Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer
The Clean Air Action Network of Glens Falls announced it has sued the Moreau Town Planning Board, Saratoga Biochar Solutions and its CEO Raymond Apy.
In a press release, CAAN contends that new information should cause the planning board to rescind its March declaration “that the project would have no significant environmental impacts.”
Mr. Apy, contacted by The Chronicle, said, “It’s going to get dismissed. She [Tracey Frisch] doesn’t stand a chance. Everything, nearly everything that she states in the complaint, and also, by the way, in her press release, is wrong.”
“It’s just a delay. That’s all it is,” he said.
CAAN said that in “a revised air permit application to the NYS DEC in June, it stated the facility would release PFAS chemicals, a fact previously denied by Saratoga Biochar.”
Mr. Apy vehemently denies this.
“There’s not a single reference to that in the records submitted to the town of Moreau or to the DEC. We have never stated that we will emit PFAS,” he said.
He said they will “remediate” PFAS by destroying them at high temperatures, and any that survive will be captured in an “advanced Air Treatment System.”
Mr. Apy says Biochar has gone above and beyond in the permit process.
“The 16 conditions that the Town Planning Board included in our approval — they’re pretty stringent,” he added.
“If we can’t comply with odor, noise, truck traffic, emissions controls, DEC compliance — the town itself has the right to shut us down,” he said.
CAAN, on the other hand, says the project was not properly vetted.
It said that the planning board should have forced Biochar “to produce an Environmental Impact Statement, detailing all the ways in which the project could impact the community and environment…”
The Clean Air Action Network says the EIS would have given the public “multiple opportunities to challenge the findings and comment on their concerns.”
Tracey Frisch, CAAN chair was quoted, “The interim planning board chair person told me that in his 18 years on the Moreau planning board, no applicant has ever been required to do an Environmental Impact Statement.”
“Such a track record suggests that the planning board has not been using all the tools at its disposal to protect the best interests of the community. Not only is the planning board failing the people of Moreau; it is also breaking the law.”
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