The Ones to Watch
Metroland
Volume 30 - Number 39 - September 27, 2007
A Metroland roundup of some of the high-profile people who see to it that the media always have something interesting to report
Compiled by Metroland staff
Eliot Spitzer rode the wave of prodigious victory to the Capitol in 2007, campaigning the entire way that his administration would “change the ethics of Albany.” Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany District Attorney David Soares have dedicated considerable resources to their Public Integrity Units, jumping into the fray of the day’s high-profile ethics scandals.
Currently, the “Troopergate” scandal, which has consumed the media for months, highlights perspicuously the politics-as-usual nature of Albany: Powerful state Sen. Joseph Bruno (R-Brunswick) is caught up in allegations of misuse of state helicopters. But before the dust settled on the accusations, he managed to shift the weight of scandal onto his fiercest political opponent, Gov. Spitzer. Two investigations later, it would come out that neither man appears to have committed a crime. Yet, if the media frenzy surrounding the rather banal Troopergate is an indication, the public is fed up with corrupt politicians and is ready to see some heads roll.
In an effort to help, Metroland has put together a list of the people at the heart of some of the more egregious allegations of corruption and misdeed. As Albany independent candidate for the 4th Legislative District Jose Lopez would say, these men appear to “sit at the same table that corruption sits.”
Joseph Bruno
New York state senator (R-Brunswick) and Senate majority leader
Alleged Crime
Widely suspected of political kickbacks; the FBI has been tight-lipped
Background
What can be said about Sen. Joe that hasn’t already been uttered, scribbled, or angrily slurred? A true American classic, the scrappy onetime pugilist pulled himself up by his bootstraps from humble beginnings to secure a long-held seat at the table of power in New York state. His critics are quick to claim that he runs Rensselaer County like a fiefdom, protecting his allies-run-amok and crushing his opponents. Nothing goes down in this county, they say, without the old man’s approval.
In political life, Bruno boasts an adeptness for the bob and weave; his one-two combinations landing more than a few knockouts. His masterful gamesmanship is most recently evident in the months-long series of investigations stemming from the so-called “Troopergate.” When allegations broke that he had used state helicopters to travel to and from New York City for political events, it was shaping up to be a PR calamity. Though his travels were not illegal, they were definitely questionable.
Dogged by extremely public battles with the new, feisty governor, Eliot Spitzer, Bruno took the opportunity to slap down his nemesis, and shifted the onus of scandal onto the new governor’s shoulders by exclaiming that the Spitzer administration had used the New York State Police to spy on him. The state attorney general’s office investigated and found that neither men had committed a crime. And now, even after Albany District Attorney David Soares has cleared Spitzer of any wrongdoing, Bruno’s Senate has moved forward and voted itself subpoena power to continue its own investigation into the Spitzer administration. The Brunswick Bruiser is nothing if not tenacious.
Proving harder to dodge for 78-year-old Bruno, however, is the FBI investigation that came to light late last year. Though the senator claims the feds are only interested in his “outside business interests,” all eyes have turned to his onetime business partner and friend, Jared Abbruzzese.
Bruno, it has been alleged, took personal gifts from uber-rich entrepreneur Abbruzzese in exchange for state grant money. Although the FBI has not said what it is investigating regarding Bruno, Abbruzzese himself has become the target of a state lobbying commission investigation. The commission findings report that the $34,100 of air travel, which Abbruzzese arranged for Bruno, was in violation of lobbying law that caps campaign contributions at $75. In apparent exchange for these travel gifts, Bruno arranged for two $250,000 state member-item grants for Abbruzzese’s Troy-based firm, Evident Technologies Inc. Bruno has not been implicated in the state investigation.
Status
The FBI investigation is ongoing. U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby, who has been investigating the case, recently was nominated for a federal judgeship.
Threat Level: high
Jared E. Abbruzzese
Businessman
Alleged Crime(s)
Crooked dealing and financial flirtations with Sen. Joseph Bruno
Background
Wealthy Loudonville businessman Abbruzzese currently is entangled in the FBI investigation of his friend, Senate Majority Leader Bruno, though neither of the men have stated what, exactly, is being investigated.
A report by the state lobbying commission stated that Abbruzzese gave $34,100 worth of private jet flights to Bruno, in violation of lobbying law that bans gifts to public officials over $75.
The flights are suspected to be a reciprocation for Bruno’s investment of state funds into Evident Technologies Inc., a nanotechnology company Abbruzzese helped to create. The company received two $250,000 member-item grants from Bruno, though state money allocated for member items is meant to be given to nonprofit organizations. According to the Times Union, the grants are under investigation by the FBI.
Abbruzzese has further ties to Bruno through their shared investment in the horseracing industry. While co-chair of Evident, Abbruzzese’s partner, Wayne Barr, was Bruno’s appointee on the New York Racing Association. After the lobbying commission began investigation of Abbruzzese, he rescinded his position with Empire Racing Associates, one of four bidders Bruno could approve to operate the state’s racing franchise.
In 2002, Abbruzzese’s consulting firm, Communication Technology Advisors (CTA), was hired by Motient Corp., a wireless communications company, to provide financial advice, while Abbruzzese was still a director at Motient. CTA received millions from the transaction, according to Business Week.
Abbruzzese then allegedly pressured Motient to hire Tejas, Inc., an investment bank from whom he had purchased thousands of shares of stock. Bruno said that he bought stock in Tejas as well. After the hiring, Tejas’ shares increased by 900 percent.
Status
Abbruzzese has been called to a civil penalty hearing under the newly created State Commission on Public Integrity, which will be formed at the end of the month, though he continues to fight the subpoena. He faces up to $250,000 in penalties for the flights alone, though it has been pointed out that loopholes in the system may clear him from being charged with illegal activity.
The IRS has filed a lien against Abbruzzese and his wife Sherrie for $2.9 million, from their 2005 income taxes. The FBI investigation continues.
Threat Level: medium
Alan G. Hevesi
Former state comptroller
Alleged Crime(s)
Profiting from the pension fund
Background
Investigators from the state attorney general and Albany County district attorney’s office are looking into whether aides and political allies of former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi were awarded contracts by investment firms that did business with the $154 state pension fund, of which Hevesi was the sole manager.
Hevesi allegedly poured hundreds of millions of dollars into firms that then paid money to companies affiliated with Hank Morris, Hevesi’s former top political consultant.
One such company is Searle & Co., a small Greenwich, Conn., financial- services firm. The New York Post reports that Morris received $13 million from the firm, while also earning money on the sly as a board member at eSpeed, a company that processed trades for the pension fund.
According to the current state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, documents relevant to the case disappeared following the resignation of Hevesi appointee David Loglisci, who served as deputy comptroller for pension investment and cash management.
In order to conduct a full investigation, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has invoked the Martin Act, a law that gives complete authority of investigation to the attorney general’s office, including subpoena power and the ability to file civil and criminal proceedings.
Other matters being looked into are whether Hevesi’s former chief of staff, Jack Chartier, engaged a state-employed driver to chauffer former Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton, and whether Hevesi’s sons, Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Queens) and Daniel Hevesi, who works for a hedge fund, also benefited from their father’s misdoings.
The investigations are icing on the cake for Hevesi who was accused by Republican opponent Christopher Callaghan during last year’s election of using a state employee to chauffeur his wife. The chauffeur arrangement would have been acceptable if Hevesi had reimbursed the state, which, he claimed, he “forgot” to do.
Then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had the comptroller place $90,000 in an escrow account until both the state Ethics Commission and the attorney general’s office completed investigations. Despite the scandal, Hevesi defeated the inexperienced Callaghan soundly. Soon after his reelection, Hevesi was found guilty of defrauding state government of $180,000, “with no intention of paying the state back,” according to Gov. Pataki-appointed prosecutor, David Kelley. Spitzer concurred.
After another investigation by Albany District Attorney David Soares found that there was criminal intent in Hevesi’s actions, Hevesi took a plea bargain with the Albany County Court on Dec. 22, 2006, and resigned from his office.
Status
Ongoing investigation that keeps revealing new alleged crimes.
Threat Level: medium
John Sweeney
Former United States congressman, Republican, 20th District
Alleged Crime(s)
Numerous alleged ethical violations, undue influence on state police
Background
Sweeney earned his nickname “Congressman Kickass” from President George W. Bush thanks to the take-no-prisoners style he put to use during the Brooks Brothers Riot amid the Florida recounts of the 2000 election. Sweeney reportedly led that interference.
During his eight years as representative for the 20th Congressional District, Sweeney faced down, and mostly avoided, myriad ethical questions. One of the most striking concerns focused on a trip Sweeney took to the Marianas Islands with associates of crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Sweeney failed to disclose that his trip was privately funded, which is a violation of congressional rules. He insisted that Marianas officials had paid for the trip, an accusation they deny.
Sweeney had a number of other ethical dilemmas involving lobbyists and donors.
On top of that, Sweeney had a reputation of partying just a little bit too hard. Pictures of his notoriously red-faced visit to a Union College frat house spread through the Internet like wildfire. The story of Sweeney’s one-car accident in 2001 was also popular among his political enemies, as Sweeney was never administered a sobriety test despite the fact that he admitted to consuming alcohol before the crash.
Sweeney’s many critics all assumed that one of the plethora of ethical questions dogging the congressman would be what cost him his seat. Instead, a media-revealed police report regarding a domestic-violence incident involving Sweeney and his wife, Gaia, began his descent. And it was his response to the report that may have truly cost him his seat. Sweeney charged that the report was false, perhaps the work of his political enemies. But later Sweeney and his wife acknowledged that they knowingly lied. Earlier this month, the state Police Benevolent Association delivered a comprehensive report on changes needed in the state police.
The report noted that there was an active cover-up inside the state police to make the domestic violence call to Sweeney’s home look like a “generic service call.” The report further requested the establishment of a review panel that could look into ethical dilemmas such as the Sweeney cover-up.
Status
As he currently is dealing with the results of a rather nasty and public divorce, it is questionable whether Sweeney will try to recapture his seat next fall from Kirsten Gillibrand. If Sweeney were to throw his hat back in the political arena, his ethical baggage presumably would come with him.
Threat Level: low
Robert Mirch
Three-job Bob has earned the moniker: Troy commissioner of public works; majority leader in the Rensselaer County Legislature (R-Troy); and constituent liaison for Sen. Bruno
Alleged Crime(s)
Running a political-campaign consultancy business out of the Rensselaer County legislative offices, and engineering election-year tomfoolery
Background
Mirch is known in Rensselaer County for his aggressive, take-no-prisoners politicking. So when the allegations surrounding “Tonyagate” hit the presses earlier this year, none of his critics was surprised.
According to former Sand Lake supervisor and onetime Rensselaer County Republican staffer Colleen Regan, it happened back in 2005, when Mirch whisked her away from her duties at the legislature. Together, she claimed, the two traveled in a public vehicle to Troy City Hall. There, during office hours, she said, she was forced to perform a very unique, and illegal, bit of election-year campaigning. Sitting in Troy Deputy Mayor Dan Crawley’s office, she was handed a script and told to assume the personage of a fictional woman named “Tonya.” She then read from the script, accusing Troy City Councilman Bill Dunne (D-District 4), who was reeking reelection at the time, of sexually harassing her. The message was to be used as part of the political campaign of Dunne’s opponent.
Two years later, after getting fired from her position with the majority, Regan’s allegation came out in an unrelated complaint that she filed regarding her dismissal with the state Department of Human Rights. Seizing upon Regan’s affidavit, Troy Democrats clamored for an investigation, and Albany County District Attorney David Soares was appointed special prosecutor to do just that.
