IDA Chairman to Examine Record for Quasar Misrepresentations;By Frank Parlato April 15, 2014 |
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The plan to spread human manure as fertilizer over farm fields in Niagara County, which received approval for $1.5 million in tax breaks from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), might be headed for a setback.
"I am not prepared to say we have one now," Sloma said, "I have to look at the record." Not only did Quasar fail to inform the IDA and the public that human manure was their product, but apparently misled the IDA's director of project development, Susan Langdon, who told the IDA board that Quasar's planned facility will produce fertilizer through the "anaerobic digestion" of "organic wastes such as food waste, fats, oils, greases, manure, crop waste and biosolids." Langdon did not mention the word "human" as a descriptor for manure. Nor did she mention that fats, oil, greases and biosolids, along with the manure comes from sewer plants that pay Quasar to take away their sludge. What might have been told to the board and public, but was not mentioned, is that Quasar's three-fold business model revolves around human manure: 1) Quasar gets paid to truck human waste from sewer plants that would otherwise pay to depose of it in a landfill; 2) The waste is then taken to its (taxpayer subsidized) "energy facility" in Wheatfield. There, methane gas from the human excrement is converted to electricity and sold to National Grid, which, in turn, sells it to local customers at full retail price. 3) The gas-free human manure is then stored in brown lagoons until it can be sold as fertilizer to farmers. This human manure is branded by the company as a product called "Equate." The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) plans to "reduce landfill footprints" by accepting human excrement from counties downstate and spreading it on farms in Niagara County. The DEC has already issued permits to 10 corporate farms. This spreading of human manure over Niagara County is staunchly supported by a cadre of DEC bureaucrats who live in Albany, far from the reach of its unsavory odors. Last week, State Sen. George Maziarz and Assemblyman John Ceretto sent a letter to the DEC commissioner Joseph Martens asking him to rescind Quasar's permits to spread human manure on thousands of acres of Niagara County farms. Maziarz and Ceretto pointed out that Niagara County isn't the only place where Quasar has been trying to spread human manure or create brown lagoons and that Quasar is suspected to have misled local officials. In Pittsfield, Ohio, 43 property owners filed an appeal with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that a permit granted to build a human waste lagoon was granted under false pretenses.
"It was a 'death sentence,'" said one neighbor. "No more hanging clothes outdoors; no more gardening; always fearing the sludge pit upslope could break or overflow with millions of gallons of sewage ending up in backyards and basements. The horrid, unlivable stench that the company denies literally ruins people's lives. The stench invades your house internally, so closing a window does not help. The stench saturates your clothing and, yes, there are dust particles that cause disease and illness like E-coli infected skin lesions, E-coli related pneumonias, constant throat, eye and skin irritations." Meanwhile, Quasar advertises its product as "clean organic matter," never mentioning that that the "organic matter" is, in fact, human feces. "Equate - a natural fertilizer alternative containing valuable nutrients and organic matter," their advertising pamphlet states,"…[is] applied to farm fields (as) an ecofriendly alternative to traditional fertilizer options." Quasar also downplays the fact that their product, once spread over a farm, will create odor for miles. Equate is "a less odorous product," their pamphlet reads. "We're not making rose petals here," said Bruce Bailey, a vice president of technical affairs with Quasar, in a rare moment of Quasar candor, when discussing the odor. "But it is greatly reduced."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, sewage sludge such as that used by Quasar contains "toxic contaminants with heavy metals, steroids and pharmaceuticals, including the antibacterials, triclocarban and triclosan…antibiotics, disinfectants, antimicrobials, steroids, endocrine disrupting chemicals and other anthropogenic drugs." Sen. Maziarz says he welcomes the idea that Niagara County IDA Chairman Sloma is looking into possible misrepresentations by Quasar. "If Quasar misled the IDA," Maziarz said, "then it should be explored carefully to determine whether the PILOT can be rescinded. I'm going to stay on top of this to protect the health and welfare of Niagara County residents."
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