Letter to Cargill on April 6, 2020
Mr. Shawn Wilczynski
Plant Manager
Cargill Deicing Technology
191 Portland Point Road
Lansing, NY 14882, USA
Shawn_Wilczynski@cargill.com
6 April 2020
Dear Mr. Wilczynski,
New York State is in the midst of its biggest health crisis since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. As Monday afternoon, New York State reportedly had 130,689 Covid-19 infections and 4,758 deaths, many more deaths than occurred during 9/11. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has explained that physical distancing and self-quarantine are the most effective tools for flattening the curve of the infection rate.
On March 7, 2020, Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order No. 202 “declaring a State disaster emergency for the entire State of New York” as a result of the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic into the state. On 18 March 2020, American Rock Salt shut down its salt mining operations in Livingston County and furloughed its workers. On 20 March 2020, Governor issued Executive Order 202.6 which is known as the Covid-19 Stay-at-home order for all nonessential workers. The mining of road salt is not listed in the guidance provided by the Governor’s office for determining what work is currently considered “essential.”
At the Cargill Deicing Technology web site, the following explanation is provided for the continuance of the up-reaming of Shaft 4: “Although Cargill is an essential business, due to the ongoing COVID-19 virus, all work not directly related to the ongoing shaft drilling, shaft lining, and environmental systems will be suspended at least until April 15. The surface work will be wound down until the site is secured.”
Thank you for ending most surface work at the still-under-construction 1001 Ridge Road annex location. But why is the mining, processing, storage, and shipping of road salt continuing seven days a week and apparently three shifts daily at Cargill Deicing’s Portland Point facility in Lansing, NY?
Cargill is a major producer of food. I believe Cargill still produces pharmaceutical grade saline solution for IV drips at your Watkin’s Glen salt mining facility. However, these kinds of essential work do not make everything Cargill does “essential business.” Road salt as you know is used in winter, winter here in the Northeast is over, and it is of paramount importance to prevent future loss of life by limiting transmission of the Covid-19 virus. A healthcare calamity of astonishing proportions is taking place in New York and yet, from my frequent observations, Cargill has not missed a beat in its 24/7 production of road salt at your Portland Point facility, Executive Order 202 notwithstanding. The 100,000 tons of road salt in storage at Portland Point and the salt being transported by rail and by road are for next winter, i.e., completely unrelated to saving lives over the next six months. Sadly, your flagrant disregard for Executive Order 202 could significantly raise the death toll from Covid-19 here in Central New York.
Today a little before 5pm, Shaft No. 1 was operating and the main conveyor system was continuously dropping salt near the lower bulk storage pad. There three 10-wheel dump trucks were continuously moving road salt to the upper bulk storage pad. Today all four railroad sidings south of Shaft No. 1 were full of rail cars compared to one siding yesterday. I counted 39 vehicles in four employee parking lots, which is slightly more than I have counted last week and over the weekend. (Previously, I wasn’t aware of a small upper parking area behind the office.)
If there are 39 vehicles for each shift and one employee arriving in each vehicle that would translate to about 117 workers at the facility each day, all working to produce that will sit in storage before it will begin to be used to deice roads next winter. Cargill Deicing in Lansing has in the past few years listed its number of employees as 200. That figure may not include the many transport-related contractors who come onto the facility daily.
I can see no reason that the Governor’s stay-at-home order should apply to Hampton Corners Salt mine employees but not to employees working for Cargill Deicing Technology in Lansing. Covid-19 infections in Tompkins County are now reported to be 102, and will likely increase as a result of Cargill’s on-going disregard of the Governor’s executive orders. Surely, you are aware that asymptomatic infected persons can transmit the disease to others?
Out of deference to the Governor’s stay-at-home orders, to Dr. Fauci’s directives, and out of respect for the health and well-being of Cargill employees, their families, and the larger community here in Central New York, I sincerely urge you to shut down Cayuga Salt Mine until such time as this non-essential production of road salt can be safely resumed.
Best regards,
John Dennis
Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now
Copies:
-Serenna McCloud, SMcCloud@cglawoffices.com
-Kevin Roe, KRoe@barclaydamon.com
-David Scott Mandeville, Acting Regional Administrator, MSHA, Mandeville.David@dol.gov
-Peter Montali, District Manager, MSHA, Montali.Peter@dol.gov
Cargill’s Response on April 7, 2020
Thank you for your email and for advising your client to communicate through counsel. I have been asked to respond on behalf of Cargill to your email and the correspondence from CLEAN that you attached.