And it doesn’t stop there. In a second affidavit, which Regan filed with Soares’ office, she widened the scope of her allegations. In this affidavit, she alleged that Mirch was running a consultancy firm, Victory Lanes LLC., with business partner Richard Crist, out of the Rensselaer County legislative offices. Meanwhile, outside of the work done for Victory Lane, she said, county staffers were routinely employed to perform political campaign work, including preparing fundraising mailers, solicitation letters, letters to residents, “reminder cards to vote on primary day, do me a favor cards.”
“Basically, Republican headquarters was not down in the Atrium [in downtown Troy],” Regan said. “It was in the Rensselaer County Legislature.”
Mirch has denied the charges and accused Regan of being a disgruntled employee.
Status
The Albany district attorney’s office investigation is ongoing.
Threat Level: medium
Richard Crist
Republican legislative liaison
Alleged Crime(s)
Sexual harassment, and running a business out of the Rensselaer County legislative offices
Background
After losing her job with the Republicans in the Rensselaer County Legislature, Colleen Regan filed a formal complaint with the state Department of Human Rights. In it, she claimed that she had been fired in retaliation for rebuffing the pervasive sexual advances of her superior, Crist. Mirch and Rensselaer County Chairman Neil Kelleher immediately defended Crist, decrying the accusations.
Though Regan’s accusations of abuse didn’t stop with sexual impropriety. In a following affidavit, she went on to detail allegations of election-year skullduggery, and misuse of city and county resources by Crist and Mirch. These allegations attracted widespread attention, eventually leading to the appointment of Albany County District Attorney David Soares as special prosecutor. In a second affidavit to Soares’ office, Regan outlined endemic abuses of Rensselaer County staff for political campaigns. Further, she described how Crist, along with business partner Mirch, ran their campaign consultancy firm Victory Lanes, LLC, out of the offices of the Rensselaer County Legislature. The two men, she deposed, were charging upwards of $5,000 a race to help candidates with their campaigns.
“I and my coworkers witnessed various candidates, which were running for an elected office,” Regan deposed, “frequently visit the legislature on a regular basis during their election campaign season to consult with Mr. Crist. . . . These candidates were clients of Victory Lanes, LLC, and were seeking out Mr. Crist’s expertise regarding their election campaign strategy, while Mr. Crist was on the job at the county.”
She goes on to list 11 candidates, including Troy City Councilman Mark Wojcik, Nassau Supervisor Carol Sanford, and Troy City Council President Henry Bauer, who allegedly visited the Legislature building to take advantage of Victory Lanes’ services.
Crist has denied Regan’s allegations, telling Metroland that he looks “forward to speaking with the special prosecutor, to clear up these charges.”
Status
The Albany County district attorney’s office and Deptartment of Human Rights investigations are ongoing.
Threat Level: low
Thomas McTygue
Saratoga Springs comissioner of public works
Alleged Crime(s)
Ethical violations
Background
A 30-year incumbent as the commissioner of Public Works in Saratoga Springs, McTygue follows the legacy of his father, who also occupied the powerful position for a number of years. Although a Democrat by registration, McTygue is an ally of Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Brunswick) and has close ties to a number of wealthy Republican developers. As DPW commissioner, McTygue has made friends with his beautification projects and enemies with his tenacious dogging of perceived enemies.
McTygue currently faces a Department of Environmental Conservation investigation into oil spills in the Department of Public Works garage that some workers say were scheduled to be covered up rather than cleaned up. Reports suggest the investigations scope has widened to other areas including illegal dumping on the site of the cities planned recreation center. Meanwhile, numerous sources inside and outside the DPW department carry the cards of several FBI agents who they claim have interviewed them regarding an investigation into McTygue. They insist McTygue has gotten too close to developers during his long time in office and that he wields the DPW as a political tool.
McTygue denies the accusations and insists that talk of an FBI investigation has been manufactured by his political enemies and that the scope of the DEC investigation has been increased thanks to undue influence by the husband of his political nemesis, Saratoga Springs Mayor Valerie Keehn. David Keehn works at the DEC.
McTygue repeatedly has faced down accusations that he does not actually reside in the city of Saratoga Springs, despite the fact that he openly admits that he lives on a farm outside of the city limits.
Status
The progress of the DEC ‘s investigation is not quite clear. All that is for sure is that it is ongoing. The status of any alleged FBI investigation is far from clear, as the FBI does not confirm or deny any investigation.
Threat Level: medium
Aaron Dare
Former head of the Urban League of Northeastern New York
Alleged Crime(s)
Real-estate fraud
Background
When Dare became president of the Urban League in 1996, he worked to shift the league’s focus onto real-estate ventures. The most ambitious of these ventures was a $40 million commercial and residential complex, Gateway Commons, in Arbor Hill, ventured with capital from Housing and Urban Development and local banks, among others. The largest tenant on the property was the National Finance Corporation (NFC), which was expected to bring hundreds of jobs to the inner city. Dare was lauded as a hero by residents and elected officials.
However, in 1998, things begun to collapse as the league fell into heavy debt and NFC backed out of the deal, citing its own financial corruption. In 2001, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer declared that Dare misdirected state and federal taxes and prohibited him from working in a financial or policymaking position in the state for 10 years.
Dare had created several real estate corporations—Emerge Real Properties, LLC; Emerge Construction; and Emerge Residential Historic Community I, II, and III—and he declared his intentions to restore historic and inner-city properties to create affordable housing. Using $7.4 million in HUD funds, Dare bought inner-city properties in Albany and Schenectady and placed them under the management of convicted felon Robert Bove. The properties fell into disrepair, and Dare ceased making mortgage payments. In 2004, HUD foreclosed on the properties, forcing taxpayers to lose millions.
For two years, Dare was missing in action, until he reappeared in Albany, drinking $900 bottles of cognac with Kenneth Wilcox, a former Albany Police detective, who would go on to die in a car crash. Dare worked with Wilcox and “others” to act as fake real-estate buyers. He was arrested in 2006, and was released after pleading guilty in federal court to felony charges regarding fraudulent real-estate sales. The state police arrested Dare on Aug. 1 for fraudulent real-estate practices in Albany’s South End, as well as for coercing appraisers into raising the value of decrepit properties.
Status
According to Albany District Attorney David Soares, Dare has been indicted on four felony counts for real-estate scams as of Sept. 12. of this year. Prosecutors have expressed concern that Dare may be a flight risk, as he has money stashed in offshore accounts. Federal sentencing is scheduled for this month.
Threat Level: high
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Bulman: Boyd made terrible decision
Bulman: Boyd made terrible decision
By TED REINERT, The Saratogian
09/28/2007
SARATOGA SPRINGS - Democratic County Chairman Larry Bulman was unsurprisingly miffed when Gordon Boyd reloaded his campaign for mayor with the Independence Party Thursday, nine days after losing the Democratic primary 1,184 to 669 and two days after edging Mayor Valerie Keehn in the full count of the Independence primary, 60 to 57.
"I think it's a terrible decision on his part" to continue the run, Bulman said, pointing out that Democrats selected Keehn by a wide margin, and that Boyd is a lifelong Democrat and his wife, Sharon, was city party chair until recently.
Asked if Boyd's entry into the race hurt Keehn or Republican candidate Scott Johnson more, he replied, "I think it hurts Gordon Boyd."
Bulman said he understood the reasoning behind a primary effort. He realizes that the Democratic sweep in the 2005 election included two factions.
"The Democratic Party is very diverse. We're not boring like the Republican Party," said Bulman. "But we're usually pretty good at coming together."
He remained optimistic about Keehn's chances.
"I think Mayor Keehn's going to do fine because she's got a very strong base in the city," he said. "People like her work ethic."
Bulman and Lou Schneider, the chair of the city committee who had supported Boyd before the primary but now "has to" support the Democratic candidate, met with Keehn Friday.
Johnson was unsurprised to see a three-candidate race lasting until November. He said more candidates offered more choices for the voters.
"I don't think he can hurt me, quite frankly," he said of Boyd's run.
Johnson also said Keehn's primary victory displayed her organized core of support, but should not be viewed as an indication of how she will do in the general election.
Johnson has begun raising funds, after holding back earlier.
He said he is glad primary season is over and he can focus on his campaign.
He also said negative campaigning against him by Keehn's supporters has already begun.
Reach Ted Reinert at treinert@saratogian.com or 583-8729 ext. 221.
By TED REINERT, The Saratogian
09/28/2007
SARATOGA SPRINGS - Democratic County Chairman Larry Bulman was unsurprisingly miffed when Gordon Boyd reloaded his campaign for mayor with the Independence Party Thursday, nine days after losing the Democratic primary 1,184 to 669 and two days after edging Mayor Valerie Keehn in the full count of the Independence primary, 60 to 57.
"I think it's a terrible decision on his part" to continue the run, Bulman said, pointing out that Democrats selected Keehn by a wide margin, and that Boyd is a lifelong Democrat and his wife, Sharon, was city party chair until recently.
Asked if Boyd's entry into the race hurt Keehn or Republican candidate Scott Johnson more, he replied, "I think it hurts Gordon Boyd."
Bulman said he understood the reasoning behind a primary effort. He realizes that the Democratic sweep in the 2005 election included two factions.
"The Democratic Party is very diverse. We're not boring like the Republican Party," said Bulman. "But we're usually pretty good at coming together."
He remained optimistic about Keehn's chances.
"I think Mayor Keehn's going to do fine because she's got a very strong base in the city," he said. "People like her work ethic."
Bulman and Lou Schneider, the chair of the city committee who had supported Boyd before the primary but now "has to" support the Democratic candidate, met with Keehn Friday.
Johnson was unsurprised to see a three-candidate race lasting until November. He said more candidates offered more choices for the voters.
"I don't think he can hurt me, quite frankly," he said of Boyd's run.
Johnson also said Keehn's primary victory displayed her organized core of support, but should not be viewed as an indication of how she will do in the general election.
Johnson has begun raising funds, after holding back earlier.
He said he is glad primary season is over and he can focus on his campaign.
He also said negative campaigning against him by Keehn's supporters has already begun.
Reach Ted Reinert at treinert@saratogian.com or 583-8729 ext. 221.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Police Chief Ed Moore's letter to Gordon Boyd
Police Chief Ed Moore criticized Gordon Boyd, John Franck, Tom McTygue and Matt McCabe at a press conference Monday as he tries to convince the City Council to build a new police station. He has two votes on the current council in Ron Kim and Valerie Keehn. In an email Monday evening, Moore criticized Boyd especially sharply:
"Mr. Boyd
With all due respect, I am tired of hearing from those like yourself who wet their finger, stick it in the air of public opinion to see which way the wind is blowing, then publicly state they agree with the need of the new public safety building yet privately conspire to prevent it from occurring. I was present at the AUG 28 public meeting on the capital budget and saw first hand how you used the proposed public safety construction project as a political weapon to attack your opponent. Your thought process in your letter is flawed, and frankly rings hollow in my ears; I have heard many times in the last 32 years from politicians and political wanna-be's how we should take more time to examine the cost of this project. This is nothing but lip service to disguise the real agenda; delay, stall, make excuses and wear down the police so we can shelve this project again and finance our own pet projects.
You propose "setting aside $1 million to $2 million cash each year for a few years in a Public Safety Capital Reserve account. Building up cash for this need will reduce the amount we have to borrow, plus give us time to bring the total cost under control, find the best location, and continue pressing for state and federal aid." In the 1970's we could have built a new PD for less than 1/4 million, but waited. We waited several times after that, the most recent stall being 2003 when the project cost rose to 7 million. Here we are, four years later, and the cost is at 17 million. Your agenda looks and smells the same as the previous several agenda’s on this same issue the last 30 years; Just more of the same old lip service I’ve experienced every time.
