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Editorial/OpEd |
November 18, 2003 |
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Political Will Can Stop the Plant
More than a year ago, this page urged Gov. George Pataki and his environmental conservation commissioner, Erin Crotty, to put an end to plans to build an enormous new cement plant on the east bank of the Hudson River just south of Hudson, N.Y. Since then, the mills of bureaucratic procedure have continued to grind exceedingly fine, as they have since the construction of this plant was first proposed. It has been some two and a half years since St. Lawrence Cement completed its application to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Nearly every significant aspect of the plant's impact must be adjudicated before a final decision can be reached. The bureaucratic landscape changes slowly, but it does change.
But certain basic facts about the proposed plant and its majority shareholder, Holcim, have not changed, and as a result, the opposition to it only grows as time passes. The new plant would be an enormous eyesore - an industrial city - in a region increasingly dependent on cultural tourism and in a county that is prospering compared with counties where cement plants already exist. The St. Lawrence cement plant would unleash a plume of pollutants endangering everyone downwind, including residents of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. And it would yield, by St. Lawrence Cement's own assessment, only one new job because its Catskill plant would close. To those basic facts, we would also add the fact that Holcim, a Swiss company, has been repeatedly fined for safety and environmental violations at its North American plants.
What has prevented the construction of this plant so far is the orderly operation of state environmental laws and determined resistance from residents and from government officials in states that lie downwind. But to kill this plant dead will take political will. Governor Pataki has taken the environmental preservation of the Hudson River to heart. And he has taken the initiative of intervening directly on behalf of the environment. It is time for him to intervene directly again.
See related New York Times editorial, The Hudson at Risk - October 7, 2002. |
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