Rutland County leaders roll up their sleeves

Vermont Business Magazine, Jun 01, 2005 by Barna, Ed

Danby happened to be the home of Annette Smith, founder of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, born of the clash over the proposal, eventually withdrawn, to run a natural gas pipeline through the area to feed two power plants. By the time Smith and her cohorts were done, six towns had joined an anti-Omya compact.

Omya president James Reddy said in October that the company had made arrangement to meet its needs from other sources.

But by then, VCE had become involved with Pittsford residents who had been concerned about Omya's practice of dumping tailings from its Florence plant in an abandoned quarry there, and were strongly opposed to their plan to add a 32-acre waste storage area nearby. In November, the Vermont Law School's Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic sent a Notice of Violation to Omya saying they would file a suit in federal court if the company did not stop what they alleged was "Illegal dumping" of marble wastes contaminated by processing chemicals.

Omya has consistently denied that the marble waste threatens health or the environment. But the Department of Environmental Conservation said in November that the chemicals were a potential threat, and late in April, Jeffrey Wennberg, once the head of Rutland County's solid waste district but now the commissioner of the DEC, reaffirmed that Omya would have to apply for a permit to create the disposal facility.

The department said Omya was to have filed a report on its waste disposal, according to its 1977 Act 250 permit, but never did - an omission they decided did not justify enforcement action. But they said Omya's own tests showed levels of chemicals like acetone in-their groundwater that were "at levels of regulatory concern," and Wennberg said the new facility would mean "approximately 40 million cubic feet of tailings material containing thousands of tons of TOHI (tall oil) will be placed in the tailings facility."

That controversy spilled over into Environmental Impact Statement hearing on whether a rail spur between the Middlebury quarry and the Vermont Railway tracks more than two miles away might be a way to help Omya and other potential freight users (Standard Register, JP Carrara) while sparing Route 7 and Brandon the impacts of so man), heavy trucks. One of the most vocal complaints was that the state shouldn't be spending so much money on one company (not true, VTrans said), especially one that was allegedly violating its permits.

The rail spur will be discussed later with other Rutland County transportation initiatives.

At this juncture, Omya did something no one would have predicted who had not closely followed the rail spur concept's history: they partnered with an environmental organization. CLF Ventures, a branch from the Conservation Law Foundation, is now a paid consultant helping to investigate the marble waste situation, find a solution, and try to meet community concerns.

As an advocate for the environmental benefits of more rail use to lessen dependence on the highways, the Foundation had already been one signer of Memorandum of Understanding through which Omya pledged to pay the main share of the rail spur's costs if it were constructed.