by Robert Lynch; January 22, 2025; revised January 23, 2025
Enfield Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond was there to be sure. Redmond prominently wears two hats; one as leader of Enfield’s government, the other as program manager of an activist group that vows to close the Cargill salt mine under Cayuga Lake.
At the start of Tuesday night’s meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature, Redmond joined several others in calling for the Legislature to endorse an intermunicipal resolution critical of the easy treatment state environmental officials have given a controversial plan by Cargill Incorporated to flood an under-the-lake portion of its Lansing mine, a move those like Redmond fear could endanger the lake and lakeside land for centuries.
The Legislature gave the Supervisor and fellow activists most of what they wanted… but just barely.
By a vote of eight-to-three—the bare minimum number of affirmative votes to pass—lawmakers backed a call for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to either “deny Cargill’s permit application” or else “rescind (DEC’s) Negative Declaration and require the preparation of a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to assess all potential environmental risks associated with the proposed activities.”
The “Negative Declaration” DEC has currently assigned the application is a confusing, double-negative term that unless overridden would speed the Cargill application toward its approval.
Tuesday’s County-adopted Resolution stands similar to one passed January 8 by a three-to-one vote of the Enfield Town Board (with Supervisor Redmond abstaining). Reportedly seven other Tompkins County towns have also adopted similar resolutions.
“I think the Cargill salt mine is sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” Redmond began her statement to the Legislature. Its underground labyrinth of caverns, she maintained, is “the size of the Town of Enfield.” It’s been there for 50 years. It’s controlled by Billionaires, Redmond continued. Nonetheless, she complained, not once has there been the kind of public hearing that an Environmental Impact Statement would command Cargill to conduct.
Redmond predicted, “I think that if we actually did have a public hearing, that you might find that a lot of people locally do not think that we should jeopardize our water resources for the sake of an out-of-state corporation to get more money for a Billionaire family to have more profits; they should not be profiting from our communal resources.”
But Cargill also employs people, local people, as many as 350 by one legislator’s calculation. And the risk of Cargill’s shutting down and going away, leaving countless locals out-of-work and placing another black mark on the industrial economy, troubled some at the Legislature’s table that night.
“I want to tell you Cargill represents many jobs in my district,” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff reminded colleagues during the half-hour of debate they took place later in the meeting preceding a final vote. “Cargill has been a well-paying, livable wage-paying employer and benefits a lot of families in my district,” he said. “I simply can’t support this,” Shurtleff concluded.
Shurtleff opposed the Cargill-critical Resolution. So did fellow Republican Mike Sigler of Lansing and Democrat Mike Lane of Dryden.
Newfield-Enfield Republican Randy Brown supported the Cargill-related measure. For reasons never completely explained, Enfield’s other representative, Anne Koreman, though a resolution co-sponsor, Zoomed into Tuesday’s meeting but was unable to vote. Two other Democratic legislators were also excused, making an eight-vote majority hard to muster. Tuesday’s vote count barely met the eight-member threshold required for passage
What persuasive power Tuesday’s Resolution actually holds remains unclear. When Enfield’s Town Board acted, DEC officials had advised that comments in the Cargill proceeding were due by January 19th, two days before the County Legislature’s latest meeting. The activist group Redmond represents, Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (“CLEAN”) had the same 01/19 deadline posted on its website the morning after the Legislature met. So what Tompkins’ lawmakers did Tuesday may find itself tardy in reaching the DEC’s door.
”[S]ignificant concerns have been raised regarding the adequacy of Cargill’s application, including compliance with the Mined Land Reclamation Law, monitoring and treatment of waste materials, the potential for groundwater pollution, the stability of the mine, and the long-term reclamation of the affected areas,” the copycat Enfield and Tompkins County resolutions state.
The resolutions decline to address head-on the prospect of an actual “collapse” at the Cayuga Salt Mine, although the County’s resolution references the 1994 Retsof Mine collapse in western New York. In her remarks, Redmond raised the scenario of a Cayuga Mine collapse maybe “20 years down the road.” Lansing legislator Deborah Dawson raised that doomsday prospect as well.
“I’m not saying that it’s highly likely that the mine could collapse,” Dawson said. But “It’s not impossible,” she cautiously qualified. “And the problem is that the low probability is more than offset by the catastrophic results that a collapse could have.” Dawson continued, “All I’m doing is seeking transparency and an open Environmental Impact Study.”
