Two Fabs.
Eighty Tons.

§ 1 · Two Fabs Out of FourWhat the permit covers, and what it doesn't

The Title V air permit DEC issued on March 31, 2026 covers Fab 1 and Fab 2 — the first two of four planned semiconductor fabrication buildings on the Micron campus. The Permit Review Report confirms the scope explicitly:

"The facility will consist of two semiconductor fabrication facilities (referred to as Fab 1 and Fab 2) and associated supporting facilities." NYSDEC Permit Review Report, p. 2

The emission units listed in the permit — 1CMBOP, 1FABOP, 1WWBIO, 1HPMCU and the matching 2-prefixed units — all carry "1" or "2" identifiers. There are no 3- or 4-prefixed units. Fabs 3 and 4 are not yet permitted.

The CLCPA Justification Statement DEC published in February 2026 makes the future scope just as clear, in footnote 17:

"The facility owner or operator will be required to prepare and submit a CLCPA analysis as part of a future Title V permit modification application addressing fabs 3 and 4." NYSDEC Justification Statement, p. 6, fn. 17

Construction of Fab 1 began Q1 2026. Fab 2 is scheduled for completion in 2033, Fab 3 in 2037, Fab 4 in 2041. Full production is projected for 2045.

This matters because every number that follows in this dispatch is for the first half of the eventual facility. At full buildout, the air emissions inventory will roughly double. The 80 tons per year of fluorinated chemistry the current permit authorizes will become approximately 160 tons per year. The 1.09 million metric tons per year of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions DEC has approved for Fabs 1 and 2 will become approximately 2 million.

§ 2 · The NumbersWhat Micron is permitted to release to the air

The Permit Review Report includes a Facility Emissions Summary that lists each contaminant Micron is authorized to emit, along with its potential to emit (PTE) — the upper limit DEC has approved. The fluorinated compounds, with their CAS registry identifiers and permitted PTE values, are below.

Permitted potential-to-emit values for fluorinated compounds — Micron NY Title V Permit, Fabs 1 and 2

Compound	lbs / year
Tetrafluoromethane (CF4)PFASCAS 75-73-0	114,405
Perfluoro N-alkylmorpholinePFASCAS 86508-42-1	15,588.8
Hydrogen fluoride (HF)HAP / InorganicCAS 7664-39-3	24,423
Fluorides (general inorganic)InorganicCAS 68188-85-2	4,963.5
Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)Inorganic / F-gasCAS 7783-54-2	3,048
Ethane, hexafluoro (C2F6 / Freon 116)PFASCAS 76-16-4	796.2
Trifluoromethane (CHF3)F-gasCAS 75-46-7	503.4
Octafluorocyclobutane (C4F8)PFASCAS 115-25-3	90.1
Difluoromethane (CH2F2)F-gas (HFC)CAS 75-10-5	86.4
Methyl fluoride (CH3F)F-gasCAS 593-53-3	65.5
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)Inorganic / F-gasCAS 2551-62-4	59.7
Hexafluoro-1,3-butadienePFASCAS 685-63-2	26.5
Total fluorinated, Fabs 1 and 2	~80 tons / year

PFASper OECD 2021 working definition (any chemical with at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon).
F-gaspartially fluorinated greenhouse gases outside the OECD PFAS definition.
HAPfederally listed Hazardous Air Pollutant (Clean Air Act §112).
Inorganicfluorine-containing compounds with no carbon backbone — not PFAS.

The compound at the top of the table — tetrafluoromethane (CF₄) at 57 tons per year — is one of the most persistent greenhouse gases known, with a global warming potential roughly 7,380 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year horizon and an atmospheric lifetime measured in tens of thousands of years.

The single line item most worth pausing on is the second one: Perfluoro N-alkylmorpholine, 15,588.8 lbs/yr. This is a fluorinated heat transfer fluid in the family commercially produced as 3M's Fluorinert. It is, unambiguously, a PFAS. Nearly eight tons per year of one named PFAS compound, permitted to leave Micron's stacks and travel on Central New York wind.

