The Spa City’s councilors heard from Moreau residents who have been fighting to halt progress on a biochar facility near residential neighborhoods in the northern Saratoga County town.
Biochar is a carbon-based fertilizer created from the heating of biosolids, what critics call sewage sludge, to more than 1,000 degrees.
Gina LeClair is the founder of the Not Moreau Facebook page, which posts updates to its 1,500 followers, and spoke at the meeting.
Saratoga Biochar’s plans, which involve trucking more than 700 tons of biosolids to the Moreau facility six days a week, do not explicitly go through Saratoga Springs, but LeClair warned that there’s nothing stopping the trucks from coming through the city.
“Maps provided by Saratoga Biochar show the main transportation of sludge coming in on I-90 from Buffalo and then up I-90 from New York City. I don’t know about you, but when I go to the state fair or when I go to Syracuse, I don’t go down to Albany when I’m heading back west, I cut out of Amsterdam or Johnstown, and I come through your community. And there’s nothing stopping these trucks from doing the same thing,” explained LeClair.
Democratic Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi sympathizes with the activists, but emphasized that as of now Saratoga Biochar is not planning on shipping sludge through the Spa City.
“It’s clear that the residents of Moreau have reason to be worried, and I think their concerns with their town planning board and supervisor are valid, and I think Saratoga Springs should be mindful of what is going on there and how it impacts Saratoga Springs’ residents, if these things come to fruition. But, we’re here to support them and we will see what happens,” said Sanghvi.
Debate over the proposed facility grew due to what many Moreau residents contend was a lack of transparency from the Planning Board. The issue also dominated November’s election when residents elected Moreau United Candidate Jesse Fish, a vocal opponent of the proposed facility, by a nearly 3-to-1 margin over Republican town supervisor Todd Kusnierz.
Speaking with WAMC, LeClair said she and other activists are seeking to spread awareness of the environmental concerns linked to the proposed facility to nearby communities.
“We can’t say that other communities won’t be affected. And if that plume – which air generally follows the wind from the west to the east – so that plume can very well go out over Hudson Falls and Fort Edward. And when you look on the map, the people in those communities are closer than many of the people in the town of Moreau. So, it is a—you can’t release emissions and say ‘it only effects a local area.’ And when you consider the exhaust, nobody wants that exhaust next to their homes,” said LeClair.
Saratoga Biochar partner Vice President of Sterling Engineering Andrew Milspaugh said he is confident in the measures being taken in the construction and operation of the facility to protect Moreau residents and the environment.
“It's not necessarily specific to what Saratoga Biochar is proposing to do, it's that they are managing waste at a location that people just don't want it there. And that's, that's a hard thing to combat. Because no matter what you say, if it could be somewhere else, they would say ‘put it somewhere else,’” said Millspaugh.
Democratic Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran spoke in support of LeClair and other activists.
“I am myself not in favor of weighing in on other communities issues. You know, I know that we all get a lot of feedback from a lot of folks who don’t necessarily live here. We don’t appreciate that, comment on your own community is generally my attitude about that. But it’s very clear that what’s happening and what’s impacting, potentially, your community has an absolute ability to impact a ton of communities,” said Moran.
Not Moreau’s presentation coincides with recently revived concerns over truck traffic on residential streets in Saratoga Springs.
The city council unanimously passed a resolution in support of Not Moreau’s efforts.
