Dear Friends,
Please give your support in protecting our Onondaga County residents and children.
Groups and individuals in our area have significant concerns about the potential adverse environmental, economic, social justice, and public health impacts of garbage incineration and importation of trash into Onondaga County. We are requesting that you sign on to support that no further negotiations are continued or planned until Onondaga County engages in an updated Health Risk Assessment. This has not been done in association with incineration. The last assessment was done in 1988.
Onondaga County officials have been reviewing plans with Cortland County to import Cortland’s waste to the Rock Cut Road incinerator for the next 20 years. In turn, the ash from Cortland and Onondaga Counties will be imported to Cortland County’s landfill. There have been two hearings regarding the Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) and the Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) in regard to this proposed plan. In 1996, a law was enacted by the Onondaga County Legislature to ban the importation of waste from other counties. Cortland has a similar law in place. The last time importation was discussed in 1996, a standing room only crowd convinced legislators NOT to import trash. Now, we have a 20 year old incinerator and an outdated mode of trash removal. In 2004, the Public Service Commission noted that for each megawatt of electricity produced, trash incineration caused six times as much mercury pollution as burning coal in power plants. Mercury has been detected in fish in Glacier Lake at Clark Reservation State Park; Jamesville Reservoir has yet to be tested.
Some of the chemicals emitted from this incinerator include lead, dioxins, mercury, cadmium, formaldehyde, fine particulates, carbon dioxide and others that contribute to climate change and have significant health effects such as cancer, asthma and suspected neurological issues.
The surrounding population of the incinerator includes some of the most vulnerable citizens and 45% of the elderly in Onondaga County. There are 46 schools, 16 recreational areas and 20 water sources in a four mile radius of the incinerator. The incidences of breast cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer are higher in Onondaga County compared to NYS and the U.S. This information comes directly from the Onondaga County Health Department data.
Experts on this subject believe that this country’s next steps are toward creating jobs from recyclables instead of destroying resources. In addition, New York State’s Beyond Waste program prefers waste reduction, recycling, ruse, repair and composting with a goal of zero waste in the future. This will not happen if we need to feed the Rock Cut Road incinerator plant with garbage either from here or anywhere.
We are requesting that you sign on to support that no further negotiations are continued or planned until the County engages in an updated Health Risk Assessment. It’s the least we all can do to be sure that our Onondaga County residents and children are not in further danger. We need your support by Friday, January 16 at 7:30 PM. All you need to do is email us your name or your organization to be added to the list of supporters. <bjbrown@skanschools.org>
For individual comments email to< CortlandOnondagaPartnership@bartonandloguidice>
Sincerely,
Patrick J. Brown
Vice Chair
JAM-PAC (Jamesville Positive Action Committee)