What leaves the stack is not always what stays in the air

Several of the lighter fluorinated compounds in the table — the methane-, ethane-, and butane-derived gases — will eventually break down in the atmosphere into shorter-chain compounds. A common end product of that atmospheric chemistry is trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), an ultra-short-chain PFAS that is highly water-soluble, biologically persistent, and now detected at rising concentrations in rainwater, surface water, and human serum worldwide. A meaningful fraction of these airborne emissions will not stay airborne. They will return to the ground as a forever chemical of their own, distributed through Central New York's precipitation, surface waters, and groundwater recharge.

Tetrafluoromethane is the exception in the other direction. CF₄ does not break down at all — its atmospheric lifetime is on the order of fifty thousand years. It accumulates. Once Micron emits it, it is not coming back.

The bottom line: roughly 65 tons per year of compounds meeting the OECD definition of PFAS, plus another ~15 tons per year of inorganic fluorinated air pollutants — including 12 tons of hydrogen fluoride, a federally listed Hazardous Air Pollutant whose acute toxicity is independent of any PFAS classification, and 1.5 tons of nitrogen trifluoride, a highly reactive and very toxic process gas. Total fluorinated air emissions: roughly 80 tons per year, from the first half of the facility. Plus a downstream TFA loading the air permit does not quantify and the modeling on file does not, so far as we know, assess.

§ 3 · The Modeling On FileThe PFAS dispersion model the public has never seen

Buried on page 41 of the 45-page Permit Review Report, in the dense regulatory analysis that explains the legal basis for each permit condition, DEC describes the requirements imposed under New York's Acceptable Ambient Air Quality regulation, 6 NYCRR 200.6:

"This citation and conditions provide requirements to promote acceptable ambient air quality and compliance with the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and New York State ambient air quality standards. The conditions cited under this subpart include: a modeling demonstration for perfluorinated compounds, total inorganic fluoride testing provisions, and emergency engine operations for the facility." NYSDEC Permit Review Report, p. 41

A modeling demonstration for perfluorinated compounds. DEC required Micron to submit one. It is on file. The public has not seen it.

When residents and elected officials have asked publicly whether air dispersion modeling has been done for PFAS at this site, the answer has been ambiguous or absent. The Permit Review Report makes the answer clear: yes, modeling was done. Now it needs to be released. ForeverChemicals CNY is filing a Freedom of Information Law request for the modeling demonstration and all supporting documents.

The PFAS modeling is not the only document at issue. The same regulation cited in the Permit Review Report — 6 NYCRR 200.6 — also references "total inorganic fluoride testing provisions," and the dispersion modeling supporting Micron's permitted hydrogen fluoride emissions (24,423 lbs/yr) is part of the same file. Reviewers familiar with semiconductor air permits at this scale have noted that off-site HF concentrations under such modeling typically come out close to the regulatory ambient limit — that is, barely in compliance. Whether that is the case here is a question only the model on file at DEC can answer. The FOIL being submitted by ForeverChemicals CNY covers all dispersion modeling, all stack-test protocols, and all underlying T-BACT analyses for fluorinated compounds and inorganic fluorides.

Until those documents are public, the question of where Micron's airborne PFAS — and its airborne HF — will land is one only DEC and Micron can answer.

§ 4 · One Process, Three Documents, Three AnswersWhat DEC has said about biological wastewater treatment

The most consequential discovery in the Title V permit isn't a number. It's a categorization.

