Sludge Watch ==> For Unpleasant Synagro Pellet Odors - Inspiration from Wall Street

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/nyregion/thecity/13stoc.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Hunts Point
For Odors Unpleasant, Inspiration From Wall Street

By JENNIFER BLEYER
Published: August 13, 2006
When it’s especially hot out, or the wind is blowing in a certain direction, 
Silkia Martinez refuses to eat outside in her Hunts Point neighborhood. The 
odor from the New York Organic Fertilizer Company’s plant, she said, might 
make her gag.

“It’s plain old nasty,” said Ms. Martinez, a freshman at the Interboro 
Institute and the mother of a 6-year-old girl. “It’s as bad as when you pass 
a horse stable.”

The plant, which is part of Synagro Technologies, a Houston company, 
converts much of the city’s sludge into fertilizer pellets, but many 
residents say it also produces an intolerable stench. They have made those 
complaints since the plant, which is between the Bruckner Expressway and the 
East River, opened in 1992.

Now critics have taken a new tack in their 14-year battle. In 2004, a 
consortium of nonprofit organizations, including an environmental advocacy 
group called Sustainable South Bronx, bought 1,750 shares of Synagro stock 
for about $2.50 a share — a token holding, but enough for a shareholder vote 
in the company. Since then, the critics have discovered that investors can 
have clout.

In December, for example, they proposed a shareholder resolution requesting 
that Synagro report how many toxins, molds, pathogens and other substances 
are released from the plant, and how those pollutants affect local health 
and safety. In May, at the annual shareholder meeting in Houston, the 
resolution garnered 31 percent of the vote — more than enough to hold 
management’s attention.

“We were thrilled,” said Elena Conte, a coordinator at Sustainable South 
Bronx.

This is not the first time critics of the plant have sought creative 
solutions to their problems. Last spring, for example, a teacher and 
students at St. Athanasius School, a Catholic school on Southern Boulevard 
half a mile from the plant, printed about 400 “Smelly Calendars” on which 
neighbors could down particularly noxious days to report to 311, the city 
government hot line.

Since becoming a shareholder, the groups say, they have had strikingly good 
results, among them productive meetings with Synagro’s chief executive, 
Robert Boucher, and its general counsel, Alvin Thomas. Before the consortium 
made its investment, Ms. Conte said, “there would be no way we would get a 
phone call from the C.E.O. and head lawyer.”

“As soon as we introduced the resolution, they flew to New York.”

The shareholder activists are continuing to meet with Synagro executives and 
are working with them on the scope of a report on the plant’s operation and 
emissions.

“As long as it’s cost-effective and provides useful information, we’ll do 
it,” said Mr. Thomas, whose company accepts some responsibility for the 
local smells, but also points out that other odor-causing businesses are in 
the area.

Sister Valerie Heinonen, a New York consultant with the national Mercy 
Investment Program, one of the groups in the consortium, hopes that Hunts 
Point residents will soon see benefits from the stock holding. “We’re not 
just looking for a report,” she said. “We’re looking for an improvement in 
the situation that gets accomplished through the report. We’re looking for a 
return on our investment.”