Lead CPWG Chair Dereth Glance, who is the Executive Program Director at Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Clean Water Network Board Treasurer, was recently appointed by President Obama to be a Commissioner with the International Joint Commission at the Department of State.
Local Officials and CPWG Members Tour Ottawa River Site.
November 28th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up
Nov, 28 2010
A number of local officials from various groups including Town Councilors Bill Davern and Mark Kolinski visited the Ottawa River site in Toledo, Ohio which has many similarities to the project headed to Wastebed 13 in Camillus. The Ottawa River site is about 1500 feet from residents with a similar composition of sediment, although a much smaller scale.
DEC Press release on Wastebed closings.
November 24th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up, Environmental
Nov, 24 2010
The DEC has issed a press release detailing the settlement with Honeywell to close waste beds 9 – 15.
“This is a good settlement for the environment and for the people of Central New York,” said DEC Regional Director Kenneth Lynch. “It not only mandates the closure of the waste beds but also sets forth a plan for reclaiming the land using a „green remedy.‟ Further, Honeywell is obligated to fund a wide range of environmental benefit projects that will address ongoing issues and improve recreational opportunities.”
Honeywell agrees to spend millions to cap waste beds, try to control mudboils, build boat launch, add fishing areas.
November 17th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up, Environmental
Nov, 17 2010
Honeywell and NYSDEC have reached agreements on many items
There is more to this agreement than closing the 670 acre wastebed. Some other items include;
- Allowing fishing in Nine Mile Creek for at least 5 years,
- Pay Camillus up to $50,000 a year for six years for engineering fees,
- Build a boat Launch
- Address the mud boil issue
Start of Construction Activities with the Sediment Consolidation Area (SCA) and Water Treatment Plant.
September 6th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up, Local News
Sep, 06 2010
Honeywell is scheduled to begin work to prepare wastebed 13 starting Sept.6. The main areas affected will be Gere Lock Road and Horan Rd. Contrustion and trucks will will run 7am to 5pm Monday-Friday.
Mobilization and initial construction activities such as fence repair, equipment deliveries, and site mobilization are underway. Starting the week of September 6, the following 2010 construction activities will begin:
Site Preparation and Clearing – Road upgrades, surveying and above-ground site clearing.
Water Treatment Plant Preloading – Placement of clean fill material on the footprint of the future water treatment plant area to achieve local soil compaction and expedite settlement prior to construction of the actual building and installation of equipment.
Water Treatment Plant Building Foundation Preparation – Construction in support of the foundation for the water treatment plant.
SCA Construction and Instrumentation – Berm construction with clean fill materials, partial placement of the composite liner system (clean gravel drainage layer, clean low permeability soil, and geomembrane liner), limited excavation in the wastebed material for the sump area, and management of construction water.
This work is detailed in the Onondaga Lake Water Treatment Plant Preloading and Sediment Consolidation Area 2010 Construction Work Plan, which is available online
You can read the rest at the DEC site.
The full health and safty plan on for preloading and construction is available at the towns site. http://townofcamillus.com/documents/1211.pdf
In a letter to the EPA dated July 29th, Sen. Schumer, Gillibrand and Rep. Maffei ask EPA to delay Wastebed 13 plans for 6 months in for time to look at “green technologies” in dealing with the sediment.
“One only has to attend any town meeting or forum to understand the emotions this project engenders among residents”.
The entire document is attached but the above statement stuck as odd. None of the above officials have ever attended one of our town board meetings ever – regardless if it was about Wastebed 13 or the SCA. Mr. Maffei did attend a portion of the EPA’s meeting on 7/8 where the EPA and DEC stated that they had looked at the “Green” proposals and determined they were ineffective, inappropriate or not scaleable to this situation. They also stated the proposed SCA was safe for all residents and therefore no compeling reason to look at boutique solutions.
In July, Rep. Maffei and Sen. Gilibrand have co-sponsored a bill will take control of the Onondaga Lake Clean up project away from the DEC and Army Core of Engineers and local towns and give it to the EPA as oversight with Themselves, The Cty of Syracuse and The Onondaga Nation a seat at the table.
So if they believe in the EPA that much and the EPA says it is safe – why the letter requesting a delay the planned August Construction and delay it past November when it would be harder to build?
Oh, wait there are election in November… Naw our representatives wouldn’t use electioneering to play on the emotions of the town, would they?
Anyway, give it a read for yourself.