The permit divides the Micron campus into "emission units" — discrete clusters of equipment that share air emission characteristics. Two of those units cover wastewater treatment specifically:

"Emission unit 1WWBIO — Wastewater treatment processes and material storage in the WWT and BIO buildings supporting Fab 1 ... Process: BG1 is located at Building BIO1 — Biological treatment processes and storage of raw materials supporting Fab 1 ... Process: WA1 is located at Building WWT1 — Wastewater treatment operations and storage of acidic raw materials and waste materials exhausting to acid gas scrubbers ... Process: WS1 — Wastewater treatment operations and storage of solvents exhausting to rotor-concentrator thermal oxidizers." NYSDEC Permit Review Report, pp. 4–5

Read that carefully. Micron's own on-site biological wastewater treatment buildings are listed in the air permit as emission sources requiring acid gas scrubbers, caustic gas scrubbers, and rotor-concentrator thermal oxidizers. The state agrees: biological wastewater treatment causes air emissions that need scrubbing.

The same biological treatment process appears in three different DEC-recognized documents from the past six months. They do not say the same thing about it.

How DEC and its consultants have characterized aerobic biological wastewater treatment

Document	How biological wastewater treatment is treated
CLCPA Justification StatementDEC, December 12, 2025	Aerobic biological wastewater treatment claimed by Micron — and credited by DEC — as a greenhouse-gas mitigation measure reducing emissions by 107,256 metric tons CO2e per year. (p. 6)
Title V Permit Review ReportDEC, April 3, 2026	Aerobic biological treatment classified as an air emission source requiring acid gas scrubbers, caustic gas scrubbers, and rotor-concentrator thermal oxidizers (Emission Units 1WWBIO and 2WWBIO). (pp. 4–5)
Brown and Caldwell CDE Report (Oak Orchard Industrial WWTP)For Onondaga County, November 11, 2025	Same aerobic biological process — Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) — designed with no scrubbers, no thermal oxidizers, no comparable air emission controls.

Same chemistry. Same regulator. Three different regulatory treatments. The first two treat aerobic biological treatment as a process that produces air emissions warranting scrubbers and thermal oxidation. The third — for a plant designed to receive Micron's pretreated effluent — leaves all of that out.

The Carollo Engineers RFAI response of November 7, 2025 acknowledged that Micron is "still developing PFAS segregation and treatment technologies" and that PFAS limits were "not identified as a critical path issue." That admission is now in tension with DEC's own treatment of the same biological process at the Micron campus.

The campaign no longer needs to argue that the Oak Orchard MBR will release PFAS-bearing aerosols. The state's own permit categorization for the same process at the same applicant says so.

§ 5 · The Climate FindingDEC found the project inconsistent with NY climate law — and approved anyway

On December 12, 2025, NYSDEC issued a document with a deliberately bureaucratic title: "Justification Statement for Inconsistency with Section 7(2) of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act." It runs seven pages. It was published quietly on the DEC website in February 2026, without a press release.

The legal finding is in the document, in writing, on page 4:

"NYSDEC finds that issuing the NYSDEC permits for the Project would be inconsistent with the attainment of the statewide GHG emission levels under the Climate Act because of the projected increase in GHG emissions associated with the Project." NYSDEC Justification Statement, p. 4

This is the same legal finding DEC has used in three previous cases — to deny Title V air permits to Astoria Gas Turbine Power (October 2021), Danskammer Energy (October 2021), and Greenidge Generation (June 2022). The Danskammer denial was upheld by the Orange County Supreme Court in 2022. The Greenidge case in Yates County (Judge Vincent Dinolfo, November 2024) reaffirmed DEC's authority to deny on this basis.

For Micron, DEC reached the same legal conclusion — and approved the permits anyway.

The numbers behind the finding

The Justification Statement reports Micron's potential greenhouse gas emissions in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, on a 20-year global warming potential basis:

"the Project has the potential to emit (PTE) direct and upstream emissions from stationary sources of 10,516,549 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, on a 20-year global warming potential basis. The Project also has the potential to emit an additional 406,513 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents during the associated construction phases." NYSDEC Justification Statement, p. 4

10.5 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions per year, direct plus upstream. After all of Micron's promised alternatives, mitigation, and operational limits, the projected post-mitigation number is approximately 2.36 million metric tons per year. New York State's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 were approximately 380 million metric tons CO₂e. Micron alone, on a 20-year basis, would represent roughly 2.7 percent of statewide emissions — from a single industrial campus.

