Moreau Biochar battle, meeting Monday 7/18

By Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer

A tense fight over the proposed Saratoga Biochar facility rages on in Moreau.

The next town Planning Board meeting is Monday, July 18, at 7 p.m.

The minutes say there will be “discussion and review of the resolution prepared by the Town’s Attorney Karla Buettner” for Saratoga Biochar Solutions.

Board member Ann Purdue, Esq., told The Chronicle “I believe the draft is going to be a proposed authorization of, or approval of, the site plan.”

The facility, which would be located in the Moreau industrial park, would truck in “biosolids” and heat them up with “pyrolysis” to create “a carbon fertilizer.”

Ms. Purdue said biosolids are “basically dewatered sewage.”

Saratoga Biochar CEO Ray Apy said they are “what comes out of a wastewater treatment plant, not what goes into it.”

Some Moreau residents have expressed concerns over the environmental safety of the project.

Mr. Apy is adamant that the facility has been thoroughly vetted and is safe.

He also downplayed the number of concerned residents. He said, “Moreau has got about 15,000 residents, and I think somewhere under 200, probably about 150 have gone as far as to sign a petition and less than 25 have been outspoken.”

Ms. Purdue is just as adamant that the project needs more evaluation.

But at the June 20 Planning Board meeting, her motion to start the process to hire an independent consultant did not even receive a second.

Ms. Purdue said she was surprised. “I do think that an independent review, advice from a consultant on what the impacts of this project might be and what the risks are, is a prudent course to take,” she said.

The Chronicle has made multiple calls to Karla Buettner, attorney for the Moreau Planning Board, all unreturned.

Ms. Purdue was the only Planning Board member who responded to The Chronicle’s inquiries.

Mr. Apy said he believes the Board’s time to bring in an outside consultant “passed quite some time ago.”

He said the planning board “…did the state environmental quality review work themselves. They chose to be lead agency, that’s their decision.”

Ms. Purdue, an attorney, says the Planning Board “can still rescind their SEQR negative declaration, they can still seek an independent review of the matters relative to the environmental impacts of the project.”

Ms. Purdue said the technology is “interesting” but that it is unproven, particularly in terms of “PFAS,” which she called the “forever chemical.” (PFAS are Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances.)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website says, “Scientific studies have shown that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.”

When asked, Mr. Apy said, “PFAS is typically resident within any biosolids, but is typically at very low trace levels.”

He said, “We take that material and we treat the PFAS, we get rid of it.”

“It’s not a forever chemical, if you get it hot enough,” he said. “That’s the key, is thermal treatment, you have to get it hot enough to break the fluorine-carbon bonds.”

Ms. Purdue contends, “The jury is out on the effectiveness of the process.”

She cited a January 2021 EPA report that said pyrolysis could potentially destroy PFAS, however “this mechanism, as well as evaluation of potential products of incomplete destruction, remain a subject for further investigation and research.”

Mr. Apy is confident that his facility would be safe and environmentally sound, by necessity, he said.

“When it comes to what comes out of the plant’s air stack, or how much noise it makes, or if it smells nasty, if anything like that happens, that’s going to be permit violations, and that’s going to shut us down.”

“So we have to do something that doesn’t allow those things to happen,” he said.

Mr. Apy insists there will be absolutely no odor generated from the plant, or the trucks bringing the “biosolids “in.

“Our process…end to end, it is designed to trap, contain, and treat odors.”

“It’s in a negative air pressure building. So we’re always pulling air into the building, we untarp the truck, we dump it into a pit in the ground…All the ambient air from the building in the receiving area goes into our air treatment system…”

“We’ve got an odor guarantee from one of the largest producers of industrial air treatment systems in the world,” Condorchem, he added.

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