Archive: Opinions

Milliken Creek and local domestic water wells are contaminated by coal ash from the Cayuga Power Plant.  Or they are not.  It depends on who you ask.

Power plant officials say they monitor pollution from the landfill and mitigate problems they find.  Nashville-based environmental consultant Mark Quarles told the Tompkins County Planning, Energy and Environmental Quality Committee Wednesday, that the creek and local wells are contaminated.

I attended the meeting, and was deeply concerned about some aspects of it.  If true, Lansing residents could be being poisoned by drinking their own well water.  If not true, it is just another cynical attack in a campaign to close a local business.  it's hard for a layman to tell.  It appeared to be a case of 'preaching to the choir' in the sense that a number of county officials on the committee have actively opposed repowering the Cayuga plant with natural gas and have publicly stated many times they want it closed.  Quarles' message certainly resonated with them.

And there was some confusion.  While Quarles never said that he or his team had done testing themselves, it was easy to think so as he presented his case.  At the end of the meeting County Legislator Martha Robertson pressed him to clarify the exact origin of the data.

"Have you actually taken measurements of water in wells?" asked County Legislator Martha Robertson.

"A couple of samples have been collected from at least one of the home wells," Quarles said.

"You've taken a couple of samples from one well?" Robertson pressed.

"Perhaps one sample from one well," he replied.  "This is all their (Cayuga Operating Company) data, not our data.  This is data taken from their annual reports."

Quarles was convinced that the landfill is leaking coal ash into the creek.  He stopped short of saying that any of this pollutant is making it into Cayuga Lake.  But he said that nearby homes with wells water are probably polluted.  He cited a rumor that the power plant bought a home that's well was polluted, and since they now owned the property they could say that any pollution was confined to power plant property.

My home gets its water from a well, so you don't have to convince me of the importance of keeping the groundwater safe.  But my takeaway was probably different from most people's in the room.  Any statistician will tell you that you can take any set of statistics and draw contradictory conclusions from the numbers.  So I didn't take Quarles' conclusions at face value.  But it would be equally naive to take the power plant's interpretation at face value.

Quarles recommended that Tompkins County take an active role in monitoring the site and influence the DEC and EPA to ensure adequate investigation and permit conditions.  He urged the County to make sure plant owners provide adequate funding for long term care of the landfill and mitigation of contamination that might escape the site.  And he urged the County to hire an advocate/consultant.  That is a perfect example of what governments are supposed to do: tangibly make people's lives better.  It would minimally reassure residents that they are safe, and in the worst case scenario it would help repair any damage caused by seepage.

The County should be involved, and it should hire a consultant.  But it should not hire Quarles' firm, because that would be another case of preaching to the choir, not an unbiased study of land conditions around the power plant.  Quarles has an impressive and lengthy resume that includes work he has done for Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, two outside organizations that have aggressively challenged the Cayuga plant's repowering plan.  They continue to fight to have the plant shut down permanently.  So Quarles did not convince me that his version of the coal ash story is true.

But he did convince me that his recommendation to get independent data and interpretation is the right thing for county officials to do.  I am not saying that I don't trust Cayuga Operating Company to self-monitor their landfill.  But with the level of concern in Tompkins County about coal burning and its byproducts, I don't think it is unreasonable for the local government to monitor it independently as well.

But it won't be worth a single cent of taxpayer money unless an unbiased, independent consultant is hired.  Nobody wants our groundwater to be contaminated.  But I don't want to be told it is if it isn't.

One of the qualities that has impressed me about Robertson, even when we disagree, is that she is a data driven person.  She always asks for the facts before deciding on how she will vote.  She was the only county official in the room Wednesday that demanded clarification on the data.  The entire legislature should take a page from her book if they decide to move forward with monitoring the power plant.  They should hire a consultant who doesn't care beforehand what the result of the testing will be.  There will always be people who scream 'unfair' when governments do something.  A truly independent environmental consultant will go a long way toward satisfying residents on both sides of the power plant controversy.

v11i36