The justification

The legal basis for the override, in DEC's own words:

"NYSDEC has determined that permitting the Project is justified because it directly and materially serves national security interests, as described by the language of the CHIPS Act and the NYS Green CHIPS Act." NYSDEC Justification Statement, p. 4

DEC invoked national security as the override. The CLCPA — passed unanimously in 2019 — contains no national security exception. The CHIPS Act is a federal funding statute, not a preemption statute. The legal mechanism DEC used is "Commissioner's Policy 49" (CP-49), an internal administrative policy that allows the Commissioner discretion to weigh "other relevant considerations" against an inconsistency finding.

This is the first time CP-49 has been used to approve a permit DEC found inconsistent with the Climate Act. It is a precedent-breaking decision. It has not been tested in court.

The Oak Orchard CLCPA analysis is still pending

On page 1, the Justification Statement explicitly carves out the Oak Orchard Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plant for separate review:

"Analysis of the proposed renewal and modification to the Oak Orchard Wastewater Treatment Plant State Pollution Discharge Elimination Systems permit (NY #0030317) and associated Air Facility Registration, Article 24 Freshwater Wetlands, and 401 Water Quality Certification applications (all together, the Oak Orchard Project) is not included as a consideration in this document. The Oak Orchard Project will be subject to a separate emissions impact analysis to allow NYSDEC to make final decision(s) on those applications." NYSDEC Justification Statement, p. 1

A second CLCPA Justification Statement is coming, for Oak Orchard. It has not yet been issued. The Oak Orchard SPDES permit, the wetlands permit, the 401 Water Quality Certification, and an Air Facility Registration are all pending and will all be subject to the same Section 7(2) inconsistency analysis. The window to argue, in writing, what those final decisions should look like is open right now.

§ 6 · The Nitrous Oxide Waiver"Technically infeasible" — and accepted

Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas — roughly 273 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 100-year horizon — and is regulated in New York as a non-criteria air contaminant with an "Environmental Rating" of B, which would normally require 90% emission control. The Permit Review Report explains how that requirement was waived:

"The facility has submitted a toxic-best available control technology (T-BACT) analysis per the procedure under 6 NYCRR 212-1.5(d) demonstrating that meeting the required 90% degree of air cleaning of Fab Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) exhaust nitrous oxide emissions per 6 NYCRR 212-2.3(b), Table 4, is technically infeasible. The Department has reviewed the facility's T-BACT analysis and determined that based on the parameters under 212-1.2(b)(20), the facility is implementing the best available control technology on the sources that emit nitrous oxide." NYSDEC Permit Review Report, p. 42

Micron asserted it could not control its nitrous oxide. DEC accepted. The result is permitted annual emissions of 327,782 lbs/yr — 164 tons per year — of N₂O from Fabs 1 and 2 alone.

The full T-BACT analysis is foilable. Nitrous oxide has many other industrial and agricultural sources, and the campaign's primary focus remains the fluorinated chemistry. The N₂O number is included here as context for the overall scale of the permit, not as a separate ask.

