LEGISLATURE: No go on the PCBs

By Mark Scheer<br><a href="mailto:scheerm@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Mark</a>
Niagara Gazette

July 22, 2008 10:48 pm

— Niagara County lawmakers are attempting to throw some roadblocks in front of 75,000 tons of contaminated waste bound for the Town of Porter.
Members of the Legislature unanimously supported a resolution that “strongly” encourages the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop a safer alternative plan for handling PCBs the agency plans to move from a waste site in Warren County to the CWM Chemical Services landfill in Porter.
“It makes our image as a county undesirable,” said Legislator Dennis Virtuoso, D-Niagara Falls. “We all saw what happened with Love Canal. We’re still suffering the effects.”
The DEC is under orders from the federal government to clean up an old General Electric operation in the Warren County community of Queensbury and transfer the waste by truck to Niagara County. Under the DEC’s proposal, an estimated 74,600 tons of a total of 149,200 tons of hazardous waste from the site would be hauled to CWM.
The Legislature’s resolution characterizes land disposal of hazardous waste as the “least preferable method” of managing such material and suggests that New York should not add hazardous waste landfill capacity in Niagara County or anywhere else in New York. The move comes just days after lawmakers in Erie County went on record as opposed to the expansion of CWM.
As an added deterrent, Niagara County lawmakers also took the first formal step in a process that would allow the county to place a PCB importation tax of $200 per ton on any material trucked across county lines under the DEC’s plan. Lawmakers directed the county attorney to prepare a home rule message that asks state lawmaker for permission to implement the tax which would be used to cover the county’s cost for public safety and infrastructure needs related to management of the hazardous material.
In other matters, the Legislature:
• Accepted a $2 million payment from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency to cover the amount the agency borrowed from the county back in the 1980s to create a revolving loan fund to assist area businesses. By law, the money must be returned to the county account from which it was originally taken. Majority Leader Richard Updegrove, R-Lockport, said members of the Republican-led Majority eventually plan to set the money aside to help reduce the county’s property tax rate come budget time.
“It is the position of my caucus that these monies will be returned to the taxpayers,” he said.
n Supported a resolution directing County Manager Gregory Lewis to hold off on filling the position of director of the Department of Homeland Security until after the November election. Members of the Majority caucus requested the move, arguing that the county may have a new sheriff after the election and that person should have a say in which candidate is chosen for the Homeland Security Director post.
• Appointed Christian Peck to the position of county public information officer. Peck, a former associate with the polling firm, Zogby International, will coordinate public relations efforts for the county for a salary of $39,500 per year.
• Declared the former Mount View Health facility as surplus property that is no longer required for public use. The move clears the way for the county to begin soliciting purchase offers for the site which closed as a health care facility on Dec. 31, 2007.
• Approved a $1.5 million bond issue for Niagara County Community College’s Hospitality and Tourism Center and the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute in Niagara Falls.