Cargill appreciates the concern for the safety of its workers and the community, and has always made health and safety its first priority. Cargill is, of course, well aware of the COVID-19 health crisis. To the extent that Cargill is continuing operations at the Cayuga Mine, it is doing so in full compliance with the Executive Orders and associated guidance issued in response to that crisis. Cargill’s remaining operations are designated as “Essential Business” under the relevant Executive Orders and guidance. This designation is a recognition that continued operation of some businesses, like Cargill’s, contribute to public health and safety.
Nevertheless, Cargill has limited all non-essential in-person work at the mine, requiring all employees who can work at home to do so. Cargill is also following CDC guidelines for prevention of transmission of the virus, including social distancing and daily sanitation of human traffic areas and touch points. As for CLEAN’s statements regarding American Rock Salt, Cargill is not in a position to comment on the decisions made by any of its competitors, except to note that there may be business reasons to choose this time to furlough workers.
I trust that this answers any questions that you or your clients may have.
Best regards,
Kevin
CLEAN Response to Cargill on April 10, 2020
Mr. Shawn Wilczynski
Plant Manager
Cargill Deicing Technology
191 Portland Point Road
Lansing, NY 14882, USA
Shawn_Wilczynski@cargill.com
10 April 2020
Dear Mr. Wilczynski,
At 10:30am this morning, I had just started my census of activity at your Portland Point facility when WSKG abruptly shifted their programming over to Governor Cuomo’s daily news conference on the Covid-19 pandemic now rendering portions of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut “a war zone.” With him were Dr. Jim Malatras (SUNY Empire State College President), Dr. Howard Zucker (Health Commissioner), Melissa de Rosa (secretary to the Governor), and Robert Mejica (NYS Budget Director).
I will share with you some of the Governor’s thoughts here in case you, Dave Plumeau, and other decision makers at Cargill Deicing Technology in Lansing were not listening.
—————partial transcript of Governor Cuomo’s news conference on 10 April 2020 (emphasis added)
– Change in ICU admissions is actually a negative number for the first time since we started this intense journey. That means there are fewer people in the intensive care unit statewide than there were.
-The bad news is we continue to lose a tremendous number of lives and endure great pain as a state, 777 lives lost. I understand intellectually why it’s happening. It doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
– The number of total lives lost, 7,844 people. Just to put this in perspective, I lived through 911 as many New Yorkers did who are of somewhat advanced age, and I believed 911 was the worst situation that I was going to deal with in my lifetime.
– And to put it in perspective, 2,753 people lost their lives on 911. We’re at 7,844. So, in terms of lives lost, that this situation should exceed 911 is still beyond my capacity to fully appreciate to tell you the truth. We’ve been watching a spread to the suburban communities around New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland. That seems to have stabilized.
– ….You can announce a policy, we’re going to close down all businesses, everybody must stay home…all these social distancing, stay at home, nobody has ever done this before.
– So the statisticians had to come up with a premise on how many would comply, and we’ve actually exceeded that. But we have to keep doing it. People tend to think, well this is a natural trajectory of the disease. There is no natural trajectory. The trajectory is the trajectory that we create by our actions. The natural trajectory would see that line continue to go up. It would continue to go up and up and up until you develop herd immunity where you would see many, many more infections. So we did that. We are doing that. And that’s why we have to stay the course. I said to someone this morning, you tell me how we behave today and I will tell you the infection rate two days from today or three days from today. What we do today will determine the infection rate two or three days from now.
– I want to thank all the companies that have come forward to be part of this effort. Airbnb is contributing funding to provide housing for our healthcare workers. 1199 SCIU is working with Airbnb, and they’re providing their members with additional benefits. We have hotels that are coming forward and offering free hotel rooms. So we thank them all very much. Last night as a signal of our thanks to the workers who are out there every day, we lit up our landmarks in the New York City area and in Niagara Falls, blue in their honor, and that’s a nice symbolic tribute.
– China winds up having 84,000 cases. We wind up having 474,000 cases. I mean, how does that happen? We saw South Korea, they wind up with 10,000 cases. Italy, where we saw a collapse of the whole health system winds up with 143,000 cases.
– Article yesterday, Italy has seen a bump in the number of cases. Before we take a step, make sure we are more informed and more aware than we were in the past. They’re talking about a second wave for Singapore. You go back and you look at the 1918 flu epidemic that was over 10 months. There was a first wave, there was a second wave. The second wave was worse than the first wave because the virus mutated a third peak and the whole experience was 10 months.
