Rutland Herald
OMYA foes’ appeal bid is thwarted
May 16, 2002
By DONNA MOXLEY Southern Vermont Bureau
DANBY — One day after a Mount Holly group was shot down in an attempt to change a decision by the Vermont Water Resources Board, the board rejected an effort by Vermonters for a Clean Environment to alter a decision involving OMYA Inc.
Both Mount Holly Mountain Watch and Vermonters for a Clean Environment were denied their requests that the board reconsider its denial that the two groups had legal party status in their respective appeals of water discharge permits.
Mount Holly Mountain Watch, denied Wednesday, was appealing a permit for the Ludlow Village wastewater treatment plant upgrade. Vermonters for a Clean Environment was hoping the board would reconsider its status and allow it to appeal OMYA’s permit to discharge water from its Florence plant into Otter Creek and Smith Pond.
“VCE has failed to convince the Board that it should alter its Memorandum of Decision as VCE has proposed,” reads Thursday’s decision, written by acting Chairman Lawrence H. Bruce Jr. “Therefore, the Board’s conclusions that VCE lacks standing in both its organizational and representational capacities remain in force.”
The board, in denying VCE party status, decided that the group has no members, basing that assertion on the definition of “member” in Vermont corporate law. With that conclusion, the board agreed with OMYA lawyers that the group could not be granted party status because it represented no one.
Without being granted party status, a person or organization cannot take part in many different permitting processes, including those conducted in front of the water board as well as Act 250 proceedings and environmental board hearings.
“It’s like they made up a rule just to kick us out,” said VCE spokeswoman Annette Smith Thursday.
Smith said the board required more of the organization to gain party status than the state water resources rules require. She said the nonprofit corporation has more than 400 members, several of whom testified or submitted statements to the board.
Every time VCE “met their standard, they raised it,” she said.
“We are obviously not happy with the decision to deny us the ability to participate in the only process that we’re afforded,” Smith said. “If that was in the rules we would have set up our organization that way, or we wouldn’t have brought the appeal.”
Smith said she wasn’t sure what the group would do next — it can appeal the decision to Superior Court — but she said the time and money wasted on this process so far might have been better spent on testing the water in Otter Creek, Smith Pond and the public water supply.
VCE appealed OMYA’s permit last year, trying to add back in a requirement that the calcium carbonate producer get state approval before using new chemicals at its Florence plant. The requirement, which was initially in the draft permit, was removed when the final permit was issued.
In its rejection of VCE’s appeal, the water board found that the organization had no greater interest in the OMYA permit than a member of the general public, a requirement for party status. Smith said the members of VCE in Florence would have had a better chance at gaining party status if they haven’t joined the group. She said they had joined the group, however, because they felt as individuals “they had no voice.”
Smith said that regardless of the individual residents of Florence, who should have qualified the group as a party in the application, part of her group’s mission is to promote economic development with minimal environmental impacts, which also should have counted as a legal interest in the permit.
Members of the group with health concerns say they suspect spills of biocides and other chemicals at OMYA are to blame. They question OMYA’s environmental record and wanted the state to exercise more control over the company’s use of chemicals.
Contact Donna Moxley at donna.moxley@rutlandherald.com.