You say you "do not agree with the way the Mayor has proposed to finance the project", yet I do not see Accounts Commissioner (accountant by profession) John Frank providing positive feedback on ways the city council can "work together" as a body to finance the project. Instead he categorizes the proposed facility as a Cadillac the taxpayers can't afford, he rants and raves publicly about mortgaging our children's future, and blames it all on the mayor while demanding to know her plan to pay for the capital budget. Isn't that really the specialty of the Finance & Accounts Commissioners? Shouldn't our city council be working in harmony like adults (even if they have differing opinions) to reach the goals that best provide for our community? That certainly is not occurring, and it is clear to me who the cogs in the wheel are.
Forgive me if I offend you, but don't try to sell me sugarcoated dung as good intentions and support. I did not just fall off the turnip truck, and I will not reciprocate in the same vein. I do not appreciate the politicization of an issue that may result in the loss of life, especially to one of my colleagues. We came close enough to that just four days ago with, as of yet, no formal inquiry by either of your compatriots on the council as to Officer Baker’s well being. I do not appreciate our officers being humiliated over and over again by having to apologize to victims for the conditions and lack of basic privacy and confidentiality we subject citizen/victims to with our facilities. I do not appreciate the lack of basic workplace conveniences like a woman’s restroom for our 15 female employees, or a closet with exposed wiring and holes in the wall for their locker room. I don’t appreciate trying to motivate these fine officers to go out on the street every day with pride and place their life on the line for our citizens while their workplace bespeaks what is really thought of their service by certain council members. Yet they do so because they are professionals who recognize their mission and derive their pride from the knowledge that our citizens appreciate them and their efforts in spite of workplace conditions. I believe these citizens support our quest for a new facility. My door-to-door visits with them indicate that overwhelming support, and I intend to continue those efforts until this goal is reached. Make no mistake; I will tell it like it is in each of my visits. I owe this to the men and women of the police department.
Commissioner McTygue, Frank and yourself need to stop playing politics with the safety of our police, firefighters, and our community. The time has come to shelve political dislikes and disagreements and prove that the form of government you rallied to keep in this city can work. All I have seen over the years and continue to see today is one big dysfunctional mess called the commission form of government. I challenge you and your associates to prove me wrong on my perception.
Edward F. Moore
Chief of Police"
"Mr. Boyd
With all due respect, I am tired of hearing from those like yourself who wet their finger, stick it in the air of public opinion to see which way the wind is blowing, then publicly state they agree with the need of the new public safety building yet privately conspire to prevent it from occurring. I was present at the AUG 28 public meeting on the capital budget and saw first hand how you used the proposed public safety construction project as a political weapon to attack your opponent. Your thought process in your letter is flawed, and frankly rings hollow in my ears; I have heard many times in the last 32 years from politicians and political wanna-be's how we should take more time to examine the cost of this project. This is nothing but lip service to disguise the real agenda; delay, stall, make excuses and wear down the police so we can shelve this project again and finance our own pet projects.
You propose "setting aside $1 million to $2 million cash each year for a few years in a Public Safety Capital Reserve account. Building up cash for this need will reduce the amount we have to borrow, plus give us time to bring the total cost under control, find the best location, and continue pressing for state and federal aid." In the 1970's we could have built a new PD for less than 1/4 million, but waited. We waited several times after that, the most recent stall being 2003 when the project cost rose to 7 million. Here we are, four years later, and the cost is at 17 million. Your agenda looks and smells the same as the previous several agenda’s on this same issue the last 30 years; Just more of the same old lip service I’ve experienced every time.
You say you "do not agree with the way the Mayor has proposed to finance the project", yet I do not see Accounts Commissioner (accountant by profession) John Frank providing positive feedback on ways the city council can "work together" as a body to finance the project. Instead he categorizes the proposed facility as a Cadillac the taxpayers can't afford, he rants and raves publicly about mortgaging our children's future, and blames it all on the mayor while demanding to know her plan to pay for the capital budget. Isn't that really the specialty of the Finance & Accounts Commissioners? Shouldn't our city council be working in harmony like adults (even if they have differing opinions) to reach the goals that best provide for our community? That certainly is not occurring, and it is clear to me who the cogs in the wheel are.
Forgive me if I offend you, but don't try to sell me sugarcoated dung as good intentions and support. I did not just fall off the turnip truck, and I will not reciprocate in the same vein. I do not appreciate the politicization of an issue that may result in the loss of life, especially to one of my colleagues. We came close enough to that just four days ago with, as of yet, no formal inquiry by either of your compatriots on the council as to Officer Baker’s well being. I do not appreciate our officers being humiliated over and over again by having to apologize to victims for the conditions and lack of basic privacy and confidentiality we subject citizen/victims to with our facilities. I do not appreciate the lack of basic workplace conveniences like a woman’s restroom for our 15 female employees, or a closet with exposed wiring and holes in the wall for their locker room. I don’t appreciate trying to motivate these fine officers to go out on the street every day with pride and place their life on the line for our citizens while their workplace bespeaks what is really thought of their service by certain council members. Yet they do so because they are professionals who recognize their mission and derive their pride from the knowledge that our citizens appreciate them and their efforts in spite of workplace conditions. I believe these citizens support our quest for a new facility. My door-to-door visits with them indicate that overwhelming support, and I intend to continue those efforts until this goal is reached. Make no mistake; I will tell it like it is in each of my visits. I owe this to the men and women of the police department.
Commissioner McTygue, Frank and yourself need to stop playing politics with the safety of our police, firefighters, and our community. The time has come to shelve political dislikes and disagreements and prove that the form of government you rallied to keep in this city can work. All I have seen over the years and continue to see today is one big dysfunctional mess called the commission form of government. I challenge you and your associates to prove me wrong on my perception.
Edward F. Moore
Chief of Police"
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Boyd too quick to let GE off cleanup hook
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
October 18, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: Letters to the Editor
Boyd too quick to let GE off cleanup hook
BERNIE McCUE
It continues to amaze me how some people feel they have to help defend big business when it comes to environmental problems they created. I am referring to a column Aug. 27 by Gordon Boyd and the TV commercials opposing the dredging of the upper Hudson River.
First of all, Mr. Boyd makes it sound not so bad that you shouldn't eat more than one fish a year caught out of the Hudson River. After all, who would eat fish from the river every day, anyway? Well, Mr. Boyd, the point is that before GE and other industries started knowingly dumping PCB-containing effluent into the river, you could eat the fish whenever you wanted to. Try telling your children why they can't take home the first fish they catch from the river and eat it.
Boyd then goes into this long-winded diatribe about how the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't come up with an acceptable plan on the dredging and disposal of the river bottom material - when and if the dredging takes place.
Once again, the EPA didn't put the PCBs into the river; it's GE's responsibility to clean it up. You are saying that if the EPA presented a firm plan that GE would just come running and say, "please let us now take care of our mess"? I think not.
The bottom line is, and I do mean the bottom line, most companies do not willingly spend money on effluent treatment within their own facility because those operations are cost centers, not profit centers. They take the gamble that it will be next to impossible to prove that their negligence resulted in either health or environmental damage. Every company knows what they are discharging and they accept that risk.
Boyd asked for suggestions on where the waste material should be cleaned and disposed of. How about a certain CEO's front lawn, or for that matter your yard, Mr. Boyd? if PCBs are nothing to worry about.
As for these TV ads, I would suggest that GE find out where these people live before they ask them to comment on the cleanliness of the river. The last I knew, Middle Grove and Porter Corners are about eight miles from the Hudson River. GE should fire all the in-house scientists and consultants they have working on this issue, because these people are able to tell the river has cleaned itself just by "looking at it."
BERNIE McCUE
Saratoga Springs
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
October 18, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: Letters to the Editor
Boyd too quick to let GE off cleanup hook
BERNIE McCUE
It continues to amaze me how some people feel they have to help defend big business when it comes to environmental problems they created. I am referring to a column Aug. 27 by Gordon Boyd and the TV commercials opposing the dredging of the upper Hudson River.
First of all, Mr. Boyd makes it sound not so bad that you shouldn't eat more than one fish a year caught out of the Hudson River. After all, who would eat fish from the river every day, anyway? Well, Mr. Boyd, the point is that before GE and other industries started knowingly dumping PCB-containing effluent into the river, you could eat the fish whenever you wanted to. Try telling your children why they can't take home the first fish they catch from the river and eat it.
Boyd then goes into this long-winded diatribe about how the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't come up with an acceptable plan on the dredging and disposal of the river bottom material - when and if the dredging takes place.
Once again, the EPA didn't put the PCBs into the river; it's GE's responsibility to clean it up. You are saying that if the EPA presented a firm plan that GE would just come running and say, "please let us now take care of our mess"? I think not.
The bottom line is, and I do mean the bottom line, most companies do not willingly spend money on effluent treatment within their own facility because those operations are cost centers, not profit centers. They take the gamble that it will be next to impossible to prove that their negligence resulted in either health or environmental damage. Every company knows what they are discharging and they accept that risk.
Boyd asked for suggestions on where the waste material should be cleaned and disposed of. How about a certain CEO's front lawn, or for that matter your yard, Mr. Boyd? if PCBs are nothing to worry about.
As for these TV ads, I would suggest that GE find out where these people live before they ask them to comment on the cleanliness of the river. The last I knew, Middle Grove and Porter Corners are about eight miles from the Hudson River. GE should fire all the in-house scientists and consultants they have working on this issue, because these people are able to tell the river has cleaned itself just by "looking at it."
BERNIE McCUE
Saratoga Springs
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Boyd: Scenic Hudson sifts through possibilities
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
November 19, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Scenic Hudson sifts through possibilities
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
With the day approaching when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will issue its long-awaited report about what to do with the PCBs in the Hudson River, it may be hoped that the public will get the environmental issues in focus. That Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner John Cahill and Sen. Joseph Bruno can publicly disagree on what approach to take, as was revealed last week, suggests that reasonable people can disagree on what is in the river's and the community's best interests.
An environmental issue may be defined as one in which there is a knowable impact on the environment or public health from some aspect of this enormous and complex project. PCB levels in fish, for instance, is an environmental issue.
GE's obligation to its stockholders to maximize profits, on the other hand, is not an environmental issue. Some people may find it offensive that GE wants to make money, and they may resent GE for moving so many jobs away from this region. They may even find it emotionally satisfying to point out these obvious facts. But these have nothing to do with protecting the environment.
The best way to get environmental issues into focus is through an Environmental Impact Statement, a document prepared by a project sponsor that lists all the effects of a project, and is subject to challenge and question by experts on the other side.
It would be great if EPA's report and dredging order were subjected to a full EIS, but that won't happen, because the PCB cleanup question is governed by Superfund law. While the Superfund law will require EPA to consider technical, economic and other criteria (including community acceptance) in its orders to GE, the law does not provide for the same rigorous review and opportunities to challenge that would occur in most other environmental proceedings.
So, in the absence of an EIS to rigorously test the scientific basis of the anticipated dredging order, it falls to the skeptical and curious to ask the tough questions, and an excellent source of information has recently been published by Scenic Hudson, an environmental group that supports dredging ("Results of Contaminated Sediment Cleanups Relevant to the Hudson River," October 2000).
How much sediment would be dredged from the river?
