The meeting was with Donald Zee, lawyer for "developers" and
land speculators, and Carver Laraway, who identified himself as the
owner of Tri-City Aggregates. In attendance was me, Larry Becker,
Tom McPheeters, Steve Stofelano, and three Mansion people who I vaguely
recognized but don't know their names.
Zee, of course, is a pro at this sort of stuff, he claimed to have
done this in 45 municipalities, and seemed intent on impressing us
with how much experience he had. Laraway, surprisingly, is experienced
at dealing with neighbors. He kept smiling and eye contacting the
whole time, although he looked a little strained at the end. He denied
having any connection with Tri-City Aggregates of Holly, Michigan,
which is an Inc. instead of an LLC like he is. I find it very hard
to believe that he never even HEARD of an outfit that has the same
name, does exactly what he does, and indeed has been operating in
New York State (among others). Laraway has his fingers in a lot of
pies, he is pretty large. He does project construction, that is,
infrastructure, for "developer" Eli Weiss (sp?) in Colonie,
Guilderland, Bethlehem and elsewhere, and on the new Northway Mall
and Mohawk Mall. He has something to do with landscaping supply,
and operates Canaday Sweepers, which contracts out street sweeping
services to municipalities. And, he already owns an asphalt plant
in Schoharie, an old plant which he bought two years ago. Zee indicated
that applications and impact statements on this Schoharie plant were
filed at the time of this purchase. However, it is interesting that
Laraway simply began operating the plant and apparently made no significant
upgrades to pollution control.
What he has in mind is to produce asphalt for his own use, because
he feels he is paying too-high prices from the suppliers already
in the area, who have, he says, the local market locked up. It seems
that the Schoharie plant is too far away from whatever operations
he has in mind in the Capital District to be cost effective. The
pollution control is a "totally enclosed plant and bag" type,
which Laraway described as a giant vacuum cleaner bag that sucks
up air pollutants. It is, of course, "state of the art." Production
will be done on a "will call demand," which means there
will be no storage of finished product at the site. (It just occured
to me that they will have to store sand, stone and oil on the site,
the materials that are used in production.)
In all the documents they say this will provide 20 jobs, Laraway
said 20-25 jobs. There was a short discussion on where the Hearst
Rag got the 6 jobs figure, which appears to be mysterious. All the
permits (state and city) allow the plant to triple in size, 20 jobs
may be what could happen if the plant gets bigger, and the reality
for now is six jobs. Laraway said, "All my employees make more
than $50,000 a year, including drivers (!), and own a piece of the
company." However, in answer to a direct question, he would
NOT commit to hiring from the local community. "We have some
blacks working for us," he said.
So why does he want to build in the South End? It is zoned heavy
industrial by the Port, and there are not a lot of those around.
There is plenty of infrastructure, roads, rail, etc. but no river
use. Proximity to oil, stone and sand are also important. There's
plenty of oil in the Port, but stone and and sand will be brought
in from 8 miles away. Again, no mention of availability of workforce.
Afellow whose name I didn't catch zeroed in on the truck traffic.
The documents talk about 50 trucks a day hauling finished product
(22 tons per truck). But there have to be empty trucks coming in.
Also, there have to be trucks carrying materials in, empty going
out. "So the truck traffic is actually four times that figure,
correct?" this fellow said. Both Zee and Laraway reluctantly
admitted that this was correct.
Zee very carefully and consistently kept steering the discussion
away from air quality, it became my job to bring it back to that
topic. Whenever air quality questions got specific, both of them
claimed a lack of knowledge and stopped talking. Very slick. For
example, when I asked if the "state of the art" pollution
controls screened out particles less than ten microns, both of them
acted as if that was an obtuse technical question and referred it
to engineers! I asked about the pollutants coming out of the stack,
such as 13.2 pounds of battery acid per hour, 60 pounds of carbon
monoxide per hour, 12.75 pounds of particulates per hour, etc. etc.
etc. they neither confirmed nor denied this, although all this in
the air permit application.
The electricity for the plant will be provided by a deisel generator
that will run constantly, make noise and expel pollutants. So far,
no statements have been filed about this puppy, and I find it hard
to believe that there are no regulations governing this monster.
Apparently, availability of electricity is not a factor in determining
the siting of this plant. Neither Zee not Laraway so much as acknowledged
my questions about this thing. Clearly, this is a weak point that
we need to focus on.
Another air issue was the statement I caught in the documents, "Odor
masking chemicals can be mixed with the asphalt" to kill the
smell. Laraway, oddly enough, was more than happy to explain that
this was usually a pine smell. Leaving aside the unspoken issue of
asphalt odors, what are these chemicals, and how exactly is an artificial
pine smell better than the smell of hot asphalt?
Finally, It appears that Zee and Laraway had two reasons for meeting
with the Mansion neighbors. One is to scope out the depth of opposition
in the wealthiest neighborhood of the South End, in other words,
how likely are they to get sued. The other was to try to generate
a warm fuzzy feeling among the neighbors, or at the very least an
aura of uncertainty. These guys came close to succeeding, but I think
I did a fair good job of keeping the issue on track and subverting
that happy attitude. Let's just keep asking ourselves, how many people
in the South End will this plant maim or kill?
In today's Gazette, there was an item that the American Lung Association,
in a new report, has issued both Albany and Troy a grade of "F".
By contrast, Schenectady got a "C".
-dwvr
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