Two months later the project is under attack by citizen activists who label it an unwelcome intruder that will harm the community’s health and environment.
“A month ago there was two of us sounding the alarm,” said Duff Badgley, a Seattle climate activist and 2008 candidate for governor on the Green Party ticket. “Now there are hundreds of Mason County residents against this biomass incinerator.”
Badgley said his opposition to the 60-megawatt power plant proposed by Adage LLC, a Maryland-based company, centers on the air pollution from the plant, thousands of tons of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals one wouldn’t normally associate with a green energy project.
The project critics have mounted an aggressive campaign with an inflammatory website – www.no biomassburn.org – and a recall petition drive against two initial supporters of the project – Mason County Commissioners Tim Sheldon and Lynda Ring Erickson.
Sheldon, also a state senator and a 24-year veteran of the sometimes fractious Mason County political wars, said he has never faced a recall petition before.
“I think I can defend myself,” he said. “This is a very small group led by certified kooks. They’ve created a lot of heat, light and smoke with misinformation. I think most people in Mason County are very interested in what Adage can do for our community.”
In a county suffering from double-digit unemployment, the hundreds of construction and operating jobs associated with the $250 million power plant will be more than welcome, Sheldon said.
Badgley cites a different set of statistics: In a county that ranks 37th out of 39 for poorest health in the state, the residents can’t afford a concentrated source of air pollution.
LABELED AS RENEWABLE
Adage public affairs director Tom DePonty said his company picked Mason County for one of its two projects across the nation for several reasons, including the strong forestry industry in Mason County and surrounding areas that generates wood debris and a state initiative – I-937 – that passed in 2006, requiring large and medium-size utilities to buy or generate 15 percent of their electrical power from renewable sources by 2020.
Under considerable lobbying by the forest products industry, biomass was included with wind, solar, geothermal and other sources as renewable.
One of the selling points for wood waste as a renewable resource is that the carbon stored in wood is part of a long-term natural carbon cycle in which trees grow and take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, then release it back to the atmosphere when the wood is burned or left to decay. Then the CO2 is recovered by new trees. This is unlike fossil fuels, from which the CO2 would never be released if the coal or natural gas weren’t burned.
“That’s the assumption made in international, national and state law,” said Craig Partridge, a director of policy and governmental relations for the state Department of Natural Resources.
But there’s growing debate about the merits of carbon neutrality, noted Nancy Hirsh, policy director for the Northwest Energy Coalition.
“Carbon neutrality is not a slam dunk at all,” she said. “And not all biomass plants are equal. A lot depends on where the wood comes from, the efficiency of the boilers and what would have happened to the wood waste if it wasn’t burned.”
Adage critics are more adamant that biomass power plants contribute to climate change, at least in the near term.
“Carbon neutrality from plants like Adage will take centuries,” said Dr. William Sammons, a Massachusetts-based pediatrician and staunch opponent of burning wood for energy. “And wood is not a true renewable resource like solar or wind.”
Speaking to more than 200 people at a town hall meeting Tuesday night at the Shelton Civic Center, Sammons said a larger health danger from the Adage plant is the release into the air of up to nearly 100 tons per year of tiny microscopic particles left over from the combustion process.
“Particulate matter will make sick people sicker and cause disease,” he said, citing studies that link particulate matter to respiratory ailments and heart disease. “And it’s the children that are at the greatest risk of exposure to particulates.”
Sammons made the claim that the 250-ton-a-year emission standard allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a plant like Adage’s is not keeping pace with the mounting evidence of health problems from particulate exposure.
“I don’t know if people should be concerned,” said Gordon Lance, the engineer for the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency assigned to determine if the Adage project meets the EPA air quality standards. “I’m not out there second-guessing the EPA rules. The only way the application will be approved is if Adage meets the air quality standards.”
The public will have a chance to weigh in on the proposed permit before ORCAA Executive Director Fran McNair, acting as the hearing examiner on the project, rules, but a date hasn’t been set yet for a public hearing.
Attending the public meeting at the Civic Center was Mason County retiree Karen Sandberg. She said she hasn’t made up her mind about the project.
“I do have concerns about the air quality, water resources and the traffic,” she said. “But I also think there’s a lot of hysteria about the project.”
Mason County resident Connie Zimmerman was at the meeting too. She is squarely against the plant.
“I have mild asthma myself, as do two of my grandchildren,” she said. “I am worried that if this plant is built, our health will suffer, and the health of many of our friends and neighbors on both sides of Puget Sound.”
STATUS OF PROJECT
There’s also a lot of loose ends to tie up before the project can go forward. Adage is in negotiations on several fronts.
The company needs a lease with the Port of Shelton for up to 100 acres of industrial-zoned property about two miles northeast of Shelton, DePonty said. Talks are continuing, he said.
The company has to lock up a supply of wood – 604,000 tons a year – to feed the plant.
“We’re in active and advanced negotiations with a number of landowners,” DePonty said. “We’re making progress.”
The company applied for its air pollution permit April 1 and expects to file its environmental assessment of the project with Mason County this summer.
He said the company is close to opening an office in Shelton and is receptive to some sort of community forum at which the project could be discussed.
“We’ve tried to be very, very open with the public about our intentions and the project,” he said.
As for the opponents?
“The facts should be presented in an honest and truthful way,” DePonty said.
John Dodge: 360-754-5444
jdodge@theolympian.com