It depends how much EPA orders GE to remove. The company has expressed concern it could be as large as 1.3 million cubic yards. Scenic Hudson calls GE's prediction of that magnitude of cleanup "unfounded," and states it is "unlikely that EPA will propose the extreme scenario GE so often describes." But an EPA official speaking in Latham recently projected that the cleanup could require as much as 4 million cubic yards of sediment removed. Who's right?
Where will the sediment go after it is removed from the river?
Sediment may be extracted from the river and the water removed and treated. The dewatered sludge would go to one or more existing landfills. Scenic Hudson states that "it is reasonable to expect the cleanup plan to include sediment disposal in existing landfills," and offers "regional solid waste landfills" as an example of disposal locations for sediment with lower concentrations of PCBs.
The group also offers that "new landfill construction near the Upper Hudson would be logical," though "EPA is unlikely to include it in a cleanup plan . . . because of local opposition." Whatever the risk of the PCBs remaining in the river, dredging them transfers and possibly augments that risk in any land-based treatment, transportation or disposal operations. If local landfill owners don't want the PCB sludge, trucks will have to take it farther away. I estimate that removal of 1.3 million cubic yards could require as many as 65,000 truck trips. What is the risk of those trips on the state's highways?
How will the sediment get from the river to the treatment/transfer or disposal site?
Scenic Hudson's report describes a flexible pipeline that would convey the river sediment to the land-based facility, which one imagines would probably include a wastewater treatment plant and sludge transfer operation. The group's research suggests pipelines as long as 9.3 miles have been used in navigational dredging projects. What additional pipeline protections (beyond what would be required for less contaminated "navigational" sediment) would be necessary for a PCB project?
What kind of dredging equipment will be used?
Scenic Hudson describes two types that have been widely employed in the U.S. GE's TV ads accurately depict one of them. The other is more like a tube with an interior screw mechanism that pulls the sediment up into a pipe.
The big question is how much sediment will be resuspended in the river by any dredging operation. Scenic Hudson's data, collected from a variety of sources, suggests a wide range of effectiveness. Some measure of contamination remains in sediment and fish even in the best situations. Scenic Hudson also wistfully discusses innovative dredges, lamenting that they are not available in the U.S. Should the upper Hudson be an experimental station for imported technology, unproven in the U.S.?
Does public opinion matter?
Public opinion in upper Hudson communities is firmly against dredging. We know this from, among other sources, this month's election results. Dredging advocate Ken McCallion, running on both Democratic and Green Party lines, received 27 percent of the vote in Washington County, and 29 percent in Warren County against incumbent Republican Congressman John Sweeney, who opposes dredging. Two years ago, Democrat Jean Bordewich, who did not make dredging an issue, received 50 percent and 54 percent, respectively, in Washington and Warren counties.
Dredging advocates evidently have yet to convince the residents of the upper Hudson that this project is in their interests.
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
November 19, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Scenic Hudson sifts through possibilities
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
With the day approaching when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will issue its long-awaited report about what to do with the PCBs in the Hudson River, it may be hoped that the public will get the environmental issues in focus. That Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner John Cahill and Sen. Joseph Bruno can publicly disagree on what approach to take, as was revealed last week, suggests that reasonable people can disagree on what is in the river's and the community's best interests.
An environmental issue may be defined as one in which there is a knowable impact on the environment or public health from some aspect of this enormous and complex project. PCB levels in fish, for instance, is an environmental issue.
GE's obligation to its stockholders to maximize profits, on the other hand, is not an environmental issue. Some people may find it offensive that GE wants to make money, and they may resent GE for moving so many jobs away from this region. They may even find it emotionally satisfying to point out these obvious facts. But these have nothing to do with protecting the environment.
The best way to get environmental issues into focus is through an Environmental Impact Statement, a document prepared by a project sponsor that lists all the effects of a project, and is subject to challenge and question by experts on the other side.
It would be great if EPA's report and dredging order were subjected to a full EIS, but that won't happen, because the PCB cleanup question is governed by Superfund law. While the Superfund law will require EPA to consider technical, economic and other criteria (including community acceptance) in its orders to GE, the law does not provide for the same rigorous review and opportunities to challenge that would occur in most other environmental proceedings.
So, in the absence of an EIS to rigorously test the scientific basis of the anticipated dredging order, it falls to the skeptical and curious to ask the tough questions, and an excellent source of information has recently been published by Scenic Hudson, an environmental group that supports dredging ("Results of Contaminated Sediment Cleanups Relevant to the Hudson River," October 2000).
How much sediment would be dredged from the river?
It depends how much EPA orders GE to remove. The company has expressed concern it could be as large as 1.3 million cubic yards. Scenic Hudson calls GE's prediction of that magnitude of cleanup "unfounded," and states it is "unlikely that EPA will propose the extreme scenario GE so often describes." But an EPA official speaking in Latham recently projected that the cleanup could require as much as 4 million cubic yards of sediment removed. Who's right?
Where will the sediment go after it is removed from the river?
Sediment may be extracted from the river and the water removed and treated. The dewatered sludge would go to one or more existing landfills. Scenic Hudson states that "it is reasonable to expect the cleanup plan to include sediment disposal in existing landfills," and offers "regional solid waste landfills" as an example of disposal locations for sediment with lower concentrations of PCBs.
The group also offers that "new landfill construction near the Upper Hudson would be logical," though "EPA is unlikely to include it in a cleanup plan . . . because of local opposition." Whatever the risk of the PCBs remaining in the river, dredging them transfers and possibly augments that risk in any land-based treatment, transportation or disposal operations. If local landfill owners don't want the PCB sludge, trucks will have to take it farther away. I estimate that removal of 1.3 million cubic yards could require as many as 65,000 truck trips. What is the risk of those trips on the state's highways?
How will the sediment get from the river to the treatment/transfer or disposal site?
Scenic Hudson's report describes a flexible pipeline that would convey the river sediment to the land-based facility, which one imagines would probably include a wastewater treatment plant and sludge transfer operation. The group's research suggests pipelines as long as 9.3 miles have been used in navigational dredging projects. What additional pipeline protections (beyond what would be required for less contaminated "navigational" sediment) would be necessary for a PCB project?
What kind of dredging equipment will be used?
Scenic Hudson describes two types that have been widely employed in the U.S. GE's TV ads accurately depict one of them. The other is more like a tube with an interior screw mechanism that pulls the sediment up into a pipe.
The big question is how much sediment will be resuspended in the river by any dredging operation. Scenic Hudson's data, collected from a variety of sources, suggests a wide range of effectiveness. Some measure of contamination remains in sediment and fish even in the best situations. Scenic Hudson also wistfully discusses innovative dredges, lamenting that they are not available in the U.S. Should the upper Hudson be an experimental station for imported technology, unproven in the U.S.?
Does public opinion matter?
Public opinion in upper Hudson communities is firmly against dredging. We know this from, among other sources, this month's election results. Dredging advocate Ken McCallion, running on both Democratic and Green Party lines, received 27 percent of the vote in Washington County, and 29 percent in Warren County against incumbent Republican Congressman John Sweeney, who opposes dredging. Two years ago, Democrat Jean Bordewich, who did not make dredging an issue, received 50 percent and 54 percent, respectively, in Washington and Warren counties.
Dredging advocates evidently have yet to convince the residents of the upper Hudson that this project is in their interests.
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Boyd: Dredge or not, the problem won't go away
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
January 14, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Dredge or not, the problem won't go away
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
"Clean up the Hudson River. For our Families, For our Future." So urges the message on the signs, visible from many a roadway in our region. A simple message. A simple hope, but a vain one.
The cost: dredging and hauling millions of yards of PCB-contaminated sediment to landfills from Niagara Falls to Alabama, strip mining a million or more tons of sand and gravel from local pits to replace the river sediment, conversion of 20 miles of natural riverscape into an industrial waterfront, removing hundreds of acres of soil and vegetation alongside and below the water line.
The missing benefit: safe fish. The dredging project will fail to reduce PCBs in Upper Hudson fish to safe levels for the foreseeable future. EPA's own report says so at Table 7-5 in Volume 2 of its six-volume plan.
Yes, PCB concentrations in Upper Hudson fish are projected by EPA to decline after the dredging. But not enough in much of the river to meet the agency's own health safety threshold for at least 60 years, and maybe never. That would be at or beyond the time this year's high school graduates enter nursing homes.
Until 2070, and probably longer, average concentrations of PCBs in Upper Hudson fish will make them unsafe for unrestricted human consumption. By then, the fishing and consumption restrictions will have been in place for nearly a century.
In short, the "benefit" of dredging the Hudson is this: no foreseeable change in the fishing rules for the lifetimes of most people alive today.
The only way
And to be at risk from PCBs you MUST eat the fish; there is no other way. EPA says none of the other ways people could be exposed to the PCBs pose a risk, whether drinking river water, coming in contact with sediments or breathing the air nearby. Only from eating fish, a voluntary activity, easily avoided.
If you invested the $460 million that the dredging and habitat removal is estimated to cost, you could take the interest income and buy a five-ounce serving of fish for each and every one of the million or so residents of the Capital Region every week forever. We'd never have to bother the Hudson River fish again.
EPA and the dredging advocates want to involuntarily protect us from a voluntary risk, and to do so at great cost to the river, the surrounding countryside and its residents.
So just what is the risk from eating fish that contain concentrations of PCBs in the levels of a few parts per 10 million, the risk that EPA can't make go away?
EPA's risk analysis concludes that if a hypothetical adult angler eats 31.9 grams of such fish every day for 40 years, he will elevate his cancer risk by one in a thousand, an increase that exceeds EPA's standard of one-to-10 in a million (for involuntary risks).
EPA appears to apply the same cancer-increase-rate criteria to avoidable, voluntary fish eating as it does to risks we can't possibly avoid, such as air pollution. Why? If a risk is avoidable, subject to informed choice, or is taken only by volunteers, why do we need EPA's $460 million protection plan?
Eating fish from the Hudson is a risk that nearly everyone avoids simply by observing common sense and the current regulations. The remedy EPA offers is one that will inflict unavoidable economic and possibly environmental harm to people and communities up and down the river, all of whom are safe from the PCBs if only they avoid eating fish. For me, not eating Upper Hudson fish is a lot easier than remembering to wear sun block.
And if the government is going to go to such lengths to protect us from voluntary risks, then why is tobacco not a banned substance, carrying a lifetime risk of 252,000 deaths per million?
Risk will remain
Finally, by EPA's own analysis, the dredging plan will fail to eliminate the supposed risk anyway.
Upon this house of card-like assumptions and speculations EPA's dredging order is built.
The recommendation here is to leave the PCBs in place unless and until conclusive evidence shows a meaningful health benefit from their removal and a less destructive removal technique is developed. Meanwhile, allow General Electric Co. to pursue its plans for eliminating further migration of PCBs from onshore and bedrock sources into the river, a step that will lead to reduced fish concentrations, albeit a few years later than from dredging.
The current situation is anything but a public health emergency. The river will be no worse off for waiting another decade or so. The people and communities of the Upper Hudson will definitely suffer for years if the dredging goes forward, and few of us will live to see the only benefit that would make such a grandiose disruption worth the cost: safe fish.
P.S.: By the way, if you're looking in EPA's six-volume study for schematic drawings of the Northern and Southern Transfer Facilities planned for sites near Schuylerville and Hudson Falls, let me know if you find them. They're listed in the Table of Contents for Volume 2, Figures 6-1 and 6-2, but those pages are something else entirely, at least in the volumes on reserve at the Saratoga Springs Public Library. Could it be they were removed from the EPA study at the last minute because of their political sensitivity, or is this a dumb mistake by the engineering consultants and a proof-reading breakdown at EPA?
