The SUNY New Paltz PCB Controversy

Stories Linger 16 Years After a Transformer on Campus Overheated

Aug 14, 2007

Despite an extensive clean-up, on-going monitoring by state health officials, and no signs of contamination, rumours and misinformation still plague SUNY New Paltz.

It will soon be "Moving In Day" for thousands of SUNY New Paltz students. Just like students attending colleges and universities all over the country, many are embarking on their first experience of living "on their own" and more than a few parents are having second thoughts about their children going away to school.

Aside from all the usual anxiety families everywhere face; this year a new website has been launched that is claiming a PCB catastrophe that occurred in 1991 still lingers in the air – and specifically – in the dorms of the SUNY New Paltz campus.

Recently, the controversy has taken a new twist. A new website, DioxinDorms, has launched, claiming to cover the health, science and politics of what happened in 1991. It also claims that the contamination – and the cover-up – persists to this day. College officials, in several phone interviews, following the launch of the controversial "slap site," claim that the site’s articles are laced with a great deal of "misinformation."

"After the incident," John Shupe, SUNY New Paltz Vice President for Facilities Maintenance explained, speaking with Suite101.com, " we had Clean Harbors and the State Health Department do an exhaustive assessment of the affected buildings. They were thoroughly cleaned or rebuilt and those inspections are still conducted by the state on a regular basis."

While Shupe noted that the "PCB issue" seems to resurface every few years – usually around the time students are beginning to move – this year’s launching of a website devoted to the controversy seems to have generated some renewed interest, even though, he stressed, the site is loaded with misconceptions. It has given college officials yet another smoldering fire to put out and caused some PR professionals to think about how to effectively deal with accusations in a cyber world where all information – correct or incorrect – is sometimes viewed as having the same degree of credibility.

This past June, several open forums were held on campus to address the PCB issue, at the request of the campus’ Students’ Association (SA). The first one, said Shupe, was held with no school officials present by the SA in order to open up the questions in a "safe" atmosphere. The second was held by the SA with Shupe, the state health department experts, Clean Harbors and the students. According to Shupe, about 35 students (SUNY New Paltz' student population is around 2000) showed up. Shupe had all of the tests and reports from 1991 to the most recent inspection there for the students to look at and question the experts on. They ran the aforementioned video taken that day. They pulled up the website (dioxindorms.com), went over the allegations one by one, and responded to them.

"They (the students) seemed satisfied that we had answered all of their question," said Shupe, speaking as the point person who deals with both the independent engineers and the state health department on an ongoing basis. "But I guess this is just going to keep resurfacing until everyone (the activists) gets tired of it. We’ll just keep answering the questions."

Some specific problems Shupe noted with the stories on the site:

The dorms at SUNY New Paltz are not (and never have been) heated with a ducted air ventilation system. They have always been heated by radiant hot water heat. Hence, there are NO heating vents to be concerned with re. the spreading of any contaminants. The articles on the site keep referring to contamination in the ventilation system - and noting that state and college officials have never tested the vents. The problem with that argument, Shupe explained, is that there are no heating vents to test.

The transformer incident was not really an "explosion" nor did it occur on a cloudy or rainy day, as the site alleges. New Paltz Fire Department video of the event – which SUNY New Paltz officials have shown to students in open meeting as late as this past June – tell the story of a transformer overheating and the resulting release of smoke that was pretty much confined to specific areas of the campus. And the smoke itself did not "linger over the campus" due to any overcast skies.

According to Shupe and health department records, every inch of the affected buildings were checked by Clean Harbors and the Health Department after the incident. One (a science and engineering building) bore the brunt of the contamination and was torn down and rebuilt. Parker Theatre (also on the website as being a "hot spot" that was never properly cleaned) was almost completely rebuilt before reopening. The dorms that were opened about a month later were dorms that showed little contamination after the incident. In fact, only two rooms in one affected dorm showed any sign of contamination - they were right next to the facilities room.

The only vents in any of these dorms are kitchen and bathroom exhaust vents. Exhaust vents blow air out - not in. These vents, Shupe insists, do not, did not and can not disburse PCBs through a building.August 20, 2007, "Moving In Day" on the New Paltz campus passed without any incident, as reported by Dylan Skriloff, a staff reporter for the "Hudson Valley Business Journal." New Paltz University spokesperson, Eric Gullickson, admitted to Skiriloff that one of the website's content providers, and possibly one or two other activists, were on campus distributing brochures regarding the alleged PCB contamination of certain dorms. Skriloff noted that they left "within a couple of hours," leaving the controversy to linger 16 years after the incident, the clean-up, and official statements by the college, insisting that they are now one of the few campuses in the United States to actually be "PCB Free.""Nobody seemed very bothered by them," said Skriloff to Suite101.com. "Everyone just seemed really excited to be moving in."

The copyright of the article The SUNY New Paltz PCB Controversy in Campus Life is owned by Debbie Kwiatoski. Permission to republish The SUNY New Paltz PCB Controversy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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