How to Stop a Biomass Incinerator

How to Stop a Bio­mass Incinerator

- by Peo­ple for Clean Mountains

On July 22, 2013 the Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na Board of Com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed 3–2 to enact a one year mora­to­ri­um on the devel­op­ment and per­mit­ting of any bio­mass facil­i­ty pro­duc­ing any out­put. This was the cul­mi­na­tion of four months of effort by the cit­i­zens and offi­cials of our community.

What was orig­i­nal­ly viewed as a NIMBY response to a pro­pos­al to bring “cut­ting edge” tech­nol­o­gy into our coun­ty, evolved past the notion of “Not In Anyone’s Back Yard” to a view­point of NOPE, Not on Plan­et Earth. Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion is a glob­al issue, spew­ing tons of tox­ic chem­i­cals and par­tic­u­lates into the atmos­phere, destroy­ing our envi­ron­ment through both pol­lu­tion and choic­es of feed­stock, from the intro­duc­tion of inva­sive species of grass to feed the burn­ers, to GMO trees and the dec­i­ma­tion of our pre­cious forests, up to and includ­ing the luna­cy of burn­ing garbage. 

Overview 

On March 25, 2013 the Tran­syl­va­nia Times ran a front page sto­ry on a pro­posed bio­mass to elec­tric­i­ty pyrol­y­sis gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty to be placed in a pris­tine riv­er val­ley at the east­ern edge of our coun­ty. 100 tons of munic­i­pal sol­id waste, woody bio­mass, and agri­cul­tur­al waste per day would be trans­formed into 4 MW of elec­tric­i­ty, and sold to Duke Pow­er.

Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty, NC has a pop­u­la­tion of 32,000. We are locat­ed in the Blue Ridge Moun­tains in the south­west­ern part of the state. We are known as the land of water­falls, with 250 water­falls locat­ed with­in our bor­ders. There are over 2,000 miles of bicy­cle trails in our forests. Approx­i­mate­ly 75% of our land area is cur­rent­ly under some form of land use reg­u­la­tion, most­ly state and Nation­al Forests.

At one time approx­i­mate­ly 8,000 res­i­dents were employed by major indus­try in paper and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing. Over the last decade those indus­tries have left, leav­ing us eco­nom­i­cal­ly dev­as­tat­ed, and with an unem­ploy­ment rate hov­er­ing around 10%. We have been des­ig­nat­ed a Tier 2 dis­tressed area, 20 miles from major inter­state access, and with a rail line that has been out of ser­vice since the mills left. The promise of both jobs and a new elec­tric gen­er­at­ing indus­try that was billed as green and sus­tain­able seemed like a win-win for this area. How soon that per­cep­tion changed.

Social Media 

A sim­ple Face­book post ask­ing if any­one knew any­thing about the pro­pos­al set off a flur­ry of activ­i­ty. Face­book became the pre­ferred means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty Bio­mass Info Exchange page was start­ed and with­in 8 hours had 100 mem­bers. With­in a week the mem­ber­ship on the page had grown to 500. It was appar­ent that out­reach through social media was the most effi­cient way for the com­mu­ni­ty to share.

With infor­ma­tion com­ing fast and furi­ous­ly, it was becom­ing appar­ent to many that this pro­pos­al was not good for our coun­ty. We felt that the cit­i­zens and coun­ty offi­cials had been tak­en by a smooth indus­try sales pitch. Today over 800 peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly access the page and con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion, as well as keep­ing track of events, meet­ings, and research.

Orga­ni­za­tion

On April 4th a small group of cit­i­zens met infor­mal­ly to start plan­ning how to deal with this issue. Out of that meet­ing came our core group, with an imme­di­ate goal of stop­ping this pro­pos­al. The orig­i­nal group con­sist­ed of 12 peo­ple, all local res­i­dents, includ­ing a doc­tor, a web site design­er, the direc­tor of a nation­al envi­ron­men­tal group, a career envi­ron­men­tal activist, event plan­ner, and radio host, inves­tiga­tive reporters, local busi­ness own­ers with back­grounds in nat­ur­al build­ing, music pro­mo­tion, mar­ket­ing, graph­ic design, gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing, and pub­lic rela­tions, retired pro­fes­sion­als, and a return­ing col­lege stu­dent focus­ing on the non-prof­it sec­tor. It was the per­fect cross sec­tion of tal­ent for the job. In the ensu­ing weeks we were offered help from lawyers, engi­neers, and media professionals.

