The Riverkeeper environmental group reported on Aug. 11 that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation denied both the Air State Facility and Solid Waste Management permit applications submitted by Rensselaer Resource Recovery LLC, a subsidiary of BioHiTech Global. The company wanted to put a waste-processing facility on a capped toxic waste site next to the Hudson River in the city Rensselaer in Rensselaer County. The plant, on the site of a former BASF chemical plant, would have taken in municipal waste, extracted all recyclable materials, and then trucked the solid recovered fuel to cement plants and incinerated as a replacement for coal or other fuels. Local environmental activists speculated that the LafargeHolcim plant in Ravena would have been a facility burning the fuel, but the Albany County Legislature voted Aug. 10 for a clean air law that would not allow this sort of burning. “DEC got this one right, and Riverkeeper appreciates the time and care that they put into reviewing the applications and for their well thought out reasons for denying these permits,” Paul Gallay, Riverkeeper President, said.