The public comment period for the Micron project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is now over.
For Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon, this is one more component in a process for a project the community has been hearing about for about three years.
"This is getting real now, right? The end is in sight to put a shovel in the ground," McMahon said.
McMahon said the 719-page report that balloons to 20,000 if you include indexes and addendums, netted under 1,000 comments, many of them complaints that the public process wasn’t long enough.
"I think from a standpoint of being able to review those comments and get them back, we'll be able to do that. And I think as we've talked about, many of the comments were asking for additional time,” McMahon said. “But the reality is is that the folks that have very super technical questions, the environmental impact statement isn't where those answers are going to be found."
Some experts are concerned about how Micron will deal with PFAS, or forever chemicals that can be persistent in the environment, and have adverse health effects.
McMahon says those concerns should be raised during an air permit hearing. There are several state and federal permits that require comment periods in the run-up to the project.
For example, the State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently accepting comments regarding the project’s impact on wetlands. If the DEIS is approved in October, it clears the way for groundbreaking of the 100-billion dollar project in November.
