Two groups ask a court to void the permits under Micron's New York fab

An Article 78 petition filed 31 July seeks to annul the air and wastewater permits, arguing 40 PFAS compounds are monitored but not limited.

Neighbors for a Better Micron and Jobs to Move America filed an Article 78 petition in Albany County Supreme Court on 31 July, naming New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, Onondaga County and Micron as respondents. The petition asks the court to annul two permits: a Title V air permit issued on 31 March covering the first two fabs, and a wastewater permit issued on 10 April covering the Oak Orchard Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The substance of the complaint is about what the wastewater permit does and does not do. It identifies 40 PFAS compounds and requires quarterly testing for all of them, and it sets 10 nanogram-per-litre action levels for PFOA and PFOS at the plant's combined outfall, which trigger investigation and minimisation steps if an exceedance is confirmed. What it does not do, according to the petitioners, is prevent those compounds from being discharged at all — they argue it imposes no substantive controls beyond measuring them. The Oak Orchard plant is being expanded at a cost of more than $1 billion to handle Micron's industrial wastewater, with permitted average discharge rising from 10 to 30.8 million gallons a day.

This is friction on two sectors at once. Domestic memory capacity is what would eventually loosen the shortage now raising device prices, and it is being built through a permitting process that the surrounding community does not accept as settled. Litigation is early and the court has ruled on nothing.

Source: Tom's Hardware