EDITORIALS
Stop the waste
State should clean toxic material instead of trucking it here
Updated: 07/25/08 6:34 AM
What a waste — figuratively and literally.
Plans to transport almost 75,000 tons of toxic waste to a Niagara County landfill, within the Lake Ontario watershed, spurn technology that could first scrub it clean. Because that process would cost more than the state anticipated paying, some 1,500 trucks will descend on the CWM landfill in the Town of Porter, carrying toxic waste from a landfill and former salvage yard north of Glens Falls. The waste contains PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls –which have been shown to cause cancer in animals.
It didn’t have to be. The first bids that New York State sought in this taxpayer-funded project would have separated out the toxic substances at the site, using a process called thermal desorption. But the state got only one bid, and it came in nearly one-third higher than the state had budgeted. It then rebid the project, with the result that only part of the waste will be cleaned, while the rest — the most toxic — will be sent to CWM.
That’s wrong, and it isn’t simple NIMBY-ism. While no community wants this kind of waste sent into its back yard — Western New York included — this isn’t about pushing toxic material off on someone else. It’s about using available technology to render it harmless. It would cost almost $7 million more than the current $22.3 million planned, but the advantages — such as avoiding the risks of transporting toxic wastes and dumping them near the Great Lakes — are significant.
Western New York legislators are fighting this plan.Gov. David A. Paterson and Pete Grannis, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, should step back. New York is in fiscal difficulty, but it still has to do things right. The current plan isn’t.
