Kenneth C. Crowe II is reporting for the Times Union a year after ending its annual payment of $100,000 to the city of Cohoes for public safety expenses, Norlite’s parent company is now proposing to resume the annual donation for 2021. The $100,000 had been paid to the city since about 2012 in monthly payments, Mayor Bill Keeler said February 10. In 2021, Tradebe Environmental Services would make four quarterly payments of $25,000, according to the proposal submitted to the Cohoes Common Council. The company is resuming the payment after a year in which the Norlite Aggregate mill was the subject of growing concern over the burning of potentially toxic firefighting foam at the plant in 2018 and 2019. Tradebee stopped the payments to the city at the end of the first quarter of 2020, citing the pandemic’s impact on its business as the reason, Keeler said.  The company said it is now in a better financial position to begin payments again, according to the mayor. “We agree that the community has to benefit directly from our doing business. On top of that, in addition to the [property] taxes and the new tax we have contributed to the city directly and we intend to continue doing that,” Sergio Nusimovich, Tradebe’s chief development officer, told the Common Council this week. Meanwhile, Norlite's Cohoes plant continues to get hit with new Department of Environmental Conservation air quality violations. DEC head Basil Seggos called it "unacceptable" after DEC "observed violations of Norlite’s air quality requirements and the controls in place to prevent dust from leaving the site." Read the full story in the Times Union.