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Plans to Burn More Debris Get 15 Year Tax Break in Niagara Falls

The new Niagara Falls product: garbage.

The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency approved a 15 year tax break for a warehouse project for a construction debris burning plant.

Sterling Energy Group, Inc., an Indiana energy firm, was granted a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement from the IDA board last week.

The Niagara Falls Boulevard warehouse will be used to store construction debris at 6000 and 6100 Niagara Falls Blvd. in LaSalle. The company then will transport the dusty debris to burn at their plant - the former Niagara Generation plant, located at 5300 Frontier Ave., that closed in 2012.

Sterling will join the growing ranks of companies that are helping to make Niagara Falls the garbage capital of the world.

Dirty construction debris, the mold stinking mass of Hurricane Sandy, the condemned litter of ghettos of urban cities, wood, garbage, nails, plaster, asphalt, painted, treated, and coated wood, wood products, plaster, drywall, insulation, wall coverings, shingles, glass, plastic, wiring, soil, and anything else that gets mixed in with the stuff.

Trucks with this debris will roll into the city bringing the debris in and to and from the warehouse to the plant.

On top of the new 15 year tax break, Sterling will also seek to take over what’s left of a 20-year PILOT agreement granted to the previous and now defunct owners of their plant back in 2007.

The Sterling plant is also equipped to burn tires and plans to burn tires that are already on site.

And for the people - they can breathe in the pollution while we cut tax breaks for the polluters.

The warehouse debris storage center will create two jobs. The overall project will create 37 jobs.

William Harrington, Sterling’s CEO, said the warehouse facility will support the jobs created at the plant at a public hearing in late August.

"If the plant doesn’t work without the site or the site without the plant, you don’t have any jobs," Harrington said.

Lockport Mayor Michael Tucker, who serves as interim chair on the IDA board, said that while the board does consider environmental impacts when contemplating tax breaks they tend to trust the state and federal agencies charged with protecting the environment to do their jobs.

"All companies, whether they come to this board or not, certainly have to fall under the state and federal guidelines for environmental issues," Tucker, who lives in far away Lockport, said of the coming of the Niagara Falls debris burning plant.

"We do have a policy here that holds them to the state and federal regulations and if they’re found to be in violation of that then we have an opportunity to claw back."

 

 

Niagara Falls Reporter - Publisher Frank Parlato Jr. www.niagarafallsreporter.com

SEP 10, 2013