Council, activists prepare for key hearing on April 5

Date: 3/29/2011

March 30, 2011

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD — Both city officials and local residents are preparing for presentations to the Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) hearing on the proposed biomass plant off Page Boulevard.

The DEP hearing will consider issuing a draft conditional air permit to Palmer Renewable Energy (PRE), which will be one more step closer to the plant becoming a reality. The hearing will take place April 5, 6:30 p.m., at Duggan Middle School, 1015 Wilbraham Road.

In anticipation of the presentation the city will make that night, Springfield city councilors conducted a meeting on March 24 to review a report from Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc., (VHB) the consultants hired by the city to review the application change PRE made.

PRE had originally applied to the state to be permitted to burn construction and demolition waste as the fuel to generate electricity. The company then switched the fuel to green wood chips.

Although the report was issued by VHB on Nov. 3, 2010, the city councilors who attended the meeting — Tim Allen, Tom Ashe, Amaad Rivera, Michael Fenton, E. Henry Twiggs, Melvin Edwards and John Lysak had questions for the VHB staff about the report.

City Solicitor Edward Pikula said there are several issues yet to be resolved between the city and PRE before state approval. One issue is the unresolved host agreement, which would stipulate if PRE would be paying the city an annual fee. Another concern is whether or not the city has the legal tools to enforce its own zoning ordinances, Pikula added.

Allen questioned how PRE could claim it was burning more green wood chips than demolition waste and yet would release less pollution. Tom Wholly of VHB said the new fuel is "cleaner" and there is additional technology to clean the air before it is released.

Fenton challenged how VHB could conclude that additional truck trips each day to the facility to deliver the wood chips could be called "nominal" in one paragraph of the VHB report, but then be called "significant" in another paragraph.

The answer was that a 10 to 25 percent increase in truck traffic would be considered "nominal."

Rivera questioned how the biomass plant could be placed within an environmental justice community with asthma and respiratory illness rates greater than other areas of the state. The VHB report noted, "No mitigation is proposed to offset the adverse impacts of this facility on these populations."

Wholly said the DEP does acknowledge the high rates of illness, but doesn't address it. Pikula said the city is "definitively going to talk about that."

The floor was then opened to residents and others expressing concerns about the plant. While the meeting was scheduled to run 90 minutes, it was still in session an hour past the 90-minute mark.

Preceding the meeting on March 4, activists against the biomass plant had filed a petition for a fail-safe review of the project to Secretary Richard K. Sullivan, Jr., of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. The petition asked Sullivan to require a more comprehensive review of environmental and health concerns.

"This project did not trigger a review threshold that required a meaningful level of public participation and review. However, the Secretary has authority under several of the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Act provisions to require that a project or state policy undergo additional review to ensure there is no undue harm to the environment," Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield member Stuart Warner said. "The petition just submitted requests that the Secretary exercise his authority to ensure that the Springfield region will not suffer from a new source of pollution."

Warner added, "When the incinerator developer proposes emission limits, we view them as a hope as opposed to a promise. Emissions violations are difficult to monitor and assess and even when there are violations, it can take years to formally address. Meanwhile, the public is not apprised of any issues but must live with the consequences."