It was appar­ent imme­di­ate­ly that any suc­cess we would be able to achieve would in part be based on offer­ing alter­na­tives to bio­mass. Our mis­sion state­ment was obvi­ous. We chose the name Peo­ple for Clean Moun­tains, with a mis­sion of “Clean Moun­tains, Clean Jobs, Clean Econ­o­my.” No for­mal struc­ture was decid­ed upon, we were going to approach the deci­sion mak­ing process as a team, inter­act­ing through Face­book, emails, and reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled meetings.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty to work under the umbrel­la of an exist­ing region­al envi­ron­men­tal group was offered to us, and by April 8 we were up and run­ning, with for­mal accep­tance as a chap­ter of the Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League on April 16 with all the ben­e­fits that this entailed.

Research

Part of the beau­ty of the Face­book page was that it gave us a way to find, and share research doc­u­ments. In the first hour the page was up a research arti­cle was post­ed. With­in 90 days 500 arti­cles were post­ed and avail­able for any­one to read. Ques­tions about the orig­i­nal news­pa­per arti­cle led to the dis­cov­ery of many dis­crep­an­cies in the claims of the project devel­op­ers. The claim that enough elec­tric­i­ty would be gen­er­at­ed for 400–600 homes turned out to be less than 300. Claims of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion were undoc­u­ment­ed any­where. Asser­tions of clean, renew­able ener­gy were met with bewil­der­ment on the part of the community.

The group propos­ing the facil­i­ty, Renew­able Devel­op­ers, LLC (RD), con­sist­ed of an invest­ment banker from NY, a lawyer from the Wash­ing­ton DC firm, Polsinel­li, and a local busi­ness­man look­ing to sell a 26 acre tract of land that cur­rent­ly hous­es our com­mu­ni­ty air­port. The pro­posed site is adja­cent to an out of ser­vice rail spur and the head­wa­ters of the French Broad Riv­er, a major source of drink­ing water for West­ern North Car­oli­na, and beyond. It was obvi­ous to many that this firm had no indus­try back­ground, a lim­it­ed web pres­ence, and lit­tle knowl­edge of their sub­ject matter.

As a result of pub­lic con­cern, the project devel­op­ers invit­ed them­selves to the coun­ty for a day of meet­ings with sur­round­ing landown­ers of the pro­posed site, and coun­ty offi­cials, cul­mi­nat­ing in what can best be described as a sur­re­al pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion. 300 cit­i­zens filled the room wear­ing Car­oli­na Blue, our col­or of choice. We did not feel that the pre­sen­ters were pre­pared for the knowl­edge­able, engaged crowd that they were about to face. The pre­sen­ta­tion seemed ama­teur­ish, not befit­ting the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and integri­ty that we were led to believe we were deal­ing with.

The Q&A peri­od after­wards revealed a total lack of prepa­ra­tion and knowl­edge of the tech­nol­o­gy and logis­tics of the pro­pos­al on their part, and com­plete dis­dain and arro­gance towards the con­cerns of our com­mu­ni­ty. In a typ­i­cal response to ques­tion­ing, the pre­sen­ters offered that com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions were of medi­um impor­tance to the busi­ness mod­el, and that the staff that were pro­posed to man the Mate­ri­als Recov­ery Facil­i­ty would with their “eyes and hands” have the abil­i­ty to sep­a­rate heavy met­als from the waste stream before it entered the facility.

Many rel­e­vant ques­tions were asked that were not answered. RD pre­sent­ed no busi­ness plan, no site plan, no engi­neer­ing data (it turns out there had been lit­tle, if any engi­neer­ing done), and no com­pa­ra­ble facil­i­ty data (as there are no com­pa­ra­ble facil­i­ty of this tech­nol­o­gy any­where in the West­ern Hemisphere).

The video of this pre­sen­ta­tion is avail­able for view­ing at our web page, www.peopleforcleanmountains.org and var­i­ous web­sites under an inter­net search for Renew­able Devel­op­ers, LLC.

It was clear that the goal of the devel­op­ers was to take full advan­tage of state and fed­er­al tax cred­its for renew­able ener­gy, and job cre­ation incen­tives for employ­ment lev­els in eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tressed geo­graph­i­cal areas, with no idea if the project as pro­posed would even work. The busi­ness mod­el was not viable with­out heavy gov­ern­ment tax subsidies.

