Erie City Councilman Pat Cappabianca is moving ahead with plans to create a local clean air ordinance, arguing that the people of a community deserve to know what it is exactly that they are breathing.
Fair enough.
But others wonder if there isn’t something deeper afoot, an attempt to give local government the ability to pick and choose what businesses come to town.
And that has its limits.
Of course anyone who has followed Erie media understands that this all surrounds a proposal to build a used-tire-to-energy plant on the former International Paper property on East Lake Road.
Neighbors don’t like the idea and have formed a grassroots organization called KEEP to KEEP the plant away.
The problem is, the land is zoned for heavy manufacturing and developers insist that the process of vaporizing and not actually burning the tires will KEEP (I don’t know why I KEEP doing that) the air emissions within state and federal standards.
Because of our beliefs in private enterprise, the law sets certain standards and any company within those standards can open shop.
It’s the American Way.
In other words, there may not be much the neighbors can do legally to stop the plant under the current system, so they went out and found a lawmaker willing to try to change the playing field.
This week’s council agenda contains the names of some 50 chemicals Cappabianca is asking the state to monitor in Erie’s air, with names like Trichloroethylene and Benzo (b) flouranthene.
He says any of the fifty declined by the state would then be included in the local ordinance.
What isn’t included is how the City would pay to continuously monitor dozens of trace chemicals in the air, but I suspect the next step would be to pass the cost on to a business, oh preferably one we don’t like, uh, maybe one that would zap tires to turn turbines.
As for Erie Renewable Energy, the company proposing the plant, they’ve already stated their belief that any attempt to pass new law just to stop one project is illegal.
But that’s not what’s happening here.
Or is it???
The federal EPA and the state’s DEP are expected to meet with members of Council next week to try to sort some of this out.
I don’t where this will end up, but I suspect it will be in the courts.
That, too, is the American Way.