Lights Out Norlite
As Norlite submits application to renew hazardous waste and air toxics permits, 70 families are relocated due to hazardous air pollution from Norlite’s aggregate piles.
While moving the Saratoga Sites apartments will provide relief, more than 51,000 people live downwind of Norlite in Cohoes and the City of Troy.
It’s time to deny Norlite’s permits to burn hazardous waste.
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TAKE ACTION. CALL ON THE NYS DEC TO DENY NORLITE'S PERMIT RENEWAL:
Lights Out Norlite Responds to Attorney General’s Lawsuit
Norlite is a toxic waste incinerator located in Cohoes, NY. For more than fifty years Norlite has released toxic pollution on the New York Capital Region and beyond.
Saratoga Sites, a public housing complex home to 70 families, is just 400 yards from Norlite’s stacks. Those families are now being relocated because of Norlite’s pollution.
Norlite has been fined repeatedly for violating environmental regulations, including for mercury, heavy metals, VOC’s, and toxic dust emissions. VIEW NORLITE’S TOXIC TIMELINE.
Lights Out Norlite is an activist organization created to raise awareness about Norlite and the dangers associated with it. We have been working tirelessly to call attention to permit violations at the plant and the effect it is having on the community.
We are calling on the NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation to deny Norlite’s Title V Air Toxics and Hazardous Waste permits. Norlite’s permits expired on December 31, 2021.
Independent tests show that dust from Norlite contains razor sharp glass and silica and is an immediate threat to residents. The dust samples were gathered from a nearby attic and car windshield. Norlite’s own Material Safety Data Sheets show that the dust can cause silicosis, a progressive, incurable, and deadly lung disease.
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- Join our biweekly organizing meeting. Send a message to norlite-subscribe@lists.mayfirst.org
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Norlite Timeline
Norlite has been polluting since 1956, and has been cited multiple times over the last few decades for violating the terms of its permits. Learn about the history.
View the TimelineIn 2020, the EPA settled with Norlite for years’ worth of permit and Clean Air Act violations, affecting multiple aspects of their operations and resulting in unknown quantities of emissions of dioxans, furans, semi-volatile metals, low-volatility metals, hydrogen chloride and chlorine gas, particulate matter, mercury, chromium, arsenic, and beryllium. These are serious violations in addition to Norlite’s burning 2.4 million pounds of PFAS-laden AFFF in secret for 2 years.
Lights Out Norlite and our sister organization, Saratoga Sites Against Norlite Emissions, firmly maintains that this incinerator is unenforceable, and will continue to spew toxins in our community, in violation of its permits, as it has done for more than three decades.
We insist that the DEC must deny Norlite’s Title V permit renewal, which expired on December 31st, 2020. Norlite continues to operate with expired permits.
The Norlite Incinerator in Cohoes has been burning toxic waste in a densely populated area for decades. In this “Norlite Town Hall meeting IV: Hazardous Waste School” on December 16th, 2020, panelists included longtime hazardous waste regulator Dr. Neil Carman, former Clean Air Act administrator Bruce Buckheit, Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew, and Jane Williams from the National Sierra Club Clean Air Team.
The moderator was Hudson Mohawk Magazine correspondent Alexis Goldsmith.
Cohoes Mayor William T. Keeler, longtime Saratoga Sites apartment resident Joe Ritchie, Dr. David Carpenter of the Albany School of Public Health, Dr. David Bond from Bennington College and former EPA Region 2 administrator Judith Enck spoke and answered questions about Norlite at an online panel on June 22, 2020 produced by The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY.
The moderator was Hudson Mohawk Magazine correspondent Corinne Carey.
Jane Williams from the National Sierra Club Clean Air Team; Sean Mahar, chief of staff for NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos; and Joe Ritchie, longtime Cohoes resident in the Saratoga Sites apartment complex spoke and answered questions about Norlite at an online panel on July 23, 2020 produced by The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY.
The moderator was Hudson Mohawk Magazine correspondent Corinne Carey.
Media Coverage of Norlite
Located in Cohoes, Norlite is burning toxic chemicals within a densely populated city and threatening the health of people throughout the entire New York Capital Region and beyond.
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