A consultant's report last year indicated the slaughterhouse empties
about 5 tons of chloride — one of the components of salt — into the
sewage treatment plant. The resulting impact on groundwater near the
Ramapo was cited in a recent lawsuit the Town of Woodbury and villages
of Woodbury and Harriman brought against Kiryas Joel. Harriman's
wells "are now suffering from particularly high levels of chlorides
apparently as a result, at least in part, of KJ's longstanding
inadequate treatment of its processing waste from its poultry plant."
The Times Herald-Record reports:
Recent water tests support the conclusion that tons of salt used every day in a Kiryas Joel slaughterhouse to make chicken kosher are spiking salinity levels in a stream that feeds the Ramapo River.…
A report submitted last year to Orange County indicated that the Kiryas Joel Poultry Processing Plant uses about 14 tons of salt a day, of which about 10 tons is recovered and sold to a tannery to be reused. The rest is flushed out of the plant in a tide of wastewater that flows first into a nearby sewage treatment plant and then into a Ramapo tributary.
The county Water Authority, which has been monitoring water quality in streams and rivers since 2004, released a report on the Kiryas Joel stream in February and did follow-up testing in the spring. Those tests found that salinity levels soared about 20 times higher just below the treatment plant.
The Water Authority and county Public Works Department have been probing the issue, in consultation with state and federal environmental agencies. County Planning Commissioner David Church, who directs the Water Authority, said the county is still researching the potential impact of the salinity, and has reached no conclusions.
"We want to make sure this is properly addressed before it becomes any kind of a problem," he said.…
A consultant's report last year indicated the slaughterhouse empties about 5 tons of chloride — one of the components of salt — into the sewage treatment plant. The resulting impact on groundwater near the Ramapo was cited in a recent lawsuit the Town of Woodbury and villages of Woodbury and Harriman brought against Kiryas Joel.
Harriman's wells "are now suffering from particularly high levels of chlorides apparently as a result, at least in part, of KJ's longstanding inadequate treatment of its processing waste from its poultry plant," attorneys for the three municipalities wrote.