———–
Mr. Wilczynski, the Governor is vastly more articulate and better informed than I am, but below are the news of the first local Covid-19 deaths and concerns and questions relevant to your decision to keep the mine and surface operations open for business:
- First local Covid-19 deaths. According to today’s Ithaca Journal, Seneca and Tompkins Counties have each had their first deaths from Covid 19. No mention of where either of these individuals worked. The article quotes Vickie Swinehart, Seneca County Health Department, as saying,
“Please stay home, do not gather with friends and family who do not reside with you at this time. In order for us to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, we must stay home. By staying home, we are staying safe and we save lives.”
If the first snowfall in the winter of 2020 is on December 1st, that’s 235 days from now. The Governor is saying that how New Yorkers implement social distancing today is affecting the infection rate two-three days from now. For Cargill decision-makers to put road salt production for next winter over the policies the Governor has been asking for immediately is unconscionable. As I pointed out previously, shipping road salt for the winter of 2020-21 cannot possibly be deemed as “essential business” when the state is on a war footing and seeing the greatest death rates since the flu pandemic of 1918.
- Contact tracing and social distancing.
-In the event that contact tracing is needed by medical professionals, is Cargill keeping careful detailed records of each and every person who comes onto the facility and a listing of every person with whom each person interacts during the course of each shift or site visit?
–According to this 7 Jan, 2016, Ithaca Journal article your hoist No. 3 has two-levels and was carrying 17 workers when on 6 January it became stuck for 10 hours 900-feet below ground. The same article mentions that MSHA data indicate that Cargill hoists had 21 problems during the same time period that 4 hoist problems were reported at American Rock Salt. Can one conclude that it’s >5 times riskier for workers to use a hoist at Cargill than at ARS, which as you know has prudently shut down during the pandemic to better protect its workers and their families?
–How is >6-foot separation being maintained on Cargill’s hoist? How many workers are allowed to travel on the hoist at one time?
-Would such social distancing be able to be maintained during an emergency in the mine or in the shaft leading to the mine?
-Is it prudent to risk a repeat of a hoist emergency or to risk possible mine flooding from the on-going reaming of Shaft No. 4 during a time when state and local emergency resources are focused on fighting a pandemic?
Vehicle Census. As I listened to Governor Cuomo’s press conference in my car this morning, I saw that Cargill’s weigh station was open and that the employee parking had about 95[1] vehicles, which is more than the 88 that I counted on 8 April. This count includes two employee vehicles at the weigh station, and at least one vehicle each belonging to Milton Caterpillar and Miller Well Drilling. A pizza delivery vehicle passed me as I was observing activity on the upper bulk storage pad, but I don’t know if it had been at Cargill.
- Imperative to take steps to reduce infections and deaths. It has been a decade since Cargill had a fatality at the facility. Please lead by example and try to extend that non-fatality time frame by at least another decade or two. The surest way to extend that time-frame right now is to send your workers home—all of them except those needed to secure the facility. The lives you save may not be just those of your employees and their families but also the lives of their neighbors and the lives of your contractors and of their families and so forth.
- Is the Cargill family being kept well-informed of your decision to stay open? I’ve heard that the Cargill family is very socially- and environmentally-conscious.
-Are you keeping them informed of your decision to unilaterally decide that road salt mining is “essential business” despite the Governor’s pleas that all New Yorkers stay home whenever possible?
-Is the Cargill family and BoD aware that American Rock Salt closed their road salt mining operation on 18 March in deference to common sense and the Governor’s executive orders?
-Was the decision to stay open during the pandemic done with express permission of your employees and from headquarters in Minnesota?
-Is each employee being offered the right to stay home during the pandemic without fear of penalty?
- Cargill has been on record telling the DEC that Cargill does not recognize New York State’s statutory authority to regulate its underground mining operations. However, refusing these past few weeks to comply with the Governor’s orders for all non-essential businesses to close now brings Cargill intransigence within New York State to include surface operations. This is a more serious level of noncompliance.
I would be most grateful for your considered reply via your Counsel to my questions and concerns above and to my letter of 8 April. Thank you again for your prompt reply via Counsel to my letter of 6 April.
Respectfully yours,
John Dennis
Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now
Copies:
-Serenna McCloud, SMcCloud@cglawoffices.com
-Richard Lippes, rlippes@lippeslaw.com
-Kevin Roe, KRoe@barclaydamon.com
-David Scott Mandeville, Acting Regional Administrator, MSHA, Mandeville.David@dol.gov
-Peter Montali, District Manager, MSHA, Montali.Peter@dol.gov
[1] The reason I write “about 95” is that the easternmost parking area is partly obscured by the main office and therefore I may have missed four or more vehicles parked at the south end.