Millions of pounds
Data: Norlite burned more AFFF than previously known
Incineration of toxic firefighting foam at the Norlite aggregate plant in Cohoes started in 2017, earlier than previously thought.
Toxic firefighting foam had been incinerated at the Norlite aggregate plant here for longer and to a greater extent than previously known, according to shipping documents from the U.S. Department of Defense.
While state environmental and city officials knew that 2.5 million pounds of aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, were burned in Norlite’s kiln between 2018 and 2019, the incineration actually started in 2017.
That included some 5.5 million pounds of wastewater containing AFFF, according to records. The concentration of AFFF in the wastewater wasn’t immediately known, however.
“It’s not clear why” the earlier shipments were not included in earlier data from the state and city, said David Bond, a faculty member at Vermont’s Bennington College who has been conducting research about the AFFF incineration and its environmental impacts. Bond spoke about the earlier shipments during an online briefing on Tuesday. He learned about them after combing through DOD shipping documents.
AFFF contains PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals. The foam is being phased out due to worries about the health effects of PFAS compounds, which can include thyroid problems, liver damage and possible cancers, among other things.
Incineration of AFFF has since been banned at Norlite, which is the only site in New York that had accepted the chemical. The ban came after revelations last year that some 2.5 million pounds of the foam had been incinerated at Norlite in 2018 and 2019. Worried about the health and environmental effects, the city imposed a moratorium, which was followed by a state ban.
News that even more AFFF appears to have been incinerated at Norlite drew rebukes from Cohoes as well as from activists such as Bond.
“If true that Norlite was incinerating AFFF firefighting foam containing dangerous PFAS chemicals before 2018, that is concerning but not surprising,” Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler said. “It is concerning that Norlite did not disclose that information, and disappointing that the DEC did not discover that fact.”
“DEC appears to be significantly undercounting the amount of AFFF and AFFF wastewater burned at Norlite,” Bond said.
DEC Chief of Staff Sean Mahar, however, noted that the state agency began scrutinizing the shipments in 2018 at Keeler’s request. And because AFFF is not federally classified as a hazardous waste, there was no requirement that either the shipper — the DOD — or Norlite had to report it.
“They weren’t required to report to us,” Mahar said.
Until they halted the incineration, Norlite took in almost 40 percent of the AFFF the DOD had been disposing of. The company had been accepting AFFF from military installations across the Eastern U.S. as part of a $5 million contract. The contract was dropped last year amid worries about the dangers of incineration and the outcry from Cohoes residents and town officials.
Much of the military AFFF was from airfields, where fire crews would train with the foam. That’s also true of locations across the state where local departments have trained. Norlite also had been taking in AFFF from fire departments in New England and other nearby states.
The DOD rules for AFFF disposal appear to have loopholes in the form of wide discretion about how shipments of the foam are reported to state and local authorities.
The DOD doesn’t require certificates of destruction or burning parameters for AFFF, noted Bond. “It seems as if the military did not want to know,” he said. The DOD, he added, may be hastening efforts to dispose of AFFF before it is classified as a hazardous waste — something environmentalists like Bond are calling for.
Norlite also pointed out that there is no reporting requirement. They had told DEC voluntarily at one point that the substance was being shipped there.
“AFFF and its constituents are not regulated as hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, nor are they subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act,” said Prince Knight, environmental and regulatory compliance manager at Norlite.
“Therefore, neither Norlite nor any generators were subject to any legal requirement to report incineration of Afff-containing waste materials to the New York Department of Conservation or federal regulators, nor has there been any requirement to report such activity to the city.”
Precisely how much AFFF was in the earlier wastewater shipments, which may have come from groundwater, wasn’t immediately clear.
Incineration of AFFF at Norlite first came to light through documents in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, including the Sierra Club.
There is a push by environmental activists for a national ban on incineration of AFFF, which is still burned in a handful of facilities across the U.S.
There also are worries about the dust and emissions coming from Norlite’s kiln, which is licensed to burn hazardous wastes. Residents of Saratoga Sites, a neighboring subsidized housing development, recently sued over the silica dust coming from the facility.