Sitting here looking out across the river at the Port of Coeymans… 🏭

Seems like every time I come here it’s gotten bigger. The piles of concrete and brick grow, the sorting buildings for the construction debris and the manufacturing facilities that assemble the bridge parts and wind turbines. There is a ton of money in recovering value out of the waste stream of building and construction debris, value that is almost entirely lost in the complementary landfills like the one in Rensselaer that competes but also benefits from the facilities bypass waste. 

You can see the new LaFarge Blue Circle Cement smoke stack with all the scrubbing equipment that reduces emissions from the old plant which was dumping nearly 800 lb of mercury in the air from the mercury rich limestone it was baking to make cement. It turned out that the limestone was a lot richer in mercury then anyone though and for many years was the regions biggest polluter of mercury and many other emissions. Ward Stone was testing mercury at the local school and we’ll never know how much mercury is in the ground the kids play in because he was silence, said that he was living at the Five Rivers Environmental Lab. I’m still undecided about them burning tires there – assuming they aren’t already. It could be a good source of energy, reduce the number of waste tires thrown over banks and in creeks by strengthening the tire disposal market.

I just saw a great big old tug boat pushing a barge full of heating oil north. It’s definitely a cold day, I probably shouldn’t linger long.