Fertilizer plant must hire engineer to monitor air quality
By Joe Hirsch
news@huntspointexpress.com
Local advocates are guardedly hopeful that new requirements imposed by the State Department of Environmental Conservation will put an end to the intolerable smells that come from the NYOFCo fertilizer plant on Oak Point Avenue, blanketing Hunts Point.
The state agency issued a new solid waste permit to NYOFCo, the New York Organic Fertilizer Company, that requires the plant to employ an odor response monitor, and to install alarms and do a better job of maintaining the plant.
In addition, trucks that bring sludge from sewer plants citywide will no longer be allowed to line up outside the plant. Under the new guidelines, deliveries must be better coordinated. The area where trucks can dump their load of sludge will also be restricted.
Sustainable South Bronx, The Point, and Mothers on the Move have been fighting for new guidelines aimed at curtailing odors. But while the local groups expect the new requirements to help improve air quality in Hunts Point, some have been disillusioned by the lengthy political process, and remain anxious about uncertainties in the permit process.
In a written statement, a spokesman for DEC said the agency “plans to strengthen the Solid Waste Permit through a Department-initiated modification, which is not yet ready for release, but will be released later this fall.”
The spokesman added that NYOFCo will have an opportunity to request a hearing if it wishes to challenge the proposed modifications.
Recalling that a year ago, advocates opened negotiations with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, Miqela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, called the long delay “fairly frustrating.”
Craytor thinks the new permit will help, but that it is only a partial solution, and that the delay in finalizing conditions is taking a toll.
“It doesn’t even address the economic and psychological impact it costs workers and residents in this section of the Bronx,”
Craytor said, adding that the DEC had declined to include a number of conditions her organization and other groups had called for.
The new permit requires the hiring of a professional watchdog to report potential hazards at the plant as they occur, including conditions that could lead to foul odors. But the local groups worry that NYOFCo may exert undue influence over the monitor’s decisions because the company will pay the monitor’s salary. The DEC insists the monitor will have to answer directly to it, and notes that hiring is subject to their approval.
The local groups are pressing for a bilingual monitor to be based in the community somewhere outside the facility in order to ensure objective monitoring. They are also pushing DEC to ensure the odor watchdog is a professional engineer, or under the regular supervision of an engineer.
The groups say their anxiety stems from indefinite wording in the permit, which allows NYOFCo several more months to define the role of the new watchdog and present it to the state for approval, after which the company can take further court action if the state objects.
When asked for reaction to the new permit, a spokesman for NYFCo’s public relations firm, Geto & de Milly, responded with an email statement from NYOFCo, saying, “The New York Organic Fertilizer Company will continue to cooperate and work with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and members of the Hunts Point community to ensure that the requirements and the spirit of the permit are adhered to.”
In addition to the operating permit, the DEC is developing a revised air permit that will soon be released for a 30-day public comment before becoming final. The federal Environmental Protection Agency will also review that permit, since it is issued under both New York State and federal law.
The DEC’s action “vindicates what we have been saying all along,”
said Thomas Assefa, environmental justice organizer for Hunts Point based Mothers on the Move, a plaintiff along with several members of the organization in a lawsuit filed this summer by the national environmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We’re going to continue with the lawsuit to get them to stop emitting their noxious odors,” Assefa said.