EPA HHRA of the SCA Summary Available.
August 2nd, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up
Aug, 02 2010
For those who could not attend the EPA has released a summary of frequently asked questions compiled from the July 8 public information session on the Human Health Risk Assessment for the Sediment Consolidation Area at Wastebed 13.
It is available for download on EPA’s website hhra_qa080210.pdf
The document has 32 of the questions submitted by attendees and repsonses given by the EPA.
EPA’s Human Health Risk Assessment presentation.
July 22nd, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up
Jul, 22 2010
EPA’s Human Health Risk Assessment presentation regarding Wastebed 13 and the SCA project that was given July 8th at the public meeting in the Martha Eddy room is now available for download on the agency’s website at. It is a large file to download, but worth the read if only for the maps.
Here is the Direct link to the presentation. and this is to all the documents
What will Wastebed 13 look like?
July 15th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up
Jul, 15 2010
YNN Has a video of some of Waste Bed 13, and comments from Ken Lynch of the DEC and Camillus Ward Councilor Bill Davern.
After attending the EPA meeting explaining the HHRA.
July 13th, 2010 Posted in DEC Lake Clean Up, Environmental
Jul, 13 2010
Approximately 100 people attended the EPA meeting at the fairgrounds on 7/8/2010. There were several members of the DEC, EPA, and Honeywell on hand to answer direct questions about every conceivable topic, some highly technical and some not, but all relative to the to the recent EPA human health study of the Waste bed 13 sediment disposal system.
The meeting was very informative and provided a unique ability to directly question the engineers of the system and the people who wrote the HHRA. Some have more than 20 years or experience working with and designing systems exactly like the one proposed for the Onondaga Lake Project. The power point presentation may be made available to the public soon but there were a couple points of note that seemed interesting enough to pass along, even without the presentation to reference.
The most interesting is that the main determining reason for removing the sediment from the lake is not because of a direct human contact risk, but rather because chemicals like mercury and PCB’s “bio-accumulate” in the food chain. This means the higher up the food chain one goes, the higher the concentration would be (i.e. if guppies eat some mercury and can’t rid it, a larger fish eats 100 of those guppies and their mercury content, and then that fish is consumed by an even bigger fish which is then consumed by a human, the human eats the cumulative mercury content of all those fish). Therefore, you have to remove the PCB’s, mercury, etc, from the food chain in order to mitigate that ultimate risk to humans. The actual concentration numbers of toxins in the sediment is surprisingly low, but it’s the potential for accumulation in the food chain that is dangerous. For example, the levels of PCB’s in the lake are about 0.53 parts per million, compared to the 1.00 part per million considered acceptable for residential soil or the roughly the same odds as being struck by lightning.
If you were to breathe in everything at the waste bed for 350 days AND come in contact with the sediment for 45 days straight, the odds go up to about 7 in one million; roughly equivalent to being killed in a dog attack or asteroid impact.
The actual risk to individuals in the area is exponentially less as neighborhoods and parks were farther away from the testing boundaries. This led the EPA to decide that NO adverse effects would be expected from the entombment of sediment at the Waste Bed 13 location.
To put it in perspective your children are and water are almost 100% likely to have chemicals from fertilizer and pesticides in their systems from lawn applications. The danger of exposure from waste bed 13 borders on zero. Now that is something to get concerened about.
(“By-products of the insecticide chlorpyrifos were found in 93 percent of urine samples taken from children ages three to 13” – “Studies of major rivers and streams have documented that 100 percent of all surface water samples contained one or more pesticides at detectable levels.” ) reference
The DEC representatives did say that they are currently in negotiation to close the additional waste bed sites in Camillus and that they had no plans to bring any other sediment to the area from the lake or otherwise, except some being considered from the Willis Avenue area. This sediment would only come if the Waste Bed 13 project was still pumping sediment at the time they are ready to move the sediment from the Willis Avenue area and there is no further information available on that as the project is in it’s early stages.
Monitoring of the waste bed system will be nearly live, internet based, and accessible to the public.
They also indicated that because of the previous 40 years of waste in the area, building residences/schools on the site will never happen however, once the waste beds are capped the repurposing of the land as ball fields, hiking trails, a bird sanctuary, or other type of recreation area is likely and encouraged.
For more information please see:
New York State DEC/Department of Health Freqently asked questions regarding wastebed 13.
Human Health Risk Assessment
Town Engineers response to the HHRA.