To the Editor:

Thank you for hearing my concern over the next plans for the Port of Albany.  The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is considering approving a facility to boil fuel — whether oil from the Bakken fields of North Dakota, tar sands oil from Alaska or fracking products from a fracking operation — the boiler would be handling combustible materials and facilitating the railway transportation of combustible, fossil fuels.

There have been very alarming recent accidents in the rush to transport fuels; we’ve seen the aftermath in the news. 

These only underline the need for the Department of Environmental Conservation to go carefully and require a full Environmental Impact Statement under the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act.  Currently, the DEC has issued a “negative declaration” to indicate that this facility is of so little environmental concern that we need not truly give it a full review.

That decision was an absurd concession to Global LLC desire to build a fuel boiler/heater in Albany and create — yes — an astounding six jobs!  Please comment to the NYS DEC by Jan. 10 and tell them, at the very least, to require an Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed facility.

There is no doubt there will be both pollution visited upon an impoverished community and also some danger to the Hudson River involved in the proposed fuel operation.

You may write the NYS DEC at: Karen M. Gaidasz, NYS  DEC, 1130 North Westcott Road, Schenectady, NY  12306.

Thank you.

Grace Nichols