For Odors Unpleasant, Inspiration From Wall Street


Sunday, August 13, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/nyregion/thecity/
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Hunts Point

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.”