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Omya's waste application under consideration

December 26, 2005
By Bruce Edwards Herald Staff

A state agency has reversed its previous decision and will consider Omya's application for its marble waste site in Pittsford.

The state's Waste Management Division notified Omya Inc. this month that it will begin a technical review of the company's application for interim certification of its waste site used to store chemically treated tailings from its Florence calcium carbonate plant.

For the past 25 years, the company has been allowed to dispose of its waste, or tailings, in old quarries near the plant without a permit.

Last month, the state initially denied Omya's application citing several violations that could substantially endanger the public health or the environment. Those violations included violations of Omya's wastewater discharge permit as well as a single violation of its air pollution permit.

But the state left open the door to reconsider Omya's permit application provided the company provided proof that it could "demonstrate its rehabilitation."

In his letter of Dec. 16, P. Howard Flanders, director of the state's Waste Management Division, informed Omya that the company had provided sufficient proof that it had taken the necessary steps to "prevent a recurrence of those violations."

The state cited several actions Omya had implemented to prevent repeat violations of its discharge permit. Those steps include developing an integrated contingency plan that addresses the company's storm water and process water discharge systems; a change in procedures to eliminate the opportunity for manual override of measures to prevent spills; hired an environmental health and safety manager; completed an environmental management system certification in compliance with ISO 14001 standards; the state also noted there had been no adjudicated violations of the permit since Feb. 16, 2001 assurance of discontinuance.

Regarding its air pollution control permit violation, the state noted the company had submitted revisions to its monitoring system quality assurance plan and that there had been no adjudicated violations since June 13, 2000.

"In consideration of the steps taken by Omya to address the violations listed above, the Solid Waste Management Program has determined that Omya has demonstrated that these prior violations have been rehabilitated," Flanders wrote.

Omya said its intent is to close the existing tailings areas during the two-year interim certification period, the maximum time allowed under the law.

James Reddy, the head of the company's North American operations, said that during the period the company would develop a plan and submit an application for a roughly $10 million facility to treat and store its future waste.

Omya intends to employ what's known as "paste technology" to treat its future tailings — a technology that the company says would draw out most of the water in the waste, which would then be recycled back into the plant. The remaining waste would be bound in a clay-like substance and stored on a yet-to-be determined site near the plant.

Reddy said the paste could have commercial uses in concrete, neutralizing acid on farm fields or neutralizing acid waste from copper mines. He said the company is working with the University of Vermont on a study to see if the copper mine option is feasible.

A lawyer representing neighbors of Omya's waste site said the he was "encouraged to hear that Omya is definitely closing the pits." But Pat Parenteau of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School expressed concern about the waste that has been dumped for the past 25 years.

"The application certainly doesn't have the kind of closure plan you'd normally see, which would mean we're going to leave the waste on site but in a condition that it won't leech," Parenteau said. "Closure doesn't mean put some dirt on it and walk away."

Reddy said the company is exploring the possibility of siphoning the carbonate waste from the existing holding areas.

"We've been working to see if we can find a way to bring that back into the plant and recover the carbonate out of it, or alternatively to sell it as is," Reddy said. "The existing tailings pile we would certainly like to recover the carbonate out of it or to sell it and we're working on doing both of those."

But Reddy also said that if those options aren't feasible, the existing tailings pose no threat to either the public health or the environment.

"That's what all the data shows," he said. "We've been monitoring them for years … everything is bound up and the water doesn't flow through."

Parenteau, however, said while Omya has done some analysis, what's required is an independent "top-to-bottom" study of the existing waste. The question, he said, is how much of a threat the chemically treated waste poses to nearby residents groundwater and the Otter Creek.

In June, the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic sued Omya in federal court on behalf of several neighbors seeking to put a halt to Omya's dumping. That case is still pending.

The chemical residue includes tall oil, which is used as a flotation agent to separate the tailings from the calcium carbonate product, biocides, which are used as a preservative, acetone, tolune, chloroform and lubricating oil.

Parenteau also said with new mining waste disposal regulations still to be promulgated whether Omya will have to store its future waste in a lined landfill and whether state has the authority to waive that requirement.

"When I hear statements like we're going to close these and we're going to find an alternative location, I get to wondering where on that site could you put a lined landfill and if you're not talking about a lined landfill where is the authority for less than a lined landfill going to come from," he said.

Calcium carbonate is used as a filler or extender in the paint, paper, plastics, food and pharmaceutical industries.

Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com.