," said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. "It's not a done deal yet. We are going to do everything we can to reduce threats to public health."
Contact Darren Allen at darren.allen@rutlandherald.com
I'm know the guy who is the president of the company who owns the technology.
He is a capitalist to be sure and a big donor to conservative groups (and my alma mater). But he, like me is an environmentalist and this technology addresses some important concerns - a significant portion of landfill is tires - there is great energy stored in tires and much work has been done to extract it as cleanly as possible.
I don't know how much is public so that's all I'm gonna say is I'm way more environmentally conscience and educated than the average American and I this is a very good idea. While Vermont may seem like an odd place to start there is a very logical reason to start in the Northeast corridor - that where disposal costs are highest and thus the technology will become economical there first.
That mill can't stink anymore than it does now. Burning rubber might even be an improvement.
I'm an environmentalist and a conservative. If this technology works, I'm all for it. If not, I'm against it. I'm sick of being downwind from all those power plants spewing pollutants in the Ohio Valley that have been weakening and killing our forests in the Northeast. But I'm also sick of knee-jerk envirofreaks.
From a completely different angle, I get a certain pleasure from seeing hillary fighting with her own base over this.
What the environmental wackos don't understand is that they are actually doing a great service to the environment by burning these tires. A tire in rubber form left abandoned in a landfill does greater harm to the environment than burning them to make energy does. Burning tires is a highly effective and environmentally safe way to recycle tires. The only problem is the environmental wackos think that burning a tire will harm the environment. The process in which it is done is so re-fined that is does little to any harm to the environment, but you can't explain that to the wacko environmentalists. They should call is recycling tires instead of burning tires, and they would immediately be for it.
Then build yourself a nuclear plant and send your old tires to Arizona. We use them to pave roads, and we're starting to run out of them. More tires - please!
Do you know anything of the effort to use chips of old tires as a leachate bed for septic systems? I believe in the Carolina's they are having good luck with it. The right kind of bacteria like it better that gravel.
At least that's the way I understood the report I saw.
Why couldn't this be done in downtown Burlington?
Yes, I believe tires are used to pave roads in parts of the East, too.
Let the market solve this. It's a question of whether tire burning plants are willing to pay more for old tires than asphalt plants--or if it's not profitable, it's a question of which will charge less to get rid of them.
"Do you know anything of the effort to use chips of old tires as a leachate bed for septic systems? I believe in the Carolina's they are having good luck with it. The right kind of bacteria like it better that gravel.
At least that's the way I understood the report I saw."
I have not heard of that one - I customer who is an investment banker that owns part (or maybe all of a company) that is making park benches out of the stuff... they aren't pretty but they are nearly indestructible.
I will concede that the process is not as clean as natural gas or even clean coal but coal isn't lying around or clogging up landfills - nor are people paying big money in the northeast to haul away coal...
And if you never even do a trial (which is what this is) how is the process going to improve? Would coal burning be as clean as is now if we had simply banned coal in 1970? No, but heating oil would be $4 a gallon.
Give Vermont to Canada and get rid of them!
I suggest that Bush use the power of emminent domain and turn the whole state of Vermont into a nuclear and toxic waste dump. Then when it is full we can give it to Canada.
Dean was Governor there. Compared to the toxic air he released, a few tires burning won't even be noticed.
From the New York Times, December 5, 1989:
A Ghost of Manson Reappears In the East
Special to The New York Times
http://www.squeakyfromme.org/media/ghost.htm
BRIDPORT, Vt., Dec. 3—From her bedroom window, Blue Collins can look across Lake Champlain to see the white cloud rising from the International Paper Company mill in Ticonderoga, N.Y.
It is a sight that fills Ms. Collins with outrage, the same outrage that drove her 15 years ago to write 3,000 letters to corporate executives, warning them that their polluting ways could lead to random acts of violence and even assassinations.
Blue Collins was known as Sandra Good then. She was the roommate of Lynette Fromme, the woman who attempted to kill President Gerald R. Ford, and a member of the family of Charles Manson, the Rasputin-like figure who killed and masterminded the killing of nine people.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said the letters found in her apartment contained death threats; she says they were simply warnings. "I never threatened anybody," she said. "I was simply warning them of the potential consequences of their behavior. Anyone who would threaten to take care of the heads of all corporations would have to be a total nut."
Whichever is true, she served 10 years of a 15-year sentence in Federal prison for conspiring to mail the letters and for threatening the same people in a series of radio interviews. In 1985, she settled in Vermont, dropping the name Good to shield herself from an aggressive press.
But now she has shed the cloak of anonymity she has worn for more than four years,wrapping herself instead in anger over the paper mill and its effect on Lake Champlain.
It is an anger so great that Miss Collins and her housemate, Earl Parsons,refused the $12,000 they would have received when the company recently settled a suit with lakefront landowners on the Vermont side for $5 million. In the settlement, which she protested in front of the Federal courthouse in Burlington, the company admitted no wrongdoing in polluting the lake and is protected from any future legal action by landowners. Her protest was photographed and led to the revelation of her identity.
Until she took up the cause of the lake, Ms. Collins, a sandy-haired, wiry woman who is now "40-something," lived here quietly, without a car or a checking account, growing vegetables and flowers to sell locally. In the winter, when the gardens have been harvested and the flowers have been dried, she spends her time walking and thinking.
Now she hitches rides to the newly formed Lake Champlain Steering Committee, authorized under a joint agreement among Vermont, New York, and Quebec to clean up the lake. At those meetings, she takes copious notes and confronts officials with whom she disagrees.
"I am amazed by the leap in environmental awareness I see around me," says Ms. Collins, who is known to her friends as Blue, a nickname given to her by Mr. Manson, who is serving a life sentence. "I got locked up for saying these things; 15 years ago, people considered this fanaticism."
But at times, she wonders if even her natural allies want her help. Noting that some of her telephone calls to the Lake Champlain committee, an advocacy group, have not been returned, Ms. Collins wonders "whether my past associations are embarrassing" to committee members.
"I doubt it," said Ginger Dowling, the administrative assistant. "We're interested in getting all the help we can to save the lake."
At the moment, Ms. Collins has two important goals. One is to save the earth.
"I will hook up with anybody who is sincere and has guts," she said.
The other is to be reunited with Charles Manson. In 1985, she had planned to settle near him in California until state authorities prevented it. When her 5-year probation ends in December 1990, she said, she plans to go to California, where he is still serving his sentence.
"Charles Manson is the most enlightened human being I've ever met," said Ms. Collins. "He never lies. That is the big attraction of Manson. He never lies.
"The Manson family's issue has always been pollution, but the press buried it, pandering to the public's taste for vicarious thrills," she said. "Charles Manson never murdered anybody. The media mangled the Manson thing so badly it would take another trial—with cameras in the courtroom this time—before people will ever know the truth.
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