Biomass Moratorium for Brevard County, North Carolina

Bio­mass Mora­to­ri­um for Bre­vard Coun­ty, North Carolina

- by Kim­ber­ly King, August 2, 2013. Source: WLOS

Mon­day night at the Bre­vard coun­ty cour­t­house the gallery broke in in rau­cous applause after Tran­syl­va­nia Com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed for a one-year mora­to­ri­um that effec­tive­ly stopped plans for a Bio­mass plant on pri­vate prop­er­ty in Pen­rose at the airport. 

“They lis­tened to us,” said Kevin Glenn, with the anti-plant grass roots group, Peo­ple for Clean Moun­tains. “A 12-month mora­to­ri­um is what we need.” 

“We heard noth­ing from the developer(Renewable Devel­op­ers Pen­rose LLC) at all, said Sandy Brig­gs, who came to sup­port the group. “They had many chances.” 

In fact, that same sen­ti­ment was expressed by sev­er­al com­mis­sion mem­bers who said they repeat­ed­ly asked RDPen­rose for more infor­ma­tion about their plant but got noth­ing. There were two ver­sions of the mora­to­ri­um, one specif­i­cal­ly address­ing RDPen­rose and a sec­ond more sweep­ing mora­to­ri­um which was the one Com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed in. The sec­ond ver­sion cov­ers not only the cur­rent project but any Bio­mass pro­pos­al that may look to open in Tran­syl­va­nia coun­ty in the next year. The plan, com­mis­sion­ers said, is to eval­u­ate what Bio­mass facil­i­ties entail as far as require­ments, poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal effects, and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port. It was clear lead­ing up to Mon­day’s com­mis­sion vote that a large con­tin­gent of Tran­syl­va­nia coun­ty res­i­dents were against the plant that would recy­cle garbage into ener­gy. By phone Matthew Ross, an attor­ney with RDPen­rose said the fol­low­ing: “We’ve known about this vote for quite some time. There is noth­ing that will take place that will be a sur­prise. We think it’s short sight­ed and sends the wrong mes­sage to devel­op­ers that Tran­syl­va­nia coun­ty is not inter­est­ed in new business.”

When pressed, Ross would­n’t say if his group would pull out of plans in Tran­syl­va­nia coun­ty alto­geth­er, but said the group was look­ing at oth­er sites and had been for awhile. Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Lar­ry Chap­man told the crowd and his fel­low com­mis­sion­ers, that no indus­try is com­plete­ly green. He remind­ed them that many res­i­dents in the coun­ty would not have jobs were it not for plants and fac­to­ries in the past and to be cog­nizant of the real­i­ties of devel­op­ment going for­ward. Though he and the oth­er com­mis­sion mem­bers said a mora­to­ri­um gives them the chance to take a clos­er look at what kind of indus­tries and busi­ness­es are the right fit for their coun­ty, and to recruit busi­ness­es to the coun­ty that remains in need of jobs.