County exec reaches out to AG over debris site
Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan has sent a letter to the state Attorney General’s Office, asking why Joseph and Rachel Karolys’ debris-processing site on Route 212 in Saugerties is allowed to keep operating despite the known presence of contaminants.
Ryan’s letter to Attorney General Letitia James, sent Wednesday, outlines 39 violations of clean water and solid waste disposal laws found at the 1446 Route 212 site earlier this year by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
“Test results indicate the presence of heavy metals and other probable carcinogens,” Ryan wrote. “The DEC put [Joseph Karolys] on notice that he is in violation of the state’s solid waste and stormwater regulations. Mr. Karolys was directed to immediately begin removing the solid waste and dispose of it properly as required by the environmental conservation law. To date, Mr. Karolys has not complied with the DEC.”
The Karolyses were issued a stopwork order by the town of Saugerties in January and a ceaseand-desist order by the DEC in July, but a court-issued stay has allowed the business to keep operating as the matter makes its way through legal proceedings.
“While I respect the pending judicial process, it is my view that Mr. Karolys is knowingly endangering the health and safety of our residents,” Ryan wrote to James.
The state order came in response to the results of tests on samples taken during a raid on the Route 212 facility in May, as well as raids at Saugerties landfills owned by the Karolyses at 90 Goat Hill Road and 3¾3 Fel Qui Road.
Ryan also wrote that at least some of the construction-and-demolition debris being brought to the Route 212 site is from outside of Ulster County, which violates a county law. That law, though, has not yet been authorized by the state.
“Mr. Karolys ... has allowed trucks with demolition debris and material from Long Island and the New York [City] metropolitan area to continue to dump onto his properties,” Ryan wrote.
Neither Karolys or his attorney, Melvin Higgins, were available for comment Thursday.
During a protest Tuesday morning across the road from the Route 212 site, five trucks arrived to make deliveries. Three bore than name of a Queens company called Atlas, and two were from American Trucking of Brentwood, Suffolk County.
A person answering the phone Thursday at Atlas’ office said he had no knowledge of the yearlong controversy involving the Karolyses’ operation. The person would not provide his name and hung up on a reporter during two separate calls when asked.
When told about the state-issued cease-and-desist order, the person said: “Don’t know anything about that . ... Wouldn’t you think that Karolys would tell me that he no longer should accept that material there?”
The person said Atlas sometimes makes deliveries to the Saugerties site twice a week but other times only once a month. He said the material delivered Tuesday consisted of dirt, concrete and bricks.
“That is a DEC-approved facility for me to dump that material there, and we are a DEC-approved handler down here,” he said. “That’s all there is to it. There is nothing else to it.”
Representatives for American Trucking were not immediately available for comment Thursday.