The Case for the Coast is Clear
THINK OF COASTLINE and what comes to mind -- sandy beaches, crashing waves, the endless horizon? What about a tug on the Hudson plying the river's dark, slightly brackish waters?
The Hudson does comprise part of the coast of New York, a fact that comes as no surprise to anyone who's been adrift in a small boat anyplace south of Albany, where the water that eventually finds its way to the Atlantic can just as well carry you upriver as down, depending on the tide. Henry Hudson discovered that when he sailed up the river nearly 400 years ago.
Recognizing the shores of the Hudson as coastline helps explain its special significance and why policies to protect it were adopted in the early 1980s under the state's Coastal Management Program. Those same policies could now decide the fate of the proposal by St. Lawrence Cement for a new plant in Greenport and the City of Hudson.
Much of the debate over the proposal during the last few years has focused on the review of the environmental impact of the plant by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which must determine whether to issue permits the company needs to start construction. So it came as something of a surprise last year when another agency of state government, the Department of State, asserted that it too has authority over the project. The Department of State administers the Coastal Management Program as part of a federal mandate.
The policies of the coastal program address many of the same subjects in the DEC's review, including air quality and scenic impact. But unlike the seemingly endless DEC proceedings, the Department of State says it will issue a decision by April 22. That's warp speed by government standards and so fast we question whether decision makers will have time to read the lengthy arguments by both sides, let alone digest them.
And it gets worse, because the policies that address many of the big issues surrounding the plant use such broad language they would leave Biblical scholarsscratching their heads. Just consider Policy 1: "Restore, revitalize and redevelop deteriorated and underutilized waterfront areas for commercial, industrial, cultural, recreational and other compatible uses." Huh?
The company says it will do exactly that by building a facility serviced by huge ships and barges delivering raw materials and hauling away cement. But that activity would undermine the cultural and recreational uses of the waterfront and the surrounding area. Contradictions like these make it dicey to predict how the Department of State will apply the policies in making its decision.
We encourage the officials charged with this difficult task to look beyond the language of the policies to the coastline itself, True, the City of Hudson traces its origins to the whaling business. And the ocean-going vessels sailing the river's deep-water channel spice the waterway with a bit of romance. But from the early sailing ships until this day, the water traffic and shoreline facilities fit the scale of the surrounding landscape.
No manmade features, not even the existing cement plants, come close to dominating the coastline the way the St. Lawrence project would. The proposed plant would not redevelop the coastline, its very scale would redefine it. Nothing in the policies of the Coastal Management Program authorizes the Department of State to take such drastic and unprecedented action.
We have grave reservations about the health impacts of the plant, especially now that the company has proposed a shortened smokestack. We share the concerns of those who believe the proposal diminishes the national treasure of Olana. And we see no evidence that the plant would have an appreciable positive impact on the local economy after its construction.
But for this decision, we believe the nation has a stake the preserving the integrity of the coastline. And the Department of State has a duty to reject outright the St. Lawrence proposal.
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