May 21 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Brian Nearing Times Union, Albany, N.Y.



Efforts by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to ban mercury-tainted coal fly ash used by a Ravena cement plant have been bottled up for more than 19 months in a special regulations review office of Gov. David Paterson.

The DEC request to yank permission from Lafarge North America for ash use at its Route 9W plant has been sitting in the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform since October 2008, according to records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Act by the Times Union.

In the, 2008, letter, DEC Deputy Commissioner Alison Crocker asked the governor's regulatory office, GORR, to accept the ash ban proposal by December 2008 to allow DEC to "reduce the quantity of mercury emitted from cement manufacturing facilities."

 On Friday, DEC spokesman Yancey Roy declined comment and referred calls to the governor's office. DEC is considering a renewal of the plant's air pollution permit, which expired in 2006.

When asked for comment, Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook emailed a single-sentence statement: "The regulation is still under review." A message left with GORR was not returned.

The behind-the-scenes inaction on fly ash outraged the leader of a Ravena citizens' group that has been pushing DEC for two years to reduce Lafarge emissions of mercury and other pollution.

"This is something that the state could do tomorrow to improve mercury emissions at Lafarge," said Elyse Kunz, co-founder of Community Advocates for Safe Emissions. "Why is this just sitting there? This lets DEC say they are trying, and lets Lafarge continue doing what they are doing."

Lafarge is the state's second-largest polluter of airborne mercury. Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that causes developmental problems in fetuses and children, primarily entering the body through consumption of tainted fish. Mercury primarily enters the food chain through water, where it can be transformed into toxic methyl mercury, and can poison loons, bald eagles and other wildlife.

Mercury is part of coal fly ash, a fine gray powdery waste left from burning coal at power plants, Considered "recycled air pollution control residue" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the ash has contained increasing amounts of mercury and other toxic heavy metals left over from the burning of coal as pollution rules on power plants have grown stricter.

Ash has been used in cement manufacture in the high-temperature kiln at the Ravena plant since at least 1991, when it was owned by Blue Circle Cement, according to DEC records.

Lafarge uses between 30,000 and 60,000 tons of ash a year, according to a prepared company statement in 2008. Ash comes from the Danskammer plant in Newburgh, the Mount Tom plant in Holyoke, Mass., and the Hudson Generating Station in Jersey City, N.J.

While fly ash is less than 2 percent of the kiln mixture, it causes more than 10 percent of mercury emissions on average, according to tests done by Lafarge in 2008 at the behest of the DEC.

In one of the four tests done, ash accounted for 19 percent of mercury emissions.

"We look forward to the executive addressing this serious health and environmental problem forthwith," Assembly member Robert Sweeney, chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee, said on Friday.

Mercury emissions have been under DEC scrutiny for more than two years at Lafarge, which is across the road from the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk high and middle schools, and about a mile from the Hudson River.

Kunz questioned whether state inaction on fly ash might be tied to Lafarge's employment of high-profile lobbyist Patricia Lynch, a former aide to Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver, who has strong ties to state Democratic officials.

Lynch's firm went to work for Lafarge after June 2008, according to online records from the State Commission on Public Integrity. That was about the time that DEC was moving against fly ash at Lafarge.

"Historically, the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform has been the killing field for good regulations," said Blair Horner, legislative director the New York Public Interest Research Group. He said Lynch, whose company last year was the state's second-highest-paid lobbying firm, is a "hot-wire Democratic lobbyist with a long and deep history."

In November 2009, Deputy DEC Commissioner Val Washington told a panel of state lawmakers looking into mercury pollution that DEC intended to revoke Lafarge's permission to use fly ash.

At the time, Washington called the move "a logical step," adding "Why should the state take (mercury) out of some stacks, just to allow it to come out of others?"

To make cement, Lafarge blends ash with water, ground limestone, bauxite and iron ore. Called slurry, the mix is heated in a kiln to nearly 2,700 degrees to make "clinker," which is then ground into cement.

Fly ash contains alumina and silica, which strengthen cement. Coal plants are eager to give away ash, rather than pay to dispose it, making ash attractive to cement makers compared to costly replacement ingredients like shale or clay.

Cement kilns nationwide have dramatically increased use of ash, from about 1 million tons in 2001 to more than 4 million tons in 2006, according to industry figures.

Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or bnearing@timesunion.com.

As more coal is burned to make electricity, power plants are left with growing mountains of waste ash. That includes fly ash, which concentrates mercury and other toxic heavy metals naturally found in coal. Fly ash topped 71.7 million tons in 2007, up 50 percent from 1993, when the federal government continued to exempt ash from hazardous waste rules to encourage its use by business. In cement making, the amount of fly ash burned has skyrocketed natinwide this decade, quadrupling from a million tons in 2001 to more than 4 million tons in 2006. Critics have faulted the Environmental Protection Agency for not regulating mercury emissions from cement kilns, where high temperatures can release mercury in fly ash out of smokestacks and into the environment.

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