Syracuse, N.Y. – Onondaga County’s proposed industrial wastewater plant for Micron Technology could cost three to five times more than original estimates, according to consultants working for the county.

The estimated cost of the industrial plant has ballooned rapidly. In May 2024, County Executive Ryan McMahon told syracuse.com that the county would spend about $500 million to build the industrial wastewater treatment plant for Micron.

Now the county’s ownconsultants calculate the price tag between $1.4 billion and $2.6 billion, numbers McMahon recently said were based on worst-case scenarios rather than likely outcomes. Still, that’s the construction estimate by professional consultants to treat the water from the first two of four factories Micron plans to build.

The treatment plant in Clay would be the single most expensive project the county has ever undertaken, potentially costing more than the county’s decades-long cleanup of Onondaga Lake.

The treatment plant is the final safeguard to keep chemicals in Micron’s toxic process wastewater from entering the Oneida River. Yet critics say the county is forging ahead without enough independent environmental review of the plant’s potential impacts.

The treatment plant, like several other utility projects critical for Micron’s operations, was lumped into the 20,000-page environmental impact study of Micron’s main campus. But unlike those other projects, this plant won’t undergo a separate, public review by state or federal regulators.

Environmentalists say the wastewater plant needs a specific and more detailed public review of its own.

The industrial treatment plant is a crucial component toward Micron’s promise to produce millions of computer memory chips each day. The plant would be the last chance to prevent the industrial pollution, including the use of “forever chemicals” ubiquitous in the chipmaking industry, from ultimately reaching Lake Ontario.

Making those tiny chips that run modern electronic devices takes a secretive combination of dozens of chemicals, formulas heavily protected by businesses and laws. Some of those chemicals are toxic heavy metals. Some are a class of chemicals called PFAS, which are toxic and don’t break down in the environment.

After the chips are made, Micron has to dispose of the leftover chemicals, waste that can’t be reused but remains toxic. The treatment plant is meant to turn that industrial wastewater into something safe enough to discharge into the Oneida River.

The plant would handle about 16.5 million gallons of Micron factory wastewater every day. That’s from the first two chip factories; the treatment plant could ultimately handle 42 million gallons of industrial wastewater per day if Micron builds all four.

Here’s what we know, and what some critics are saying.

Who pays?

In mid-2024, McMahon said the treatment plant would cost $500 million. McMahon has this year started using a figure twice that high: $1 billion.

Earlier this month, in an interview with syracuse.com, McMahon dismissed the consultants’ estimates as speculative and worst-case.

“I continue to use the billion-dollar number is because that’s going to be the number,” McMahon said. “Under no circumstances can there be a $2.7 billion industrial project or else there just won’t be a project. That’s just a fact.”

The consultants, Brown and Caldwell, are “part of the county’s program management team” for the proposed expansion, the county said in August.

Brown and Caldwell, an engineering firm with offices in DeWitt, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The county has sometimes evaded questions about the ballooning price tag for the industrial plant. When asked at a Nov. 17 public hearing if the county had a cost estimate for the project, Deputy County Executive Cydney Johnson replied, “Not yet.”

That was two months after the county had submitted its application containing the consultant estimates.

No matter what the final costs, it’s still not clear how much Micron would pay, or when. The county plans to build the plant and borrow money to finance the construction.

McMahon has said repeatedly, including to syracuse.com in December, that Micron will reimburse the county through user fees once the factories and plant start operating.

McMahon said the county is negotiating with Micron but no agreement has been signed yet. He said work won’t start until that deal is done.

The county plans to establish an industrial district that includes Micron and the county’s planned industrial park for suppliers, just south of Route 31. Only the users in that district would be required to pay for the plant.

The county will hold a public hearing on establishing that district at 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the Department of Water Environment Protection offices, 650 Hiawatha Boulevard W., Syracuse. The hearing will be in the 3rd floor conference room.

Critics: Project needs better review

Environmentalists say the industrial plant, which would process Micron’s contaminated wastewater and discharge the effluent into the Oneida River, should face greater environmental scrutiny.

The plant was included as one of four “connected actions” in the 20,000-page county and federal environmental review of Micron’s overall chipmaking project. The public had just 45 days and one public hearing to digest that report and comment on everything from traffic to air pollution to greenhouse gas emissions.

That massive report studied the impacts of the entire Micron development, which would someday be three times the size of the New York State Fairgrounds and consume more water than the entire city of Syracuse.

Burying the only environmental review of the industrial treatment plant into that larger study isn’t sufficient, said Don Hughes, an environmental consultant and activist.

Hughes said the Micron report didn’t delve deep enough into how the county would protect the environment from the toxic chemicals and sludge that the Micron factories would generate.

“They should do an environmental impact statement because this is an expensive and complicated process, and there’s going to be a lot of chemicals coming down the pipe at this plant,” Hughes said. “We have to get an understanding of what they are and how effective the treatment will be.”

An environmental impact statement on a proposed treatment plant would require months of study on what effect the construction and operation of the plant would have on the environment. The county would have to prepare a report and give the public at least 30 days to comment.

