Panel backs Moreau action
Biochar disappointed with county Planning Board’s approval of moratorium
BALLSTON SPA — A wasteconversion company’s hopes that the Saratoga County Planning Board would reject a Moreau moratorium Thursday were dashed.
Instead, the board approved the moratorium — one that would deny new permits in the industrial and manufacturing zones and new permits to process waste that could release contaminants — and sent it back to the town board for more work.
The planning board recommended clarifying language so the moratorium won’t deem commercial, industrial and residential waste hauler permits invalid. The planning panel unanimously voted to ask the town board to also consider a schedule and budget for the moratorium as well as develop waiver criteria before approval.
The move disappointed Saratoga Biochar Solutions CEO Ray Apy who wanted to see the moratorium soundly rejected.
“We were hoping the county planning board would take a difference stance and the targeting of a single business and the county wide impact,” Apy said. “It’s going to hurt the county’s ability to process biosolids in a better way.”
Town Councilman John Donohue said the town board will discuss any county modifications with its attorney, Bill Nikas. He also said the moratorium is necessary to give the town a chance to review and update what he sees as outdated language for the industrial and manufacturing zones.
“Like I have said, we have to do something about our codes,” Donohue said. “If the county wants to throw a monkey wrench into what we are doing, OK. We will see what our attorney says.”
The decision by the county planning board came an hour before the town was to enter a
public hearing on the moratorium. Donohue said the board would not vote on the moratorium Thursday evening and will likely accept public comments through Monday.
The county decision is the latest in a three-year battle between town residents and Saratoga Biochar, which wants to ship tons of sewage sludge and wood waste into its proposed $95 million plant in the Moreau Industrial Park. The 50,000-square-foot facility would convert the waste into carbonbased fertilizer known as biochar. But residents worry that the wastewater to create biochar could be contaminated.
They also fear the potential of pollutants being released in the air, and more trucks rumbling through residential neighborhoods.
Despite residents’ outcry against Saratoga Biochar, the plant was approved by the town’s planning board in August 2022.
Nikas, the attorney representing Moreau who authored the moratorium law, told the county board that the moratorium is necessary as the approvals for Saratoga Biochar were misguided, mostly because the town planning board misinterpreted the code.
He said the moratorium will give the town a chance to clarify the prohibitive activity, such as hauling waste into the town, which he said it already on the books.
Tom Lewis, chair of the planning board, said that his board’s job is not to consider the questions of environmental hazards or legalities. Normally speaking, he said the board wouldn’t block the town from approving moratoriums. He said the board is limited to determining if such town decisions negatively affect the county.
“We have a long consistent history of not overturning legislative action, especially a moratorium. … This is straightforward,” Lewis said.
Ian Murray, a member of the board and Saratoga supervisor, said while it’s clear the town doesn’t want Saratoga Biochar, it’s not the county board’s role to stop or promote it. Rather it must consider the law in front of them.
“We have to put blinders on and look at it as we rule every other one,” he said. “It’s a matter of consistency. There is going to be a legal fight one way or another.”