The facil­i­ty would have to be ini­tial­ly per­mit­ted and sub­stan­tial con­struc­tion begun by 12/31/2013, when most of the tax advan­tages would expire. Expe­dit­ed approval at every lev­el would be required for the devel­op­ers to meet this unre­al­is­tic tar­get. Their appli­ca­tion with the North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion (NCUC) had been filed eleven days pri­or to the pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion for a per­mit to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. June 30th was the ear­li­est that they could expect a deci­sion. If the firm had been able to achieve these goals, an addi­tion­al tar­get of full per­mit­ting had to be com­plet­ed by July 11, 2014. This is the date that the EPA was tasked with estab­lish­ing GHG emis­sion stan­dards, that bio­mass plants are cur­rent­ly exempt from. The recent rul­ing of the DC court vacat­ing the exemp­tion effec­tive­ly killed this advan­tage for now.

We mobi­lized research teams to scour the inter­net, search­ing for doc­u­ments as we attempt­ed get up to speed on bio­mass tech­nol­o­gy. Vet­er­an activists from around the world offered us their knowl­edge and inspi­ra­tion through our FB page. What we found was a con­flict­ing mass of infor­ma­tion from indus­try, gov­ern­ment, and cit­i­zen activists. Sift­ing thru this data tru­ly was a mas­sive under­tak­ing. How­ev­er, infor­ma­tion on this par­tic­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy, and this par­tic­u­lar devel­op­ment firm was eeri­ly lacking.

In late April, a binder con­sist­ing of 100 pages of research about the tech­nol­o­gy, the alter­na­tives, the tax cred­its, and failed and jailed bio­mass oper­a­tors was gath­ered and deliv­ered to each of the coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers, the coun­ty man­ag­er, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment direc­tor, and the coun­ty attor­ney. To that point, they had seen only indus­try doc­u­ments and the devel­op­er’s pre­sen­ta­tion. To our knowl­edge lit­tle or no research had been done for the two years that the coun­ty had been in dis­cus­sions with the developer.

Peti­tions and Let­ter Writing 

An online and a paper peti­tion dri­ve were start­ed to air our con­cerns to the coun­ty. A let­ter writ­ing cam­paign began to the NCUC request­ing that the com­mis­sion reject the devel­op­er’s appli­ca­tion for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Addi­tion­al­ly, and in advance of any for­mal appli­ca­tion, we began a let­ter writ­ing cam­paign to six dif­fer­ent offices with­in the NC Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources (DENR).

For a pletho­ra of rea­sons the orig­i­nal appli­ca­tion to NCUC was inad­e­quate. It was full of inac­cu­ra­cies, and key tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion was miss­ing. The state had also made mis­takes in the paper­work. It was ripe for chal­lenge. Almost 550 let­ters of com­plaint about the pro­pos­al were reg­is­tered dur­ing the pub­lic com­ment period.

Dur­ing the last week of June PCM noti­fied the NCUC of an error in their paper­work that could pos­si­bly have sig­nif­i­cant impact on the per­mit­ting process. The result of that noti­fi­ca­tion was an order to resub­mit part of the appli­ca­tion inter­nal­ly with­in the agency, extend­ing the process 30 days Due to the over­whelm­ing num­ber of com­plaints reg­is­tered, the NCUC would be forced to sched­ule a pub­lic hear­ing 3–6 weeks after the com­ment peri­od end­ed, effec­tive­ly push­ing the antic­i­pat­ed response date to the end of Sep­tem­ber. Waste water, air, ero­sion con­trol, and sol­id waste per­mits still had to be applied for and approved, and sub­stan­tial con­struc­tion would have to begin before the end of the year.

Media

A web­site, www.peopleforcleanmountains.org was estab­lished as a repos­i­to­ry for the research effort, and actions that were tak­en and planned, as a much more orga­nized tool than social media was able to offer.

We have done four, one hour radio shows devot­ed to the sub­ject, broad­cast region­al­ly on pub­lic and inde­pen­dent radio and avail­able in the archives at www.oursoutherncommunity.org. The first was streamed on April 16. We have inter­viewed on local AM radio, net­work tele­vi­sion, in sev­er­al dai­ly news­pa­pers, and reg­u­lar­ly kept the media noti­fied of our actions.

