TROY – A potential fight is brewing between the city and residents as the Zoning Board of Appeals considers granting a variance Tuesday to allow the Scolite site in South Troy to be used to load gravel and other materials on barges to be shipped down the Hudson River.

On Thursday, residents from the South Troy and Downtown neighborhoods turned out to oppose the City Council taking any action to move the project forward.

They argued their neighborhoods would be damaged from tractor-trailer trucks hauling gravel and aggregate through streets, air pollution from exhaust and particulate matter and other adverse health and environmental impacts.

Jim Scully, a city businessman and downtown resident, said the proposal is not positive. Scully said an effort is being made to turn residents out for the ZBA meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.

“It goes against the comprehensive plan. It’s moving so quickly,” Scully said about the shipping project.

Mayor Patrick Madden’s administration has proposed leasing the 5.74-acre brownfield site between the Poesten Kill on the north and Madison Avenue on the south to Tri-City Shipping LLC, a company affiliated with R. J. Valente Companies, which is one of the Capital Region’s largest material handlers. Valente has operations on the south side of Madison Avenue where it has renovated the former Bruno building.

The Scolite site is not zoned for the shipping use being proposed. As a Waterfront Commercial District (WCD) zone, the site may be developed for mixed use such as recreation, public green space, professional offices, multifamily residential, research and development offices and some retail.

The barges would be loaded from the site. This work would take place just north of the city’s Madison Avenue fishing pier.

The city wants to sign a four-year lease with an optional fifth year. Valente would pay the city $72,000 annually in rent. The city would then have to transfer the money to the state Department of Environmental Conservation to pay back the $620,000 in state funds used to clean up the site.

In its application for a variance, city officials noted that when they took the property in 2001 for unpaid property taxes, the shipping use was allowed under zoning then in effect.

At one time, the Scolite site was planned to be transformed into a $15 million environmental center. The proposal for the Upper Hudson Research Center of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries did not happen when funding could not be obtained.

The site has been used for different industrial operations as far back as 1846. The Rensselaer Iron Works, where rivets and bar iron were manufactured for the pilothouse of the USS Monitor during the Civil War, was located there. Later businesses included Ludlow Valve Manufacturing and Ludlow Rensselaer Valve Foundry. Scolite International took over the site in the 1970s and manufactured Perlite. Later a roofing products company, automobile storage and a salvage metal transfer station were in business there.

The City Council approved the environmental impact review in a 4-2 vote Thursday. Republican City Council President Carmella Mantello and Democratic Councilman David Bissember voted against the measure. A vote on the lease is expected to occur at the council’s Sept. 5 meeting.