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
January 14, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Dredge or not, the problem won't go away
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
"Clean up the Hudson River. For our Families, For our Future." So urges the message on the signs, visible from many a roadway in our region. A simple message. A simple hope, but a vain one.
The cost: dredging and hauling millions of yards of PCB-contaminated sediment to landfills from Niagara Falls to Alabama, strip mining a million or more tons of sand and gravel from local pits to replace the river sediment, conversion of 20 miles of natural riverscape into an industrial waterfront, removing hundreds of acres of soil and vegetation alongside and below the water line.
The missing benefit: safe fish. The dredging project will fail to reduce PCBs in Upper Hudson fish to safe levels for the foreseeable future. EPA's own report says so at Table 7-5 in Volume 2 of its six-volume plan.
Yes, PCB concentrations in Upper Hudson fish are projected by EPA to decline after the dredging. But not enough in much of the river to meet the agency's own health safety threshold for at least 60 years, and maybe never. That would be at or beyond the time this year's high school graduates enter nursing homes.
Until 2070, and probably longer, average concentrations of PCBs in Upper Hudson fish will make them unsafe for unrestricted human consumption. By then, the fishing and consumption restrictions will have been in place for nearly a century.
In short, the "benefit" of dredging the Hudson is this: no foreseeable change in the fishing rules for the lifetimes of most people alive today.
The only way
And to be at risk from PCBs you MUST eat the fish; there is no other way. EPA says none of the other ways people could be exposed to the PCBs pose a risk, whether drinking river water, coming in contact with sediments or breathing the air nearby. Only from eating fish, a voluntary activity, easily avoided.
If you invested the $460 million that the dredging and habitat removal is estimated to cost, you could take the interest income and buy a five-ounce serving of fish for each and every one of the million or so residents of the Capital Region every week forever. We'd never have to bother the Hudson River fish again.
EPA and the dredging advocates want to involuntarily protect us from a voluntary risk, and to do so at great cost to the river, the surrounding countryside and its residents.
So just what is the risk from eating fish that contain concentrations of PCBs in the levels of a few parts per 10 million, the risk that EPA can't make go away?
EPA's risk analysis concludes that if a hypothetical adult angler eats 31.9 grams of such fish every day for 40 years, he will elevate his cancer risk by one in a thousand, an increase that exceeds EPA's standard of one-to-10 in a million (for involuntary risks).
EPA appears to apply the same cancer-increase-rate criteria to avoidable, voluntary fish eating as it does to risks we can't possibly avoid, such as air pollution. Why? If a risk is avoidable, subject to informed choice, or is taken only by volunteers, why do we need EPA's $460 million protection plan?
Eating fish from the Hudson is a risk that nearly everyone avoids simply by observing common sense and the current regulations. The remedy EPA offers is one that will inflict unavoidable economic and possibly environmental harm to people and communities up and down the river, all of whom are safe from the PCBs if only they avoid eating fish. For me, not eating Upper Hudson fish is a lot easier than remembering to wear sun block.
And if the government is going to go to such lengths to protect us from voluntary risks, then why is tobacco not a banned substance, carrying a lifetime risk of 252,000 deaths per million?
Risk will remain
Finally, by EPA's own analysis, the dredging plan will fail to eliminate the supposed risk anyway.
Upon this house of card-like assumptions and speculations EPA's dredging order is built.
The recommendation here is to leave the PCBs in place unless and until conclusive evidence shows a meaningful health benefit from their removal and a less destructive removal technique is developed. Meanwhile, allow General Electric Co. to pursue its plans for eliminating further migration of PCBs from onshore and bedrock sources into the river, a step that will lead to reduced fish concentrations, albeit a few years later than from dredging.
The current situation is anything but a public health emergency. The river will be no worse off for waiting another decade or so. The people and communities of the Upper Hudson will definitely suffer for years if the dredging goes forward, and few of us will live to see the only benefit that would make such a grandiose disruption worth the cost: safe fish.
P.S.: By the way, if you're looking in EPA's six-volume study for schematic drawings of the Northern and Southern Transfer Facilities planned for sites near Schuylerville and Hudson Falls, let me know if you find them. They're listed in the Table of Contents for Volume 2, Figures 6-1 and 6-2, but those pages are something else entirely, at least in the volumes on reserve at the Saratoga Springs Public Library. Could it be they were removed from the EPA study at the last minute because of their political sensitivity, or is this a dumb mistake by the engineering consultants and a proof-reading breakdown at EPA?
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Boyd's defense of GE doesn't hold water
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
September 19, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: Letters to the Editor
Boyd's defense of GE doesn't hold water
PAULINE BOEHM and WILLIAM F. KOEBBEMAN
We would like to respond to Gordon Boyd's Aug. 27 defense of General Electric Co.'s refusal to remove PCBs from the Hudson. Mr. Boyd thinks it is significant that some local citizens are supporting GE. What is more significant and revealing is that GE has quietly shifted the emphasis in its losing arguments.
Not long ago, GE was campaigning for a review of the mathematical models by independent experts. GE was saying science should decide. When the peer review by seven independent scientists showed that the Environmental Protection Agency's model was acceptable with minor revisions, GE changed gears. Now GE says maybe the real experts are the "average citizens" whom they have recruited for their anti-dredging campaign.
Mr. Boyd blames environmentalists for slow economic growth, but strong environmental laws are compatible with a strong economy. Germany has tighter environmental laws than the United States, yet its citizens enjoy a high standard of living. Do we want economic growth that sacrifices clean water?
According to Mr. Boyd, there is no good technology available for dredging. There is, in fact, the cutterhead suction dredge, which was designed to remove contaminated sediments while minimizing resuspension of material outside the immediate dredging area. In a number of studies, this process has been shown to be effective and efficient.
He asked for "a Solomon like compromise." Here's one: People seem to be looking at the dredging question as all-or-nothing, but as King Solomon proposed, let's slice the problem into manageable bits. Start with a pilot project that is large enough to prove that dredging and disposal can be done safely and effectively with available technology; but small enough that it can be modified or even terminated if results are unsatisfactory. This approach would allow a phased cleanup of the river without the risk of major environmental impacts to the communities along the Hudson, or unnecessary costs to GE.
We don't want to eat, drink or swim in PCBs. If a child spills their milk, a parent usually cleans it up. As an adult, if you make a mess, you know it is your responsibility to clean it up. GE made this mess and GE has the responsibility to clean it up. Let's get started.
PAULINE BOEHM
WILLIAM F. KOEBBEMAN
Clifton Park
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
September 19, 2000
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: Letters to the Editor
Boyd's defense of GE doesn't hold water
PAULINE BOEHM and WILLIAM F. KOEBBEMAN
We would like to respond to Gordon Boyd's Aug. 27 defense of General Electric Co.'s refusal to remove PCBs from the Hudson. Mr. Boyd thinks it is significant that some local citizens are supporting GE. What is more significant and revealing is that GE has quietly shifted the emphasis in its losing arguments.
Not long ago, GE was campaigning for a review of the mathematical models by independent experts. GE was saying science should decide. When the peer review by seven independent scientists showed that the Environmental Protection Agency's model was acceptable with minor revisions, GE changed gears. Now GE says maybe the real experts are the "average citizens" whom they have recruited for their anti-dredging campaign.
Mr. Boyd blames environmentalists for slow economic growth, but strong environmental laws are compatible with a strong economy. Germany has tighter environmental laws than the United States, yet its citizens enjoy a high standard of living. Do we want economic growth that sacrifices clean water?
According to Mr. Boyd, there is no good technology available for dredging. There is, in fact, the cutterhead suction dredge, which was designed to remove contaminated sediments while minimizing resuspension of material outside the immediate dredging area. In a number of studies, this process has been shown to be effective and efficient.
He asked for "a Solomon like compromise." Here's one: People seem to be looking at the dredging question as all-or-nothing, but as King Solomon proposed, let's slice the problem into manageable bits. Start with a pilot project that is large enough to prove that dredging and disposal can be done safely and effectively with available technology; but small enough that it can be modified or even terminated if results are unsatisfactory. This approach would allow a phased cleanup of the river without the risk of major environmental impacts to the communities along the Hudson, or unnecessary costs to GE.
We don't want to eat, drink or swim in PCBs. If a child spills their milk, a parent usually cleans it up. As an adult, if you make a mess, you know it is your responsibility to clean it up. GE made this mess and GE has the responsibility to clean it up. Let's get started.
PAULINE BOEHM
WILLIAM F. KOEBBEMAN
Clifton Park
Copyright 2000, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Countering Boyd: PCBs stand in way of region's economy
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
January 30, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
PCBs stand in way of region's economy
JOHN KAUFMANN
I find myself in uneasy agreement with much of Gordon Boyd's Jan. 14 column, questioning the Environmental Protection Agency plan for the Hudson River. He accurately notes that their plan will only partially remediate the PCB problem and that it will take decades to reduce the level of PCBs in fish. Unfortunately, rather than advocate that EPA take a more aggressive and comprehensive approach, he argues that they should do nothing.
More troubling is the fact that Mr. Boyd carefully ignores the broader implications of contamination in order to make his argument against dredging. He appears not a wit concerned that doing nothing will leave the area as the largest toxic dumpsite in the United States. The contamination of the fish is just a symptom of the underlying problem. Without a cleanup, this region is doomed to economic stagnation while the remnants of its poison slowly wend their way downstream to add to the global problem of PCBs.
Mr. Boyd has often complained about how environmentalists have stymied the development of jobs and the economy in this region. It is inexplicable that in this case, where the economic impact is simply massive, he chooses to ignore it. The state spent a fortune developing a marina in Fort Edward whose use is marginal since the boats that should be using it cannot reach it. They cannot reach it because the river has become largely unnavigable. It is unnavigable because dredging would result in destabilizing the bottom and flow of the river, which would in turn lead to a release of PCBs.
More fundamentally, what sane corporation would spend serious money to build a facility in an area that is identified as a Superfund toxic site? Without a cleanup, the area is doomed to backwardness and stagnation.
On some level, I am looking forward to the next time someone like Paul Lilac, the supervisor of Stillwater who appeared on a commercial for GE, whines about the fact that there are no jobs for people in his area. My answer is that when community activists were insisting on forcing GE to clean up the mess that is stifling development in your region, local individuals such as yourself and Gordon Boyd were doing everything possible to make sure that the area remained just as it is: with its boarded-up buildings and high unemployment rates.
JOHN KAUFMANN
Saratoga Springs
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
January 30, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: B-10
Column: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
PCBs stand in way of region's economy
JOHN KAUFMANN
I find myself in uneasy agreement with much of Gordon Boyd's Jan. 14 column, questioning the Environmental Protection Agency plan for the Hudson River. He accurately notes that their plan will only partially remediate the PCB problem and that it will take decades to reduce the level of PCBs in fish. Unfortunately, rather than advocate that EPA take a more aggressive and comprehensive approach, he argues that they should do nothing.
More troubling is the fact that Mr. Boyd carefully ignores the broader implications of contamination in order to make his argument against dredging. He appears not a wit concerned that doing nothing will leave the area as the largest toxic dumpsite in the United States. The contamination of the fish is just a symptom of the underlying problem. Without a cleanup, this region is doomed to economic stagnation while the remnants of its poison slowly wend their way downstream to add to the global problem of PCBs.
Mr. Boyd has often complained about how environmentalists have stymied the development of jobs and the economy in this region. It is inexplicable that in this case, where the economic impact is simply massive, he chooses to ignore it. The state spent a fortune developing a marina in Fort Edward whose use is marginal since the boats that should be using it cannot reach it. They cannot reach it because the river has become largely unnavigable. It is unnavigable because dredging would result in destabilizing the bottom and flow of the river, which would in turn lead to a release of PCBs.
