A fter five years of frustration tying to get a permit to dump illegal amounts of hazardous hexane into the air of Hellam Township, Pa., chicken-seller Perdue has now attracted this Lancaster, Pa. LNP news headline:
Perdue moves to take legal action against Hellam Township
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Here are two public comments left at LNP's September 18, 2015 news site:
1.
"Just for clarification, the Hellam Township Supervisors do not oppose the proposed Perdue Soybean processing plant. We support it!
2.
"Big company that Pollutes and wants to step over people's lives to make a Profit and to say screw you we are building this plant!"
J Dittoe Jr., Harrisburg Area Community College
-- The above comments appear on this LNP news site:
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Lancaster Farming
September 19, 2015
Commentary/Opinion
Township Simply Trying
to Protect the Air We All Breathe
Editor:
From Day One, Hellam Township (in York County, Pa.) has strongly supported the construction of the proposed Perdue soybean oil extraction plant (across the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County).
Farmers feel it will benefit the prices they get — which is questionable in the long run — and there’s no doubt this region can use more jobs. By their current lack of complaints, the residents along Route 441 seem willing to tolerate the additional truck every two minutes the plant will bring.
Because the proposed plant is upwind of Hellam Township and because we already have some of the worst air quality ratings in the nation, Hellam Township has sought help to ensure all clean air requirements are followed.
We have sided with the American Lung Association in asking the state Department of Environmental Protection to require the installation of a regenerative thermal oxidizer, or RTO, that would reduce by 95 percent the 208 tons of hexane Perdue plans to release.
Hexane damages nerves and lungs. It combines with nitrogen oxides emitted by the adjacent Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority’s mass burn incinerator, the nearby Brunner Island power plant, and the Armstrong ceiling plant to form ozone.
A study by Millersville University found temperature inversions that trap pollutants close to the ground where we must breathe them on 311 days per year near the proposed plant.
The approximate $5,000 a year Hellam Township has spent to help ensure all clean air requirements are followed is less that the average medication cost for one person with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma, and American Lung Association statistics indicate more than 900 people, almost one in six Hellam Township residents, suffer from either asthma or COPD.
Concerned Hellam Township residents have already donated $6,000 to offset those expenses.
While some are complaining of delays, a DEP engineer stated that most issues would be resolved by using an RTO.
In dealings with the DEP, Perdue has attempted to use illegal permitting approaches that were caught by the people hired by Hellam Township — not the DEP — and Perdue has taken quite a long time to reply to DEP requests for information.
The DEP has been waiting since early July for answers to its most recent request for information from Perdue. In short, Perdue is responsible for the delays. It’s not the process, not the DEP and most certainly not Hellam Township.
Industry provides jobs, and we all need jobs. But with a history of coal mines, steel mills and now gas well fracking, Pennsylvanians are keenly aware of the Faustian bargains that are all too often made with large corporations.
We must not allow our legislators to compromise the current DEP process that allows for public input to the issuing of DEP permits and ensures the DEP enforces a legally binding response from industries seeking to release pollutants into our air and water.
-- Michael C. Martin, Chairman, Hellam Township board of supervisors
-- From:
[Colors added above for emphasis.]
Yeh Perdue is one class operation.....NOT!!!!.....they should get together with VW....another classless operation....
ReplyDeleteRay, I read thd DEP's request fir information from the link you supplied in your last article. It takes every detailed explanation by Perdue of everything asked by the EPA and generally refuted each one and asks for further explanation, even though the first answers were considered compliant and within requested parameters and limits required by the EPA.
ReplyDeleteThe list of RFI's is miles long and would take a team of scientists and lawyers a year to reply to, yet after only giving them two months, you write this added complaint. What these RFI's amount to is just plain obstructionism, and IMHO, should not only cause a lawsuit, but win the suit hands down.
Go away, Ray. Your tiring posts of this drivel should serve to include you in the lawsuit and cause you to pay for the damages you are doing to Perdue as well.
Illegally requiring the use of an RTO when there is no requirement on any other soybean oil processor places the added cost of burning even more fossil fuels than are being saved by shortening the distances the haulers must drive has been proven in the research to not only cause MORE pollution, but would serve to make the plant impossible to compete in today's market.
Your agenda is outside the law, Ray, and obstructionism like yours should be stopped in its tracks and punished accordingly.
Go away, Ray.
If you think what they do to the environment is bad - you should see how they treat their own employees....lure them to smallsbury with re-lo packages and signing bonuses, get them to buy a house in the area - then lay them off when they're holding cash....now, they have skills in an area that is financially depressed and nobody else is hiring for that skillset at the rates needed to pay for the house you just bought.
ReplyDeleteI have seen them do this a number of times over the years - it gets harder and harder for them to recover when the situation improves.
Maybe someday they'll wake up to the fact that they need to take care of the locals that are their community and employment base.
From what I can see, the owning family doesn't know this is happening as it is the lower level of managements that is taking the actions...if they only knew....
Tough man - tender chicken - rough management....
You go away 6:37. Either go away or get out from under the rock you are living under and wise the heck up.
ReplyDeleteThe EPA! Oh the EPA is so wonderful! Again wise the heck up, you stooge.
FYI-The EPA is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Big Business. Do you understand! It was dreamed up and created as a way for Big Business to skirt the anti trust laws. Over regulate as a way to get rid of competition so just an handful of big businesses control all trade, commerce and services. It prevents others from opening new businesses thus further limiting competition as it costs lots of money to become "complaint."
Is this all this guy does? Go after perdue? It's getting pathetic.
ReplyDeleteSeems like the only time we read articles from him. Probably has a vendetta of some sort.
Deleteat least it is not in our back yard. We already have a processing plant in the center of town in sby.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who continues to align themselves with the EPA has mental problems. Ray, please go away. The EPA must be challenged on every level. They twist and lie and have been caught in many lies over the years and even recently. They tell these lies to prop up their agenda. period
ReplyDeleteGOOD GOING PERDUE!!! Tell Ray to spend his time cleaning up the contaminated water coming out of his state and screwing up the Chesapeake Bay...clean-up your own mess before you worry about somebody else. NORTHERNERS class act...NOT!
ReplyDeleteJim P. is doing to those in PA what he is doing to those in MD with those mega chicken factories on the shore. What a nice guy (who supported O'Malley and Anthony Brown -- guess why).
ReplyDelete