CASTLETON-Crossing the buckling floor of a cavernous warehouse, Andrew Confortini of the federal Environmental Protection Agency said that the more answers he finds at the abandoned Fort Orange Paper plant, the more questions pop up.
For example, will his agency find PCBs in 420 gallons of oil inside an electrical transformer here? What purpose was served by two pounds of mercury that has spilled in one room?
But there one overriding mystery lingers behind the cleanup work that Mr. Confortini is now coordinating at this hulking plant and its surrounding property.
"Who just walks away from 120 acres?" he wondered.
The EPA began a $237,000 remediation project here last week. Now that Mr. Confortini and his crews have gotten a good look at the property, he said a full cleanup would well exceed his current budget.
So the goal of this job, which continues through October 14, is to tackle immediate hazards to safety and public health. Walking through the project this week, Mr. Confortini showed The Independent that even this limited task is a large undertaking.
Fort Orange, which produced folding cartons like cereal and candy boxes, closed abruptly in March 2002, leaving roughly 80 employees jobless. TransCanada Power, an electricity co-generation plant that shares the site, shut off the steam it supplied to Fort Orange, saying its neighbor owed nearly $500,000 in unpaid bills.
TransCanada says it warned Fort Orange owner John P. Hay before the shut-off, yet the factory's employees said in 2002 that their boss told them the steam was shut off because of an accident at TransCanada. They were told it would soon be turned back on to power machinery and heat buildings. It wasn't, and workers never returned.
Today, equipment, chemicals and records remain inside the plant, deteriorating with age and weather, or damaged by vandals and looters. Officials are concerned about trespassers, possible fires, and the potential for contaminants to spread in the Moordener Kill, the stream that crosses the site. They also worry that winds that could carry off asbestos.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation began a cleanup here last year, and estimates it removed 8,000 gallons of waste and machine oil. The EPA must now tackle asbestos abatement, two small mercury spills, removal of a large transformer and nearly 300 containers, and testing of a lagoon and landfill on the property.
"Because of the current funding, we had to prioritize and come up with a phased approach on how to address this place," Mr. Confortini said. "We don't have the money at this point."
Throughout the main building-one of eight that make up the factory-signs of vandalism were everywhere. In dark rooms where the paint peeled off the walls, computers lay smashed in piles, file cabinets were overturned; papers and employee ID tags littered the floors.
Signs of recent visitors were here and there, like a half-empty can of Molson Ice beer, and a dead deer that hung from a ceiling, apparently killed by a man who lived here when the DEC arrived.
At one end of this warehouse, the roof has caved in from the weight of last winter's snow. Mr. Confortini says a garage roof has done the same, and one building that used to house the printing department has partially collapsed.
The EPA doesn't want its crews to venture in to clean up asbestos released by the collapse or for trespassers to get hurt inside. Mr. Confortini said he's decided to knock it down entirely just to cut off access.
Asbestos is widespread at the site and has created one of the main problems that drew the agency here. At the boiler house, contractors from Optech Services of Albany spread a pasty substance meant to prevent asbestos fibers from rising on the flat roof. The workers wore hazardous materials suits and breathing masks.
Asbestos insulation from pipes on this building has crumbled off and fallen to the ground, along with asbestos tiles. The material is stored in a sealed Dumpster until it's shipped off to a landfill elsewhere.
Mr. Confortini said other "friable" asbestos-meaning the fibers that can easily become airborne and breathed in-has already been tackled in other places. He recalled a flock of birds raising a visible cloud of the material inside the boiler house.
Behind the plant, closer to the plant's old wastewater treatment operation, are long stacks of what Mr. Confortini called transite piping, some nearly a foot wide and also made with asbestos, though in a form less likely to become airborne.
In the warehouse, crews this week gathered all the remaining containers that could find on the property. Surrounded by jugs, pails and spray cans, Mr. Confortini said they range from paint and empty fire extinguishers to worrisome machine degreasers and chemicals from two labs on the property.
In another room sits the old electrical transformer, possibly full of PCBs. Imagine the cleanup required if this equipment ever sprung a leak, Mr. Confortini said.
Though much has been looted, equipment that must have had value at one time still sits discarded throughout. A massive set of rollers, used to flatten cardboard, remains mostly intact but rusted; one room is full of electronics. "Circuit boards like this do not come cheap," Mr. Confortini said.
Upstairs, in the factory's offices, everything appeared to have been left behind. Canceled paychecks littered the floor, file cabinets were full of purchase orders and payroll records, and 2002 calendars still hung on the walls. Boxes for Corn Flakes and dog food were here too, reminders of what the factory once produced.
In the owner's office, Mr. Hay seemingly forgot a few things on his way out: a pair of shoes and a sports jacket sit on the floor near an open, emptied safe.
It is, as yet, unclear where Mr. Hay is. When the state first began working on the site, a DEC official said he had four different addresses and couldn't be contacted at any of them. Yet Mr. Confortini said he believed Mr. Hay gave the EPA written permission to come on his property, and negotiations to recover costs for the cleanup might be in the works.
Because of the legal issues involved, officials have been reluctant to comment on Mr. Hay's whereabouts. The EPA is working with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office to determine who ultimately controls the property.
At TransCanada, Operations and Maintenance Manager Stephen Konisky recalled the printing plant's final days. Mr. Konisky said he has been with his company for seven years.
When TransCanada was built in 1992, state law required co-generation plants to have a host company, and theirs was Fort Orange. TransCanada, which mostly burns natural gas to generate electricity, produces steam as a byproduct and supplied it to Fort Orange.
Fort Orange, in turn, leased TransCanada the property for 40 years, supplied the power company with water and sewer hookups, and plowed its roads. But when Fort Orange stopped paying its bills, TransCanada's corporate leadership ordered the local plant to shut off steam.
The laws had changed by then, allowing TransCanada to operate without a host company. But without Fort Orange, TransCanada had to take on responsibility for water, sewer and roads. "Since they shut down, it's put a lot of costs on us," Mr. Konisky said.
This week, steam remained in the pipes to Fort Orange. Mr. Konisky said TransCanada hoped a new company would move in, and held talks with the Dixie paper company when that firm considered opening an operation here. But Dixie changed its mind when its representatives saw the property.
"Now, with the condition of the buildings, we're sort of cutting ourselves off completely," Mr. Konisky said.
Mr. Confortini said he wants very much to speak with former Fort Orange employees to find out more about how the plant used to operate. Until the EPA leaves October 14, he can be reached at his temporary office at TransCanada, 732-4400. After that, he can be reached in his New Jersey office at 732-906-6827. |