More fundamentally, what sane corporation would spend serious money to build a facility in an area that is identified as a Superfund toxic site? Without a cleanup, the area is doomed to backwardness and stagnation.
On some level, I am looking forward to the next time someone like Paul Lilac, the supervisor of Stillwater who appeared on a commercial for GE, whines about the fact that there are no jobs for people in his area. My answer is that when community activists were insisting on forcing GE to clean up the mess that is stifling development in your region, local individuals such as yourself and Gordon Boyd were doing everything possible to make sure that the area remained just as it is: with its boarded-up buildings and high unemployment rates.
JOHN KAUFMANN
Saratoga Springs
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Boyd: Dredging Up the Truth???
DREDGING UP THE TRUTH
Farmers sue to force EPA to release information
By GORDON BOYD
(Reprinted from the Schenectady (N. Y. Gazette page E1 6/3/01)
For The Sunday Gazette Although it has been lately quiet in the media, the controversy over whether to dredge the Hudson River to clean up PCB contamination recently shifted into a new forum: litigation.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who spent any time with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's six-volume Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study before the comment period ended in mid-April. Although six volumes should be enough to fully describe almost anything, EPA's effort was woefully incomplete and disingenuous. So last month, the group Farmers Against Irresponsible Remediation (FAIR) served notice on EPA that it intends to haul the agency into federal court, charging that EPA has committed multiple violations of federal statutes in pursuit of its dredging plan.
Whether FAIR will be successful, of course, remains to be seen. But they have a number of legal points working in their favor, and pro-dredging environmentalists are uncomfortable. FAIR is led by a dairy farmer, Willard Peck, with deep roots in Northumberland, a beautiful spot on the Hudson about 10 miles east of Saratoga Springs. He works his farm like so many others in that community, but unlike most farmers, Peck is also an attorney, and he is associated with one of the leading environmental law firms in the state: Young, Sommer, Ward, Ritzenberg, Wooley, Baker & Moore, of Albany.
By way of background, at least two of the firm's senior partners have professional roots in the environmental law bureau of the state Attorney General's Office during the tenure of Democrat Robert Abrams, a fact that suggests they are taking on FAIR's cause more out of intellectual and ethical loyalty to the original intentions of Superfund law and the goals of public participation in the environmental process.
Citizen suits FAIR, represented by Peck and Dean Sommer, intends to file a citizen suit under federal Superfund law, citizen suits being the avenue the law provides for people living adjacent to or near Superfund cleanups to make sure the polluters and everyone else are following the law.
FAIR's suit will raise several strong points unless EPA agrees in writing by July 16 to "complete the (Feasibility Study) assessment," that is to publish the following information, none of which is contained in the EPA dredge plan:
1) An assessment and evaluation of the impacts of dredging, especially concerning excavation, transport, and redisposal or containment. How a feasibility study does not contain such information makes you wonder.
2) Disclosure of the location of the hazardous waste treatment and dewatering facilities and soil/gravel extraction mines necessary to implement the dredging. Where will they be?
EPA's plan is silent on it all, including where the gravel will come from to replace what comes out of the river.
3) Assessment of the community impacts, particularly concerning noise, odors, PCB resuspension, health and environmental risks.
Without disclosure of these aspects of the plan, says FAIR, "the public has been deprived of an established statutory right and U.S. EPA has violated" federal environmental laws.
FAIR asserts that EPA's "failure and . . . refusal to complete the (dredging Plan)" prior to issuing its final Record of Decision this August "constitutes an abuse of discretion, is arbitrary and capricious and constitutes a violation" of federal laws. EPA, and its friends among certain environmental groups, have always said that the details of the location of the treatment facilities, gravel mines, disposal sites and other incidentals will be handled during the design stage, that is, after the final, irrevocable decision and order are issued to GE to start spending a half-billion dollars. First you make the decision final, then you tell the public what you're going to do and where. FAIR anticipates, probably correctly, that EPA will respond to its notice or of?
ourt action by saying that the federal courts have no jurisdiction until after the dredging is complete, i.e. in about 10 years.
FAIR cries foul But FAIR maintains that "EPA's violations of law, its attempt to deprive the public of its statutory right to public participation during the . . . process, and its expected assertion that the U.S. District Court will not have jurisdiction to hear challenges in this matter once the [final decision] is issued, constitute a gross violation of" Superfund law.
Unlike other citizen groups in our community, FAIR explicitly does not challenge the dredging remedy per se, but the incompleteness of EPA's plan. The refreshing aspect of this challenge to EPA is that it constitutes a surgical attack on the agency's adherence to its own rules and procedures, an area that the plaintiffs' attorneys know well from years of experience in these issues.
FAIR's challenge exposes how the EPA has undermined the public participation process. After all, FAIR asks, how can the public possibly assess the wisdom of the proposed remedy without all the information?
How does a national environmental group react to a group of citizen farmers and environmental lawyers challenging EPA to provide full information about its dredging plan and allow more public input?
The Sierra Club's Chris Ballantyne, asked by a local paper for his view, found the challenge "troubling. Litigation is not the way to do it." Mark your calendar. When was the last time an environmental group sought to deny public access to information about an environmental cleanup project?
Environmental groups should drop their dogmatic insistence on dredging, stop turning a blind eye to EPA's abuse of the review process, and insist that New York state provide for environmental review of all upland treatment and mining operations.
At this point, environmental advocates are in the uncomfortable position of cutting the public out of the process and leaving them short of information. Not a legacy you would expect from the likes of the Sierra Club.
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs. He is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Farmers sue to force EPA to release information
By GORDON BOYD
(Reprinted from the Schenectady (N. Y. Gazette page E1 6/3/01)
For The Sunday Gazette Although it has been lately quiet in the media, the controversy over whether to dredge the Hudson River to clean up PCB contamination recently shifted into a new forum: litigation.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who spent any time with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's six-volume Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study before the comment period ended in mid-April. Although six volumes should be enough to fully describe almost anything, EPA's effort was woefully incomplete and disingenuous. So last month, the group Farmers Against Irresponsible Remediation (FAIR) served notice on EPA that it intends to haul the agency into federal court, charging that EPA has committed multiple violations of federal statutes in pursuit of its dredging plan.
Whether FAIR will be successful, of course, remains to be seen. But they have a number of legal points working in their favor, and pro-dredging environmentalists are uncomfortable. FAIR is led by a dairy farmer, Willard Peck, with deep roots in Northumberland, a beautiful spot on the Hudson about 10 miles east of Saratoga Springs. He works his farm like so many others in that community, but unlike most farmers, Peck is also an attorney, and he is associated with one of the leading environmental law firms in the state: Young, Sommer, Ward, Ritzenberg, Wooley, Baker & Moore, of Albany.
By way of background, at least two of the firm's senior partners have professional roots in the environmental law bureau of the state Attorney General's Office during the tenure of Democrat Robert Abrams, a fact that suggests they are taking on FAIR's cause more out of intellectual and ethical loyalty to the original intentions of Superfund law and the goals of public participation in the environmental process.
Citizen suits FAIR, represented by Peck and Dean Sommer, intends to file a citizen suit under federal Superfund law, citizen suits being the avenue the law provides for people living adjacent to or near Superfund cleanups to make sure the polluters and everyone else are following the law.
FAIR's suit will raise several strong points unless EPA agrees in writing by July 16 to "complete the (Feasibility Study) assessment," that is to publish the following information, none of which is contained in the EPA dredge plan:
1) An assessment and evaluation of the impacts of dredging, especially concerning excavation, transport, and redisposal or containment. How a feasibility study does not contain such information makes you wonder.
2) Disclosure of the location of the hazardous waste treatment and dewatering facilities and soil/gravel extraction mines necessary to implement the dredging. Where will they be?
EPA's plan is silent on it all, including where the gravel will come from to replace what comes out of the river.
3) Assessment of the community impacts, particularly concerning noise, odors, PCB resuspension, health and environmental risks.
Without disclosure of these aspects of the plan, says FAIR, "the public has been deprived of an established statutory right and U.S. EPA has violated" federal environmental laws.
FAIR asserts that EPA's "failure and . . . refusal to complete the (dredging Plan)" prior to issuing its final Record of Decision this August "constitutes an abuse of discretion, is arbitrary and capricious and constitutes a violation" of federal laws. EPA, and its friends among certain environmental groups, have always said that the details of the location of the treatment facilities, gravel mines, disposal sites and other incidentals will be handled during the design stage, that is, after the final, irrevocable decision and order are issued to GE to start spending a half-billion dollars. First you make the decision final, then you tell the public what you're going to do and where. FAIR anticipates, probably correctly, that EPA will respond to its notice or of?
ourt action by saying that the federal courts have no jurisdiction until after the dredging is complete, i.e. in about 10 years.
FAIR cries foul But FAIR maintains that "EPA's violations of law, its attempt to deprive the public of its statutory right to public participation during the . . . process, and its expected assertion that the U.S. District Court will not have jurisdiction to hear challenges in this matter once the [final decision] is issued, constitute a gross violation of" Superfund law.
Unlike other citizen groups in our community, FAIR explicitly does not challenge the dredging remedy per se, but the incompleteness of EPA's plan. The refreshing aspect of this challenge to EPA is that it constitutes a surgical attack on the agency's adherence to its own rules and procedures, an area that the plaintiffs' attorneys know well from years of experience in these issues.
FAIR's challenge exposes how the EPA has undermined the public participation process. After all, FAIR asks, how can the public possibly assess the wisdom of the proposed remedy without all the information?
How does a national environmental group react to a group of citizen farmers and environmental lawyers challenging EPA to provide full information about its dredging plan and allow more public input?
The Sierra Club's Chris Ballantyne, asked by a local paper for his view, found the challenge "troubling. Litigation is not the way to do it." Mark your calendar. When was the last time an environmental group sought to deny public access to information about an environmental cleanup project?
Environmental groups should drop their dogmatic insistence on dredging, stop turning a blind eye to EPA's abuse of the review process, and insist that New York state provide for environmental review of all upland treatment and mining operations.
At this point, environmental advocates are in the uncomfortable position of cutting the public out of the process and leaving them short of information. Not a legacy you would expect from the likes of the Sierra Club.
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs. He is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Boyd: Economic advantages of [Hudson] dredging exaggerated
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY)
August 26, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Economic advantages of dredging exaggerated
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to move ahead with environmental dredging of PCBs from the upper Hudson River has not brought an end to the debate, nor has it prevented the seemingly victorious lower Hudson environmentalists from making wild and crazy claims about what all this means.
One recent event that caught my eye was staged by the environmental group Clearwater, which held a press conference July 30 in Troy to promote the release of an "economic impact" study of the dredging project.
The study, performed for Clearwater by a consulting firm, KLIOS, touts the job-creating benefits of the dredging project, which is expected to cost $460 million, according to EPA.
Clearwater, for its part, sees this as a tremendous boon to our benighted region.
"You just can't spend $460 million in a relatively small, poor, post-industrial, post-agrarian region and not have it have some economic benefit" said Clearwater's executive director, Andrew Mele, according to local press reports.
Post-agrarian? Poor? Who's this guy's PR adviser? Why is he making such statements when he should be trying to find common ground in the community where the dredging and environmental devastation will take place?
Mr. Mele must be unaware that only about half of the $460 million will be spent anywhere near Saratoga and Washington counties because so much will go for the likes of rail haul and landfill fees in Texas.