§ 7 · No One Watches In Real TimeThe Compliance Assurance Monitoring exemption

Compliance Assurance Monitoring, or CAM, is the federal mechanism that requires continuous emission monitoring for facilities that rely on control devices to meet major emission limits. CAM does not apply to Micron. The Permit Review Report explains:

"To be subject to the CAM requirements at 40 CFR 64, an emission source must: be subject to an emission limitation or standard that is not exempt per 40 CFR 64.2(b)(1) ... emission limitations or standards proposed by the Administrator after November 15, 1990 are exempt from CAM requirements. The emission sources at this facility are subject to 40 CFR 63 Subparts BBBBB, SS, ZZZZ, and DDDDD and 40 CFR 60 Subpart IIII. These standards were promulgated after November 15, 1990 and are therefore exempt from CAM requirements. Accordingly, this facility is not subject to CAM." NYSDEC Permit Review Report, p. 45

The reasoning is procedural, not substantive. The federal standards governing semiconductor manufacturing emissions all happen to have been written after November 15, 1990 — so the continuous monitoring rule, which was written to apply to the older standards, doesn't apply to them. Micron's compliance with its hazardous air pollutant limits will be demonstrated by intermittent stack testing and recordkeeping, not by continuous measurement.

That means the entire fluorinated emissions inventory laid out in § 2 is a permitted maximum. There is no public, continuous, transparent record of what is actually emitted day to day. The community downwind has no way to verify compliance in real time. We know only what is permitted, and what Micron self-reports during the periodic tests it conducts on its own schedule.

§ 8 · What This Means for Oak OrchardThe argument the air permit makes for us

The Title V air permit is for Micron's process emissions, not for the Oak Orchard wastewater treatment plant. The two facilities are regulated under different statutes and different permits. But the regulatory logic doesn't stop at the property line — and DEC's own classification of biological wastewater treatment as an air emission source applies wherever that process is used.

The Oak Orchard plant will receive water with documented PFAS content. It will treat that water with biological aeration. By the air permit's own reasoning, it will release fluorinated compounds to the air over Clay, Cicero, and the surrounding communities. None of that is in the conceptual design. None of it is in the SPDES permit. None of it has been modeled, monitored, or controlled in any document the public has seen.

The question for the County executive's senior team and the legislators voting on the bond is no longer whether airborne PFAS from the Oak Orchard plant is a theoretical concern. The question is why one biological wastewater treatment system on this campus needs scrubbers, thermal oxidizers, and a perfluorinated compound dispersion model — and another, two miles away, doesn't.

The window is the next CLCPA Justification Statement — the one DEC has now formally committed to producing for Oak Orchard. Whatever comes out of that document will rest on inputs the public can shape now, before the design-build contract is awarded.

§ 9 · What We Are AskingConditions, dispersion modeling, monitoring, limits

• Release the perfluorinated compounds dispersion modeling — and the inorganic fluoride dispersion modeling — already on file at DEC. The public is entitled to know where the model says Micron's airborne PFAS will land, and whether off-site hydrogen fluoride concentrations are within or close to the regulatory ambient limit. ForeverChemicals CNY has filed a FOIL.
• Apply the same dispersion modeling standard to the Oak Orchard MBR before the design-build contract is awarded. The state already requires this for one biological wastewater treatment system on this campus. The other should not be exempt.
• Require continuous emission monitoring of fluorinated compounds at Micron. The CAM exemption is procedural, not protective. The Title V permit can be reopened under 6 NYCRR 201-6.4(j) when the agency determines reopening is necessary to assure compliance with applicable requirements. This is one of those cases.
• Place enforceable PFAS air emission limits in the next permit revision and in the future Title V modification for Fabs 3 and 4. The current permit lists fluorinated compounds and their permitted maxima but does not establish source-specific limits sufficient to demonstrate that ambient concentrations downwind will remain below the levels the dispersion model assumes.
• Require the same controls on the Oak Orchard MBR that the state has required on Micron's own biological treatment buildings. Acid gas scrubbers. Caustic gas scrubbers. Rotor-concentrator thermal oxidizers. Or something demonstrably equivalent. Not nothing.
• Open the forthcoming Oak Orchard CLCPA Justification Statement to substantive public review. DEC has now committed in writing to a separate Section 7(2) inconsistency analysis for the Oak Orchard project. Comments submitted before that determination is finalized are part of the administrative record. The public should have a real opportunity to be heard.