What Tompkins legislators stripped away from their resolution before their final vote effectively weakened its persuasive punch. At Mike Sigler’s urging, and by a second 8-3 vote, the Legislature removed late-added language, words that Enfield’s adopted counterpart had lacked.
The removed clause in Tompkins County’s version would have held that “the ongoing operations of the mine conflict with Tompkins County’s commitment to sustainability, environmental stewardship, and mitigating climate change impacts as outlined in the County’s Comprehensive Plan and environmental policies.”
“I don’t believe that is true,” Sigler responded to the clause’s purported assertion. “The mine has no impact on climate change per se,” he insisted. “As for ‘environmental stewardship,’ there’s never been any evidence that the mine harms the environment.”
“Cargill in Lansing is one of the few places we can get road salt,” Randy Brown recalled the County’s Highway Director having told him recently. The only other available mine, Brown was informed, can’t meet its orders. “Road salt also protects people on roads so we can drive in this kind of weather, and there are safety issues with that,” Brown reminded legislators, as they convened with zero-degree temperatures outside.
Both Supervisor Redmond’s comments and the County Legislature’s final language referenced the mine’s local workforce and the need for its retraining should the Cayuga Salt Mine close.
“We talk about workforce development programs, economic transition assistance. Yeah, I mean, it’s all B.S, frankly,” Sigler asserted. “None of that’s going to happen.”
The Lansing Republican reminded colleagues of when New York State, through then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and environmental activists, pressured his town’s Cayuga Power Plant to cycle away from burning coal, only to thwart its transition to natural gas, and eventually to close. Jobs disappeared; tax revenues evaporated.
“You had the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the country… one of two left in the state,” Sigler recalled. State regulations shut it down. “Seventy-five people and their spouses lost their jobs; there was no retraining,” Sigler grumbled. “I think Lansing got $50,000 from the state as like an offset for a $160 Million assessed value power plant,” he stated,. “And why? So that we can buy that power from Pennsylvania.”
Mike Sigler wasn’t the only legislator who saw an ulterior motive at work that night. Mike Lane did as well.
“I’m just worried that what’s being proposed here is a precursor to asking for the mine to close,” Lane suspected. “This is part of our economic development,” Lane said in defense of the Cayuga Mine. “It’s real jobs; real, good-paying jobs in Tompkins County,” he added. “Everyone wants us to spend a lot of money on social services and other things, which we do. But we can’t do it unless we have the taxation available. And people need to have jobs in order to pay the taxes.”
Ithaca’s Rich John—who normally sits beside Lane, but that night was Zooming-in, nursing an obvious cold—echoed his colleague, but only to a point.
“We should be good partners with Cargill, but Cargill should be a good partner with us, too,” John said.
Anticipating what’s to come if an impact statement is indeed required and a hearing mandated, Rich John added, “I anticipate if there’s a public hearing, there’ll be a lot of people that’ll come out and say terrible things about Cargill and say the mine should be closed. But they’re entitled to say that, and they should have that opportunity given the public nature of the resource being used here.”
Local lawmakers have a propensity to over-value the importance of their own pronouncements. And this may be another instance. What Tompkins County—or Enfield—says to the Department of Environmental Conservation may not matter a whit. Time will tell. And the snail’s-pace progress of bureaucratic review will, without a doubt, drag on for months, if not for longer. But the issue gained its public airing Tuesday night in the County Legislature’s chambers, just as it has in similar sessions in numerous town halls these recent weeks, including in Enfield. That is, for whatever good it may do.
“It seems like the main difference between (what’s already been required of Cargill) and a full EIS is public comment,” Sigler remarked before he voted his dissent. “And frankly, public comment’s open right now, and people are commenting. I’m seeing the letters. I don’t think there’s been a lack of public comment when it comes to the Cayuga Mine… It’s not like it’s been hidden. The State of New York has it, and has published it.”
But environmental advocates like Supervisor Redmond may feel better for what Enfield’s Town Board and now the County Legislature have now done. All of us can now see where all this goes from here.
Correction: An initial version of this story had reported the Enfield Town Board’s January 8th vote on the Cargill Resolution as four-to-one, having failed to recognize Supervisor Stephanie Redmond’s abstention for an alleged conflict-of-interest. Redmond, nonetheless, spoke in the measure’s favor.
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