Leaving that aside, since when did Saratoga and Washington counties become post-agrarian? Or poor?
KLIOS/Clearwater touts 4,500 new direct and indirect jobs and $800 million in "economic rewards" that will rain down like manna on our poor, post-agrarian local economy.
Look at numbers
Drawn by this statement in local news reports, I downloaded the KLIOS study and got out my trusty calculator.
Page 18. KLIOS states that the impact of the proposed cleanup project on the regional economy between 2003 and 2008 (the period planned for the actual dredging) will include 3,543 new direct jobs drawing on $88.5 million in new direct wages.
Is it really going to take more than 3,500 people to get the PCBs out of the river?
The report does not show how KLIOS modeled this out, but it looks to me as though they either made a mistake or there's a big explanation missing.
KLIOS does not explain how $88.5 million pays 3,543 workers a living wage, unless it is assumed EPA spends the money in one year, at the rate of about $25,000 per job, which, if benefits are backed out, amounts to gross salaries of only about $18,000. But these are supposed to be union jobs, right? $35,000 and up, plus benefits.
In fact, the EPA plan spends $88.5 million on wages over five years, not one. The average payroll is only $17.7 million per year. At $25,000 per job, that pays for 709 jobs, not 3,543. At union scale, the number of jobs is more like 300 to 400, which sounds about right to me for a project of this scale.
Of course, if these are only six-month
See CLEARWATER, Page F4
Clearwater must mean magic money
Continued from Page F1
jobs, because there's no dredging during the winter, then $25,000 for a half year makes more sense, but then KLIOS is counting all 709 jobs as new jobs each of the five years. Thus each worker on the dredging project after five years would have had five jobs, not one. And 709 workers would have had just about 3,543 jobs after five years of dredging.
Or . . . perhaps KLIOS was thinking that in this small, poor, community of ours, you actually could create 3,543 jobs with $17.7 million each year, in which case, KLIOS, Clearwater and Mr. Mele must think that thousands of us post-agrarian hunter-gatherers around here will put down our spears and clubs and march right over to Schuylerville to get one o' them $5,000-per-year jobs that EPA is offering. Fat City.
Anyway, it is math like that that puffs KLIOS's economic benefit up to $800 million Gross Regional Product from the direct spending ordered by EPA. If local economies could magically create $800 million out of spending $17 million per year, life would be pretty good in upstate New York. Maybe our local governments should hire KLIOS to see how it can be done.
The PCB dredging project will devastate the upper Hudson valley, as river bottom and miles of shoreline will be excavated, dewatered and hauled away, then replaced with a million tons of locally strip-mined sand and gravel. When complete, the fish will still not be free of contamination for at least 60 years, and therefore not fit for unrestricted human consumption. We know this from the EPA's plan.
We know that the project will require a few dozen engineers and laborers to operate, but it is hard to get excited about new jobs when the economy hereabouts is suffering from a labor shortage anyway.
Clearwater has done a great job over the years educating people of all ages about the conditions of the Hudson River and other waters in the Eastern United States. Its campaigns to stop pollution have had a big impact.
However, Clearwater has not seen fit to apply the same standard of technical proficiency or explanation for this alleged economic impact study that they would require for their environmental analyses. They have used their environmental credibility to make deceptive claims about what happens to dollars and jobs, i.e. people's livelihoods.
EPA is soon to start the process of siting the two dewatering facilities needed for the project, possibly seizing land by eminent domain and overriding local zoning codes. Mele's remarks and Clearwater's report can only further inflame sentiments in the Upper Hudson community, the opposite of what they should be trying to achieve at this stage.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
August 26, 2001
Section: Opinion
Edition: Schenectady Albany; Final
Page: F-01
Economic advantages of dredging exaggerated
GORDON BOYD For The Sunday Gazette
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to move ahead with environmental dredging of PCBs from the upper Hudson River has not brought an end to the debate, nor has it prevented the seemingly victorious lower Hudson environmentalists from making wild and crazy claims about what all this means.
One recent event that caught my eye was staged by the environmental group Clearwater, which held a press conference July 30 in Troy to promote the release of an "economic impact" study of the dredging project.
The study, performed for Clearwater by a consulting firm, KLIOS, touts the job-creating benefits of the dredging project, which is expected to cost $460 million, according to EPA.
Clearwater, for its part, sees this as a tremendous boon to our benighted region.
"You just can't spend $460 million in a relatively small, poor, post-industrial, post-agrarian region and not have it have some economic benefit" said Clearwater's executive director, Andrew Mele, according to local press reports.
Post-agrarian? Poor? Who's this guy's PR adviser? Why is he making such statements when he should be trying to find common ground in the community where the dredging and environmental devastation will take place?
Mr. Mele must be unaware that only about half of the $460 million will be spent anywhere near Saratoga and Washington counties because so much will go for the likes of rail haul and landfill fees in Texas.
Leaving that aside, since when did Saratoga and Washington counties become post-agrarian? Or poor?
KLIOS/Clearwater touts 4,500 new direct and indirect jobs and $800 million in "economic rewards" that will rain down like manna on our poor, post-agrarian local economy.
Look at numbers
Drawn by this statement in local news reports, I downloaded the KLIOS study and got out my trusty calculator.
Page 18. KLIOS states that the impact of the proposed cleanup project on the regional economy between 2003 and 2008 (the period planned for the actual dredging) will include 3,543 new direct jobs drawing on $88.5 million in new direct wages.
Is it really going to take more than 3,500 people to get the PCBs out of the river?
The report does not show how KLIOS modeled this out, but it looks to me as though they either made a mistake or there's a big explanation missing.
KLIOS does not explain how $88.5 million pays 3,543 workers a living wage, unless it is assumed EPA spends the money in one year, at the rate of about $25,000 per job, which, if benefits are backed out, amounts to gross salaries of only about $18,000. But these are supposed to be union jobs, right? $35,000 and up, plus benefits.
In fact, the EPA plan spends $88.5 million on wages over five years, not one. The average payroll is only $17.7 million per year. At $25,000 per job, that pays for 709 jobs, not 3,543. At union scale, the number of jobs is more like 300 to 400, which sounds about right to me for a project of this scale.
Of course, if these are only six-month
See CLEARWATER, Page F4
Clearwater must mean magic money
Continued from Page F1
jobs, because there's no dredging during the winter, then $25,000 for a half year makes more sense, but then KLIOS is counting all 709 jobs as new jobs each of the five years. Thus each worker on the dredging project after five years would have had five jobs, not one. And 709 workers would have had just about 3,543 jobs after five years of dredging.
Or . . . perhaps KLIOS was thinking that in this small, poor, community of ours, you actually could create 3,543 jobs with $17.7 million each year, in which case, KLIOS, Clearwater and Mr. Mele must think that thousands of us post-agrarian hunter-gatherers around here will put down our spears and clubs and march right over to Schuylerville to get one o' them $5,000-per-year jobs that EPA is offering. Fat City.
Anyway, it is math like that that puffs KLIOS's economic benefit up to $800 million Gross Regional Product from the direct spending ordered by EPA. If local economies could magically create $800 million out of spending $17 million per year, life would be pretty good in upstate New York. Maybe our local governments should hire KLIOS to see how it can be done.
The PCB dredging project will devastate the upper Hudson valley, as river bottom and miles of shoreline will be excavated, dewatered and hauled away, then replaced with a million tons of locally strip-mined sand and gravel. When complete, the fish will still not be free of contamination for at least 60 years, and therefore not fit for unrestricted human consumption. We know this from the EPA's plan.
We know that the project will require a few dozen engineers and laborers to operate, but it is hard to get excited about new jobs when the economy hereabouts is suffering from a labor shortage anyway.
Clearwater has done a great job over the years educating people of all ages about the conditions of the Hudson River and other waters in the Eastern United States. Its campaigns to stop pollution have had a big impact.
However, Clearwater has not seen fit to apply the same standard of technical proficiency or explanation for this alleged economic impact study that they would require for their environmental analyses. They have used their environmental credibility to make deceptive claims about what happens to dollars and jobs, i.e. people's livelihoods.
EPA is soon to start the process of siting the two dewatering facilities needed for the project, possibly seizing land by eminent domain and overriding local zoning codes. Mele's remarks and Clearwater's report can only further inflame sentiments in the Upper Hudson community, the opposite of what they should be trying to achieve at this stage.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Boyd lives in Saratoga Springs and is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section.
Copyright 2001, 2006 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Gordon Boyd and the Planning Process
Gordon Boyd and the Planning Process
It is essential that the City planning process enjoy the trust and confidence of the general public and the development community. The process must be immune from political machinations and influences which would inappropriately attempt to compromise or corrupt it.
This is particularly true here in Saratoga Springs where we have witnessed a surge of development activity over the last several years. Consider this: since 2000 the city has issued permits for the construction of nearly 1400 new dwelling units. During the same period 460,000 square feet of new construction – valued at $55 million - has taken place in our central business district.
And in our form of government - which in part distributes executive authority among the various departments without a corresponding system of checks - it is even more vital that the planning process be immune from the political intrigue that Boyd and those whose water he carries (the Mctygues and big money developers) would bring. Every applicant and every member of the public must have faith in the integrity of the system.
This is why Gordon Boyd cannot serve as mayor.
The planning board is an autonomous review authority and the ZBA is a quasi-judicial body. Both are bound by state law, the conflict of interest prohibitions in the General Municipal Law, the city’s Code of Ethics and the boards’ own standards.
Further, it is state law [General City Law] which prescribes how these boards are established, how their members are appointed and the length of their terms.
Boyd told us in his January 30 Reader’s View that state law allows the terms of planning board and zoning board members to be reduced from seven years to five. But - as is his custom – he told us a half truth. In order to do that, the total membership of each board must be reduced from seven to five. In the world according to Boyd fewer members of the community should be allowed to participate in the life of the city.
The same section of General City Law specifically prohibits members of the city council from serving on the board [GCL Sec.27 (3)], and also prohibits appointment of any “municipal official or employee” in the “…event that such officer or employee cannot carry out the duties of his or her position without a conflict in the performance of his or hers duties as a member of the planning board.” [GCL Sec.27 (10)]. As an aside, this provision alone not only justifies, but arguably mandates, Mayor Keehn's decision at the beginning of her first term not to reappoint Bill McTygue to the Planning Board. He should have never been on the board.
All of this, of course, is designed to buffer against unwarranted influence and to ensure integrity. Thus Boyd’s attacks on the city’s three review boards, his characterizations of them as a ‘Houses of Lords’ and his publicly stated interest in ‘reigning them in’ suggests his willingness to politicize boards and use them to dispense and withhold favors.
This is dangerous at best and certainly contrary to General City Law and the City Charter. Boyd’s past attempts (December 7, 2002) to compromise the required environmental review of the then proposed Excelsior Park development suggests a predisposition to act outside the constraints of state and local law. His joined-at-the-hip (and wallet) connection with Tom McTygue, the subject of ongoing Federal and State criminal investigations, doesn’t give any comfort on this front.
It is essential that the City planning process enjoy the trust and confidence of the general public and the development community. The process must be immune from political machinations and influences which would inappropriately attempt to compromise or corrupt it.
This is particularly true here in Saratoga Springs where we have witnessed a surge of development activity over the last several years. Consider this: since 2000 the city has issued permits for the construction of nearly 1400 new dwelling units. During the same period 460,000 square feet of new construction – valued at $55 million - has taken place in our central business district.
And in our form of government - which in part distributes executive authority among the various departments without a corresponding system of checks - it is even more vital that the planning process be immune from the political intrigue that Boyd and those whose water he carries (the Mctygues and big money developers) would bring. Every applicant and every member of the public must have faith in the integrity of the system.
