STUYVESANT AIR MONITORING STATION TO BE REMOVED

Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP

07-21-10 - A monitoring system that has stood watch over the air quality in Stuyvesant for the past year will be removed from the town in the coming weeks.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation-issued monitor has actually been broken since May, and instead of being repaired will be removed, DEC spokesperson Lorie Severino told ccSCOOP this week.

While town officials and residents had hoped to keep the system, Severino said the system was installed in July of 2009 and has found no indications of air quality issues in the town.

The air monitor was placed in the town in the wake of concerns over air emissions from the Lafarge Cement plant located across the Hudson River in the Albany County village of Ravena.  Stuyvesant is located downwind from the plant, which some have alleged emits high levels of mercury. DEC wildlife pathologist Ward Stone has reported elevated levels of mercury -- as well as lead, zinc, selenium, vanadium and cadmium -- in soil and wildlife around the plant.

Ironically, even when working the air monitor never tested for mercury, as Bertram said DEC could not afford to purchase a mercury air monitoring system. Instead, the monitor measured particulates and common pollutants. 
 
On three separate occasions in the past year, Bertram said the monitor found air quality in Stuyvesant not in the normal range. Severino said that none of the occasions raised concerns with the state.
 
While Bertram said the Town Board had planned to ask the state to leave the monitor in place or replace it with one that measures mercury emissions in the air, Severino said it would be unlikely that a new monitor would be placed in town, given the lack of problems identified over the 10 months the air monitor did function in town.
 
In an email to ccSCOOP, town resident Lee Jamison said the monitor is important and that Stuyvesant residents should not be deemed “expendable.”

She also questioned the timing of the system’s failure, noting that on several occasions this July air quality warnings have been issued by the National Weather Service.

But Severino said there was nothing sordid about the failure of the system or the inaction to repair it. She said it was simply a matter of funding and the state’s fiscal crises.
 
Severino said the agency had not repaired the monitor – or removed it - because no state budget was in place to make repairs.
 
“We just did receive emergency funding appropriations and we will be down in the next couple of weeks to remove the monitor,” she said.