The state Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC) proposal to ban the use of mercury-tainted coal fly ash at the Lafarge cement plant has been sitting in the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform (GORR) since October 2008, according to the Albany Times Union.

Lafarge is currently seeking permits to modernize its Albany County facility.The Lafarge cement plant in Ravena, just south of Albany, is New York State's second-largest airborne mercury polluter, using between 30,000 and 60,000 tons of coal fly ash a year in their cement kilns. The plant has used fly ash in cement manufacture since at least 1991.

The ash is a waste by-product left over from burning coal at power plants, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers a "recycled air pollution control residue."

DEC asked GORR to accept the ash ban proposal by December 2008 to allow DEC to "reduce the quantity of mercury emitted from cement manufacturing facilities."

In November 2009, Deputy DEC Commissioner Val Washington told a panel of state lawmakers looking into mercury pollution that DEC intended to revoke Lafarge's permission to use fly ash. DEC is considering a renewal of the plant's air pollution permit, which expired in 2006.