Jan. 15—For months, they’ve been calling on state and federal regulators to stop a local manufacturer from releasing potentially harmful amounts of a cancer-causing chemical into the air above a Niagara Falls neighborhood.
On Tuesday, advocates for operational changes at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant off 56th Street aired their concerns during a meeting with the top regional official from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Attendees of the Zoom conference call with EPA Region 2 Administrator Lisa Garcia said they received assurances that the federal agency will consider some of their recommendations for reducing the plant’s output of ortho-toluidine, a chemical used in the production of tires that has been linked to bladder cancer.
“All we are really asking them to do is finally require Goodyear to follow the Clean Air Act,” said Anne Rabe, a spokesperson with Don’t Waste New York, one of six organizations involved in an ongoing push for better emission controls at the Goodyear facility.
Don’t Waste New York, together with the Niagara Falls Chapter of the NAACP, Clean Air Coalition of WNY, Sierra Club Niagara Group and Interfaith Climate Justice Community of WNY, submitted a letter to the EPA on Nov. 27 that outlined their concerns about plant emissions. The letter included recommendations for six action steps advocates say would help address concerns about public health in the surrounding neighborhood.
On Tuesday, Rabe said EPA officials agreed to consider three of the recommendations they considered to be the most “reasonable.” Those recommendations include:
—Requiring Goodyear to “immediately” install interim emission reduction measures.
—Requiring the company to perform a new round of testing to get a more accurate read on output from stack’s emitting materials from the plant.
—Imposing a compliance schedule that would require the company to install permanent emissions reduction equipment in keeping with O-T release standards established by the state in 2021. Advocates say the final measure would result in a 90% reduction of O-T levels from the facility.
Rabe said members of her coalition are expecting to receive a status update from the EPA on Friday.
“These three actions will be impactful in addressing the public health,” Rabe said.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation produced an air pollution model in September that showed O-T levels substantially higher than allowed under state standards being released into the air in roughly a half-mile area around the plant.
O-T release standards were changed in 2021 so the plant, which was once allowed to release 5,000 pounds of the chemical per year, can now legally release only 100 pounds annually.
While the DEC notified the company in July 2023 that it was in violation of its air permit and that it needed to develop a plan and a schedule for installing new pollution control equipment, critics say the state agency has failed to actually force Goodyear to follow the rules at a cost to the health of residents living near the plant.
Environmental and community advocates have called on the EPA to issue an emergency order under the Clean Air Act to respond to what they describe as an “imminent” public health crisis. They argue that doing so would force Goodyear to take immediate steps to reduce O-T emissions from the site.
Support for the emergency order received the backing of the statewide NAACP on Saturday. The measure has also been supported by 40,000 members of the Sierra Club in New York.
Renae Kimble, a former Niagara County legislator who serves as president of the Falls chapter of the NAACP, took part in Tuesday’s Zoom conference that included representatives from the EPA and the DEC.
She said she was “appalled” with the lack of knowledge that the EPA administrator had regarding the issues at the Goodyear plant.
“Why the delay?’ she said. “That’s my question and that’s what I asked them. Government is supposed to work for the people and when you have an eminent health emergency it should not be an incremental process.”
Kimble said the EPA has had ample time — well over 30 business days — to review concerns submitted by advocates for change at the plant in November.
“You just don’t leave over 4,000 people constantly exposed to emissions levels that are way over the requirement,” she said. “These are carcinogens and we know that they cause bladder cancer.”
The DEC says it is continuing to work with federal and state partners and Goodyear to ensure “all facility emission requirements are backed by rigorously examined scientific methods.” The agency has suggested the state’s emission guidelines for O-T are set at levels to protect the public from health effects and are “more stringent than federal risk thresholds.”
“Based on DEC’s review, and after consultation with the State Department of Health (DOH), the Goodyear facility permit’s emission limits are currently protective of the surrounding community’s air quality,” the DEC said in a statement issued by a spokesperson. “Nevertheless, these emission limits will be further strengthened in the upcoming permit modification.”
Goodyear insists the Falls plant produces “low levels of ortho-toluidine emissions and that the company is in “full compliance” with its current permit for the facility.
“The DEC has updated its ambient air guidelines for ortho-toluidine going forward, and Goodyear is working closely with the agency to identify and implement any changes needed based on those new guidelines,” the company said in a statement. “Goodyear is committed to maintaining compliance with state regulatory and permitting requirements.”
The Buffalo News reported that a trio of Democratic leaders — U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy — met Monday with state officials to discuss O-T emissions from the Goodyear plant. In statements issued to the newspaper, all three lawmakers indicated that they are continuing to monitor the situation.
“I am deeply concerned over the high levels of emissions the facility is releasing into the air,” Kennedy said in a statement to The News.
“Protecting the health and wellbeing of employees and residents in the community is my top priority,” he said. “The families that live near this plant and the men and women who work there deserve to know the air they breathe every day is safe. I will not stop fighting for our community’s right to clean air.”
One local official said this week that he’s not inclined at this time to join the chorus of individuals and organizations calling for EPA intervention.
Niagara Falls City Council Chair Jim Perry — who worked for Goodyear in the Falls for decades before retiring from the plant in 2015 — said he spoke with representatives from the facility a couple of weeks ago and they assured him they are committed to installing the equipment needed to ensure the plant operates under the state’s current air quality standards.
“The plant has sent the (Department of Environmental Conservation) a plan for implementation and a timeline so the new systems are going to be coming online,” Perry said.
Perry, who lives on 69th Street in the “plume” area surrounding the plant, said he’s confident the company is doing everything it can to protect its workers and have for years conducted monitoring of the health of retirees like him from the plant.
Perry said he’s not sure what more an emergency order from the EPA would accomplish.
“We should always be concerned about what’s going on around us,” he said. “We should always be concerned. We should always be watchful for what’s happening, but I don’t see any alarms going off.”
“I’m sensitive to the matter but unless something new comes up, I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon,” he added.