By Joe Hirsch
news@huntspointexpress.com
Six of the seven storage silos at the New York Organic Fertilizer Company on Oak Point Avenue are still out of service, after an explosion on July 21 that hurled fertilizer pellets across a parking lot.
The cause of the explosion is still under investigation. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) says it is waiting for NYOFCo to present its own findings about what caused the blast, along with proposals for ways to prevent future explosions.
The agency said that it may add restrictions to the solid waste permit it issued to the plant 11 months ago. “A modification to the permit is being considered in light of the recent explosion at the facility,” the DEC said in an email response to questions from The Express.
Nevertheless, the DEC renewed NYOFCo’s clean air permit on Aug. 19, saying the new permit addressed residents’ complaints about odors from the plant.
The new clean air permit will “include a new requirement to establish a 24-hour odor response system” along with “new requirements designed to ensure operational efficiency of pollution control equipment and reduce odor,” the agency said in its email.
It added that inspectors did not detect foul odors around the plant the day of or the day after the explosion, but called scattering fertilizer pellets in the parking lot “an unacceptable condition.”
Residents and activists have complained for years that the NYOFCo plant, which processes nearly half the city’s sewage, converting sludge to fertilizer, is the source of noxious smells, particularly in warm weather.
Although no injuries resulted from the explosion, environmental professionals who are monitoring the state’s oversight procedures over the fertilizer plant are nervous more mishaps at the plant are inevitable.
Miquela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, thinks that despite the state’s assurances, residents have a right to be worried.
“The technology is kind of old and it may be nearing the end of its capacity,” she said. “It makes you wonder. Maybe the technology is too overburdened.”
Craytor added that undermanned state regulators may have a hard time ensuring public safety and clean emissions.
“There are always gaps,” she said, adding that “that’s the unfortunate consequence for people who live there.”
A version of this story appeared in the September edition of the Hunts Point Express.