Resident questions Norlite’s use of mist

Cohoes

Responding to longstanding complaints and worries about dust blowing to a neighboring housing project, the Norlite aggregate plant earlier this summer started misting the site to cut down on the airborne grit. But now a neighborhood activist is worried because the water they are using comes from a pond shown to contain low, but detectable, levels of potentially toxic PFAS chemicals. Norlite workers are getting water from a quarry pond where they mine the shale rock, which is then cooked and turned into construction and road-building aggregate. The pond was found to have low levels of PFOS, a kind of PFAS chemical, when the state last fall tested a number of spots around Norlite for the potentially toxic chemical compound. “Two samples from the quarry pond (waters 5 and 6) both showed 12 ppt PFOS, being in excess of the NY state guidelines for PFOS of 10 ppt for drinking water. If the water is unsafe to drink, it is certainly also unsafe to inhale as mist,” Joe Ritchie, an activist and resident of the neighboring Saratoga Sites housing complex, wrote in a message Monday to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. PPT is parts per trillion.

“It’s kind of alarming,” Ritchie said of the chemical mist.

PFOS, or Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, is a form of PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS chemicals until recently were a concern with Norlite as the plant had been incinerating the chemicals, which are found in some firefighting foams. They were incinerated in the plant’s large high-temperature kiln, which heats the mined shale.

That has since stopped, and incinerating firefighting foam with PFAS compounds is now prohibited in New York.

“DEC received Mr. Ritchie’s letter and is working with our partners at the state Department of Health to assess the issues raised,” a spokesperson for the agency said. They added that they are continuing to monitor dust from the facility.

They added that they require Norlite to monitor PFAS concentrations in the quarry pond. Additionally, they said the Health Department’s maximum recommended exposure levels are based on daily ingestion of two liters, or a half-gallon, per day for a lifetime.

Norlite, in responding to Ritchie’s letter, said he was making “baseless allegations,” and is on a crusade against the company.

“It has come to our attention that a resident of Saratoga Sites who is on a crusade against Norlite is again misusing public resources with baseless allegations and claims that are wholly unsupported by facts or data,” Norlite’s U.S. CEO, Jeff Beswick, wrote to DEC regional administrator Anthony Luisi.

Ritchie had written to Luisi about his concerns initially.

Beswick noted that the quarry pond water is not for drinking.

“No one is drinking this water, and to draw a connection between water that is consumed and mist that is dispersed in the air is, to put it charitably, uninformed,” Beswick wrote.

Beswick also rebutted Ritchie’s complaint about a “smelly mist,” since a state monitor is on site and would have presumably reported that.

DEC in its survey last year noted that the pond is not used as a source of drinking water and does not represent a risk of exposure to area residents.

But they also recommended further investigation for other sources of PFAS compounds in the area.

PFAS-class chemicals, including PFOS, are linked to health problems including cancers and thyroid problems. Worries about PFAS compound in drinking water several years ago prompted an ongoing overhaul of the Hoosick Falls municipal water system; chemicals had seeped into the ground from nearby factories.

Last year’s DEC survey of Norlite came after a group of Bennington College researchers and students, led by anthropology professor David Bond in April 2020, said they found PFAS contamination downwind from the Norlite plant.

The state then did its own study, sampling a number of water sources in and around the plant.

Controversy has continued to swirl around Norlite since news in 2020 that they had been incinerating PFAS-laden firefighting foam, which came from military bases and fire departments across the East Coast.

While the PFAS are no longer burned there, Norlite does incinerate hazardous waste chemicals, such as solvents, to power its kiln.