Omya eyes new location for tailings facility
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By Bruce Edwards STAFF WRITER - Published: May 9, 2009
PITTSFORD — Omya Inc. on Friday filed an application with the state for a new tailings management facility to dispose of its future marble waste.
Omya filed the application with the Agency of Natural Resources for full certification to manage its tailings operation. The company currently manages its marble waste or tailings from its Florence calcium carbonate operation under an interim certification that was issued in October.
The application for a five-year full certification identifies a location on top of the current tailings management areas. It was selected after an evaluation of 33 other properties.
The company said in a statement outlining its proposed certification that the Florence plant site was the only site that "complied with the technical requirements of Vermont's Solid Waste Management Rules and other parameters."
Plans call for construction of a single composite geomembrane liner system over the existing tailings combined with a leachate collection system.
Omya is building a $10 million dewatering facility that will purge 90 percent of the water from the tailings, to be pumped back into the plant for reuse. The tailings will then be deposited in the lined site, or if practical sold for commercial use.
Over the years, Omya has dumped millions of tons of marble waste or tailings in old unlined quarries on its property. That practice prompted neighbors of the calcium carbonate plant to express concerns about possible groundwater pollution.
Residents Concerned About Omya filed suit in federal court to stop the dumping and to force the company to take corrective action. The court is considering options to resolve neighbors' concerns.
Those neighbors also appealed Omya's interim solid waste management certification to the state Environmental Court.
The two-year interim certification issued in October allows the company to continue to dispose of and manage its tailings. The interim certification could be renewed for an additional two years.
David Mears, who represents Residents Concerned About Omya, said Friday that an expert who testified on behalf of neighbors in the federal court case said that just capping the existing waste is not a solution.
"It's putting a new waste pile on top of old waste piles," Mears said, "which essentially makes it a permanent situation that you're going to have the waste that's already in the groundwater causing contamination is there for all time."
Mears, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School, said Residents Concerned About Omya asked the court to order the company to undertake additional studies to ensure that leaving the existing waste in place is the best possible option.
Omya spokeswoman Linda Pleiman said Friday that remediation of the existing tailings isn't necessary.
"We don't believe based on exhaustive studies that remediation is necessary now or in the future," Pleiman said from company headquarters in Cincinnati.
The company continues to cite a $2.5 million, state-mandated study with multiple stakeholders participating that concluded last year that the Florence operation poses no threat to human health or the environment.
But in his ruling last year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that "the uncontroverted evidence shows that there is at least some form of harm to the environment and humans" and that some kind of remedial action is required.
bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
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