Kodak burners target of protests

 Company says group of activists uses 'distortions and half-truths'

 By Corydon Ireland
Democrat and Chronicle

 (April 25, 2002) — Activists statewide Thursday will protest Eastman Kodak Co.'s two Rochester-based hazardous waste incinerators.

Nine events in a "Kodak Day of Action" are planned in several towns and cities, said Buffalo-based organizer Mike Schade, western New York director of the Citizens' Environmental Coalition.

Rallies, press conferences and the distributing of leaflets will take place in Rochester, Brockport, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and Manhattan.

Near Mt. Marcy Dam in the Adirondacks, protesters will hold a "Voices Crying Out in the Wilderness" poetry reading.

Schade said the daylong protests are to urge Kodak to phase out its chemical waste incinerators, finance a health study of the Rochester area, reduce toxic emissions and do a study of risks associated with airborne pollutants from Kodak Park.

"There's no proof that Kodak operations present a risk to anyone's health -- none," said spokesman James E. Blamphin.

He berated the Albany-based CEC for "distortions and half-truths. They use partial information to drive an agenda of fear, and then they go home."

An incinerator at Kodak Park's Building 218, near Lancaster Street in Rochester, was rebuilt last year in a $12 million project to reduce emissions, a year ahead of a required federal cleanup schedule.

It burns 60,000 pounds of unrecyclable chemical waste a year, said Blamphin -- an amount that otherwise would require 600 12,000-gallon tanker trucks to ship off-site.

A second Kodak Park hazardous waste incinerator burns water treatment sludge at King's Landing next to the Genesee River.

The company shut down two conventional, nonhazardous waste incinerators in the last decade. One burned trash; the other recovered silver from waste film.

Kodak maintains that its two hazardous waste incinerators burn 99.999 percent of the organic waste fed into them. For Building 218, said Blamphin, that efficiency reduces 600 trucks of waste a year to a volume in air that would fill a coffee cup.

Today in Rochester, the Kandid Coalition -- a group that meets monthly to discuss the photo giant -- will distribute postcards addressed to Kodak CEO Daniel Carp.

On May 8, the group will parade in mock funeral dress outside Kodak's annual stockholders' meeting, held this year in Rochester.

And this summer, CEC will release "Learning Not to Burn," a report on alternatives to chemical waste incineration.

"Someday (efficient alternatives) may be possible," said Blamphin, adding that Kodak draws on the expertise of consultants and its 1,000 engineers. "But based on today's technology, that's just not doable."