Ezra Prentice and the Port of Albany Linked in Environmental Justice

The Department of Environmental Conservation has released its long-delayed
report on air quality in the South End and specifically at Ezra Prentice Homes. The
report is definitive in establishing blame for air pollution at Ezra Prentice on the
diesel trucks that drive through on South Pearl — and actually pinpoints the worst
of that pollution.

The DEC and the State Health Department are still tentative about health impacts of
the diesel fumes, but more willing to conclude that yes, probably this does explain
the quite elevated levels of asthma and other respiratory diseases, as well as
hypertension, diabetes and pulmonary diseases.

Although a number of helpful but very partial solutions were announced, there
appears to be a consensus that the only acceptable long-term solutions are to either
reroute the trucks off of South Pearl, or to relocate the residents (at least those most
directly affected). Those options necessarily involve the Port of Albany and its
ambitious plans to expand — and neither are remotely close to reality.
At the Monday press conference that included most of the relevant officials and
elected leaders in the area, there seemed to be universal agreement that something
needs to be done. And steps were offered:

 Mayor Kathy Sheehan said a combination of friendly persuasion and
executive action has already resulted in a 30 percent reduction of traffic on
South Pearl through Ezra Prentice.

 Albany Housing Authority is investigating new whole-building air
conditioning systems for the buildings that line South Pearl on the east side,
where the highest levels of air pollution was detected.

 The Albany County Health Department will provide direct health services to
residents at Ezra Prentice with asthma and other diseases.

 The DEC has now identified trucks and their owners that are especially bad
polluters, and will reach out to them and offer help and financing to upgrade
their fleet.

The delay in announcing the results of the air pollution study apparently can be
attributed to the desire of local officials to have time to come up with as many
solutions as possible. Nevertheless, the acknowledgment that this is a real and
serious situation is a clear victory for the residents of Ezra Prentice and the
community advocates (including AVillage, the Radix Center and many others) who
have spent the last four years collecting data, advocating and protesting.

As for the more permanent solution of rerouting the trucks, Mayor Sheehan
announced that the city is in the process of getting the interior roads in the Port of Albany designated as federal roads, so that they would be eligible for federal
funds. A redesign of those roads, with their multiple railroad crossings, would be a
major undertaking, involving regional and state funding approvals, a major design
process and then construction.

One official who familiar with the funding process estimated that the earliest a new Port
road system could be up and running would be 2013 — and that would depend on a
number of favorable decisions in a very competitive funding process.

The Port is absolved in the DEC study of creating any significant part of the truck
traffic that is affecting Ezra residents, but its ambitions to expand and position itself
as a major player in the state’s plans to create offshore wind turbines is now linked
to Ezra Prentice. In September, NYS Attorney General Letitia James and her
Environmental Protection Bureau inserted themselves in the Town of Bethlehem’s
approval process for the Port’s planned expansion, demanding that the planners
reconsider the expansion’s impact on Ezra Prentice as an “environmental justice”
community. The Port contends they can satisfy the attorney general’s concerns, but
officials worry that a delay could set back their wind turbine project or cause them
to loose contracts.

None of this is new. Longtime South End City Council Member Dominick Calsolaro
summarized the decades-long struggle in a recent letter:

“ If Gov. Cuomo, his DEC and his Health Department really care about following the
State's Environmental Justice regulations, really care about the health and safety of
NYS citizens, really care about equity, and really care about righting a wrong that
the STATE purposely imposed on a community of color to "red-line" them from
finding housing in white neighborhoods as the State forced their displacement from
Albany's South End, then the only answer to correct this WRONG, is to build a new
Ezra at the State's expense.”