This is why Gordon Boyd cannot serve as mayor.
The planning board is an autonomous review authority and the ZBA is a quasi-judicial body. Both are bound by state law, the conflict of interest prohibitions in the General Municipal Law, the city’s Code of Ethics and the boards’ own standards.
Further, it is state law [General City Law] which prescribes how these boards are established, how their members are appointed and the length of their terms.
Boyd told us in his January 30 Reader’s View that state law allows the terms of planning board and zoning board members to be reduced from seven years to five. But - as is his custom – he told us a half truth. In order to do that, the total membership of each board must be reduced from seven to five. In the world according to Boyd fewer members of the community should be allowed to participate in the life of the city.
The same section of General City Law specifically prohibits members of the city council from serving on the board [GCL Sec.27 (3)], and also prohibits appointment of any “municipal official or employee” in the “…event that such officer or employee cannot carry out the duties of his or her position without a conflict in the performance of his or hers duties as a member of the planning board.” [GCL Sec.27 (10)]. As an aside, this provision alone not only justifies, but arguably mandates, Mayor Keehn's decision at the beginning of her first term not to reappoint Bill McTygue to the Planning Board. He should have never been on the board.
All of this, of course, is designed to buffer against unwarranted influence and to ensure integrity. Thus Boyd’s attacks on the city’s three review boards, his characterizations of them as a ‘Houses of Lords’ and his publicly stated interest in ‘reigning them in’ suggests his willingness to politicize boards and use them to dispense and withhold favors.
This is dangerous at best and certainly contrary to General City Law and the City Charter. Boyd’s past attempts (December 7, 2002) to compromise the required environmental review of the then proposed Excelsior Park development suggests a predisposition to act outside the constraints of state and local law. His joined-at-the-hip (and wallet) connection with Tom McTygue, the subject of ongoing Federal and State criminal investigations, doesn’t give any comfort on this front.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Metroland Article
For those interested in the full text of the Metroland article on McBoydgate, please see full text, below:
Metroland – 8/30/07
Investigation Overload
Surrounded by controversy, Saratoga Springs Comissioner of Public Works Thomas McTygue may now be the subject of an FBI investigation
Saratoga Department of Public Works Commissioner Thomas McTygue is no stranger to controversy, and according to a number of Saratogians who say they have been interviewed by the FBI, McTygue is now the target of an FBI investigation.
At least four sources who wish to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution say they have been interviewed by two FBI special agents about McTygue and his conduct as the commissioner of Public Works. Some of the individuals who claim to have been interviewed have first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the department. They say that although they are not certain what the subject of the investigation is, they have spoken at length with the FBI about an array of subjects, including McTygue’s dealings with developers, possible misuse of city property and employees, and alleged illegal dumping.
The FBI commented only to say they do not confirm or deny any investigation. Attempts were made to reach McTygue, and a secretary at the Department of Public Works informed Metroland on Tuesday that McTygue would be unreachable that day and the following day because he would be out of town for personal reasons.
According to insiders, at least a dozen people have been interviewed by the FBI regarding McTygue. One source who had been interviewed told Metroland, “Probably about a dozen people have mentioned speaking to the FBI, in passing, but they didn’t want to talk about it in detail. This investigation is not a small one. The agent made it clear that if they had found nothing the investigation would already have ended.”
Another source told Metroland, “I know it’s not just hearsay. It has actually been going on for some time, and they have spoken to numerous people. I know of six people that [the FBI] have had pretty lengthy conversations with, and a couple of them have spoken to the FBI more than once.”
Interviews seem to have started in early 2007 and have occurred as recently as this summer.
Sources said the investigation began as an inquiry to establish the value of an investigation and has now moved on to a second phase.
McTygue simultaneously faces an investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s office and the Department of Environmental Conservation into oil spills at the DPW garage, and possible illegal dumping elsewhere in the city. The status of that investigation is unknown, and it is unclear whether it is related to the FBI’s investigation. However, a number of sources who have been interviewed by the DEC claim to have also been interviewed by the FBI.
The attorney general’s office did not return calls requesting comment.
McTygue supporters have blamed Saratoga Springs Mayor Valerie Keehn for instigating the state investigation and accuse her husband David Keehn, who is a lawyer at the DEC, of having undue influence on the investigations. Keehn denies the charge.
Both the mayor and her challenger, Gordon Boyd, a McTygue ally, claimed to have no knowledge of any investigations. Boyd declined to comment. Keehn, however, said any ongoing investigations “should be allowed to take their course.”
McTygue, a Democrat who has been a longtime powerbroker in Saratoga Springs, has his share of friends and enemies in the city. He has a reputation for ruling his department with an iron fist, while making friends with residents, businesses and developers with his tree-planting program, by repaving sidewalks and providing developers with water hookups. McTygue is credited by conservative pundits with keeping Saratoga beautiful; some even call him the “mayor” of Saratoga Springs.
McTygue’s relationship with Keehn has been venomous.
To his enemies, McTygue is an entrenched member of the old guard who has used his years in office to benefit himself. He is known for holding grudges and punishing his enemies, and is commonly described as a bully.
McTygue has repeatedly fought off charges that he does not meet residency requirements for his position as commissioner. Although naming his legal residence as a small house at 175 Clinton St., McTygue has openly acknowledged living on a large horse farm that features a regulation-sized race track in the Town of Saratoga.
In 2004, McTygue gave up a tax exemption obtained through the state’s STAR program on his Clinton Street property when critics pointed out McTygue did not live there. McTygue did not then apply for the STAR program for his farm. Although the State Board of Elections rejected a challenge to McTygue’s residency earlier this year, saying that his legal residence was in the City of Saratoga, critics of McTygue insist that the fact that he actually lives in the Town of Saratoga Springs violates the City Charter and the State’s Public Officer Law, which say elected officials must be residents of the municipalities they represent.
Former and current DPW workers who wish to remain anonymous alleged that McTygue has been known to have DPW staffers do work on his farm outside of the city, that McTygue used intimidation and threats to ensure that workers would vote for him and his allies whether they lived in the city limits or not, and they further alleged that McTygue has cultivated a relationship with developers that sees them donating large amounts of cash to McTygue’s political causes in exchange for quick water hookups.
“You name it, we discussed it,” said one source of their conversation with the FBI. “The man is crooked as a twisted-up old tree.”
—David King
Metroland – 8/30/07
Investigation Overload
Surrounded by controversy, Saratoga Springs Comissioner of Public Works Thomas McTygue may now be the subject of an FBI investigation
Saratoga Department of Public Works Commissioner Thomas McTygue is no stranger to controversy, and according to a number of Saratogians who say they have been interviewed by the FBI, McTygue is now the target of an FBI investigation.
At least four sources who wish to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution say they have been interviewed by two FBI special agents about McTygue and his conduct as the commissioner of Public Works. Some of the individuals who claim to have been interviewed have first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the department. They say that although they are not certain what the subject of the investigation is, they have spoken at length with the FBI about an array of subjects, including McTygue’s dealings with developers, possible misuse of city property and employees, and alleged illegal dumping.
The FBI commented only to say they do not confirm or deny any investigation. Attempts were made to reach McTygue, and a secretary at the Department of Public Works informed Metroland on Tuesday that McTygue would be unreachable that day and the following day because he would be out of town for personal reasons.
According to insiders, at least a dozen people have been interviewed by the FBI regarding McTygue. One source who had been interviewed told Metroland, “Probably about a dozen people have mentioned speaking to the FBI, in passing, but they didn’t want to talk about it in detail. This investigation is not a small one. The agent made it clear that if they had found nothing the investigation would already have ended.”
Another source told Metroland, “I know it’s not just hearsay. It has actually been going on for some time, and they have spoken to numerous people. I know of six people that [the FBI] have had pretty lengthy conversations with, and a couple of them have spoken to the FBI more than once.”
Interviews seem to have started in early 2007 and have occurred as recently as this summer.
Sources said the investigation began as an inquiry to establish the value of an investigation and has now moved on to a second phase.
McTygue simultaneously faces an investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s office and the Department of Environmental Conservation into oil spills at the DPW garage, and possible illegal dumping elsewhere in the city. The status of that investigation is unknown, and it is unclear whether it is related to the FBI’s investigation. However, a number of sources who have been interviewed by the DEC claim to have also been interviewed by the FBI.
The attorney general’s office did not return calls requesting comment.
McTygue supporters have blamed Saratoga Springs Mayor Valerie Keehn for instigating the state investigation and accuse her husband David Keehn, who is a lawyer at the DEC, of having undue influence on the investigations. Keehn denies the charge.
Both the mayor and her challenger, Gordon Boyd, a McTygue ally, claimed to have no knowledge of any investigations. Boyd declined to comment. Keehn, however, said any ongoing investigations “should be allowed to take their course.”
McTygue, a Democrat who has been a longtime powerbroker in Saratoga Springs, has his share of friends and enemies in the city. He has a reputation for ruling his department with an iron fist, while making friends with residents, businesses and developers with his tree-planting program, by repaving sidewalks and providing developers with water hookups. McTygue is credited by conservative pundits with keeping Saratoga beautiful; some even call him the “mayor” of Saratoga Springs.
McTygue’s relationship with Keehn has been venomous.
To his enemies, McTygue is an entrenched member of the old guard who has used his years in office to benefit himself. He is known for holding grudges and punishing his enemies, and is commonly described as a bully.
McTygue has repeatedly fought off charges that he does not meet residency requirements for his position as commissioner. Although naming his legal residence as a small house at 175 Clinton St., McTygue has openly acknowledged living on a large horse farm that features a regulation-sized race track in the Town of Saratoga.
In 2004, McTygue gave up a tax exemption obtained through the state’s STAR program on his Clinton Street property when critics pointed out McTygue did not live there. McTygue did not then apply for the STAR program for his farm. Although the State Board of Elections rejected a challenge to McTygue’s residency earlier this year, saying that his legal residence was in the City of Saratoga, critics of McTygue insist that the fact that he actually lives in the Town of Saratoga Springs violates the City Charter and the State’s Public Officer Law, which say elected officials must be residents of the municipalities they represent.
Former and current DPW workers who wish to remain anonymous alleged that McTygue has been known to have DPW staffers do work on his farm outside of the city, that McTygue used intimidation and threats to ensure that workers would vote for him and his allies whether they lived in the city limits or not, and they further alleged that McTygue has cultivated a relationship with developers that sees them donating large amounts of cash to McTygue’s political causes in exchange for quick water hookups.
“You name it, we discussed it,” said one source of their conversation with the FBI. “The man is crooked as a twisted-up old tree.”
—David King
Fishy Boyd
Looks like Gordon Boyd has a similar environmental ethic to that of his political boss McTygue. See attached link.
http://www.upstateblue.com/tag/Saratoga%20Springs
Kida fishy - so it is no surprise that Team McBoyd's preferred tactic is the placement of dead fish in their opponents' mailboxes, as they did last year.
Of course we all remember the multiple run-ins with the State McTygue has had in the past for, among othe things, dumping raw sewage. Now, of course, he is under criminal investigations by both the State and FBI.
http://www.upstateblue.com/tag/Saratoga%20Springs
Kida fishy - so it is no surprise that Team McBoyd's preferred tactic is the placement of dead fish in their opponents' mailboxes, as they did last year.
Of course we all remember the multiple run-ins with the State McTygue has had in the past for, among othe things, dumping raw sewage. Now, of course, he is under criminal investigations by both the State and FBI.
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