The final environmental report on the entire Micron project was issued by the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency on Nov. 7, and the county formally approved the Micron project on Nov. 18. Now Micron is waiting on federal approval of the report and the issuance of government permits to start work.

McMahon said the county was legally required to include the wastewater plant in the larger Micron report because the plant is essential to the Micron project. The state’s environmental law forbids “segmentation,” or breaking up a big project into smaller pieces, which could make the overall environmental impacts appear smaller, McMahon said.

Of the four connected actions, the county’s industrial wastewater plant has the greatest potential for long-lasting environmental harm. Yet critics said the plant will receive the least amount of scrutiny by regulators and the public.

Each of the other three projects listed as connected actions have or will undergo additional environmental review than that contained in the overall Micron report.

For example, National Grid has filed thousands of pages of documents with the Public Service Commission for the utility’s plan to bury eight high-voltage power lines under Caughdenoy Road to the Micron campus. Those documents included detailed environmental reviews that were not contained in the overall Micron environmental report.

National Grid’s proposed natural gas line for Micron has faced similar PSC scrutiny.

The fourth connected action, the Onondaga County Water Authority’s proposal to bring water to Micron via a new, 26-mile water line, has been the subject of thousands of pages of review, and needs the scrutiny of the DEC and a joint Canada-U.S. commission that oversees Great Lakes water withdrawals.

The county should conduct a more substantial and transparent review of the industrial plant, said John Przepiora, president of Greening USA.

“The county should hold real public information meetings and allow the public to ask questions and get this stuff clarified in the mind of the public,” Przepiora said.

2 wastewater projects

The county is undertaking two wastewater treatment plant projects in Clay, both connected to Micron.

The industrial treatment plant is the bigger project.

But the other is a massive, $549 million undertaking.

That’s the expansion of Oak Orchard, a municipal treatment plant that already treats the water coming from toilets and kitchen sinks in the village of North Syracuse and portions of Clay and Cicero. Planning for the Oak Orchard expansion started in 2021 .

The county says the municipal expansion and the new industrial plant are two separate projects.

But, in paperwork to the state, the county is also lumping them together to get through the regulatory approval process. That, again, means this industrial plant that treats Micron’s industrial waste is removed from aseparate layer of public scrutiny that environmental advocates say is needed.

The municipal expansion would increase the sewage treatment capacity from 10 million to 15 million gallons of sewage a day, according to the county’s permit application with the state. The expansion would include a water recycling facility to send some water back to Micron for reuse in cooling towers and chipmaking processes.

The environmental review of that municipal expansion was rushed throughthe county Legislature in October.

McMahon’s office provided the Legislature’s Environmental Protection Committee with a 414-page report three days before a hastily called committee meeting. At that Oct. 7 meeting, Johnson, McMahon’s deputy, pressed the committee to accept the report, which formally declared that the plant expansion would have no significant environmental impact.

Then-committee Chair Julie Abbott, a Republican like McMahon, refused to call a vote on the report because legislators hadn’t had enough time to thoroughly review it. At the full Legislature meeting one week later, on Oct. 14, Abbott complained about the rushed process but voted to approve the report anyway.

“This came to us last-minute,” Abbott said. “414-plus pages were dropped on our desk.”

Abbott, who lost re-election in November, started a part-time job on Jan. 1 with the county’s wastewater department.

Despite the late notice, the legislature voted 14 to 2 to approve what’s called a negative declaration, asserting that the Oak Orchard expansion would have no harmful environmental impacts.

On Dec. 29, just three days before Democrats took control of the county Legislature for the first time in nearly 50 years, all Republicans voted to borrow $549 million to build the municipal plant. The vote was 12-5.

Landowners worry about pipes

The state environmental permit paving the way for Micron’s industrial treatment plant also covers the underground industrial wastewater lines that would run for about two miles, from the Micron campus on Caughdenoy Road to the new industrial treatment plant. Three 30-inch diameter lines would carry wastewater from Micron to the industrial plant. Four 36-inch lines would return cleaned water from the plant to Micron.

Micron has acquired the rights of way for all but about 2,000 feet of that two-mile path. OCIDA has launched eminent domain proceedings to get easements for the last 2,000 feet, owned by a company called SSO Holdings.

The owners of SSO, developers John Russo and Joe Grosso, would still own the property next to the Oak Orchard site but would be limited on what they could build above the underground lines.

Russo and Grosso have refused to accept Micron’s offers to buy the easement rights. The two men told syracuse.com last year they’re concerned about chemicals leaking into the 76-acre property that holds a pond where they take their grandchildren fishing.

At a public hearing on the eminent domain proceeding Nov. 20, Russo’s son, J.P. Russo, said the county hasn’t done the environmental study required by state law. He argued that the potential impact of the underground lines was, like the industrial plant itself, studied only in context of the bigger Micron project.

“Before any property can be taken by eminent domain, the law requires a full and fair review of the potential environmental impacts,” J.P. Russo said. “Yet the environmental analysis of that pipeline is incomplete, segmented and lacking detail.”

OCIDA’s next step is to ask a judge to force Grosso and Russo to allow the pipes to be buried on their land. The judge would determine how much compensation OCIDA owes them.