We sched­uled and held a series of infor­ma­tion­al ses­sions for pub­lic input. A list of ques­tions about the facil­i­ty was com­piled regard­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, and the envi­ron­men­tal and health impacts. The list was nar­rowed to 125 ques­tions, grouped by sub­ject. This list was pub­lished in the local news­pa­per as a two page adver­tise­ment, ask­ing the devel­op­ers and coun­ty gov­ern­ment to respond to each of our con­cerns. It was a turn­ing point in the cam­paign. To date the devel­op­er has truth­ful­ly and com­plete­ly answered only one of the questions.

Polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and Ordinances

On April 22nd a silent vig­il was held at the Coun­ty Com­mis­sion meet­ing that was deal­ing with the fall­out from the April 11 pre­sen­ta­tion. Hun­dreds dressed in light blue arrived in sin­gle file from a gath­er­ing point sev­er­al blocks away.

The com­mis­sion­ers’ cur­rent stance was that noth­ing could be done by the coun­ty gov­ern­ment to stop the bio­mass facil­i­ty. There was no coun­ty­wide zon­ing, it was a pri­vate landown­er sell­ing his prop­er­ty to a pri­vate busi­ness, and that their col­lec­tive hands were tied. They main­tained that the best option for stop­ping it was in the per­mit­ting process of the North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion and the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal and Nat­ur­al Resources (DENR). The com­mis­sion­ers were begin­ning to real­ize that we were on to some­thing. The lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion from the devel­op­ment firm, when request­ed by the com­mis­sion­ers was hav­ing its own effect on their mind­set. Our task was to help them real­ize that the will of the com­mu­ni­ty was to find a way to do some­thing to stop this.

A con­cen­trat­ed effort to engage the com­mis­sion­ers civil­ly, indi­vid­u­al­ly and in the spir­it of coop­er­a­tion was under­tak­en. A unit­ed front against this assault on our home was required. Not a small part of this was a con­cur­rent effort to estab­lish a vision for our com­mu­ni­ty, shared by all. We were able to devel­op a work­ing rela­tion­ship with our coun­ty gov­ern­ment based on hon­esty, and the quest for knowl­edge. It has engaged the com­mu­ni­ty in a way not seen here before.

A com­mon goal of stop­ping a bad idea has unit­ed us in a quest for a bet­ter Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty. Across polit­i­cal, social, and eco­nom­ic lines, there was some­thing about this pro­pos­al that was bad for every­one, from land use to tax­pay­er sub­si­dies, from health effects on peo­ple to health effects on the envi­ron­ment. We had found com­mon ground to build upon.

On April 25th we first voiced the idea of ask­ing the Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers to con­sid­er a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment and per­mit­ting of the bio­mass facil­i­ty. Based on NC case law we request­ed that they enact an ordi­nance to pre­vent the issuance of any coun­ty per­mits nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment of a bio­mass facil­i­ty for a peri­od of 18 months. This would be to allow time for due dili­gence on the mer­its of the pro­pos­al, and also to devel­op of a high impact pol­lut­ing indus­try ordi­nance in response.

A mora­to­ri­um would delay this pro­pos­al, and give us breath­ing room as a com­mu­ni­ty to deter­mine our own fate. A draft mora­to­ri­um was ready for sub­mis­sion to the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers on April 27. Ten coun­ties in NC have pol­lut­ing indus­try ordi­nances of some sort cov­er­ing areas with­in their bor­ders with­out any land use regulations.

Not one of those ordi­nances has been suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged in the courts. Our goal was to con­vince the Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers to under­stand that this tool was at their dis­pos­al to use as nec­es­sary. June 6 saw the cul­mi­na­tion of our efforts to date.

In an open let­ter to the com­mis­sion­ers, we laid out our argu­ment for the imple­men­ta­tion of a mora­to­ri­um, and for sub­mit­ting our draft ver­sion. A pub­lic hear­ing was called to dis­cuss the pro­posed per­mit­ting mora­to­ri­um, the result being an agen­da item to be addressed at the July 8 Board of Com­mis­sion­ers meeting.

At that meet­ing, 3,000 signed peti­tions were pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion­ers in sup­port of an 18 month mora­to­ri­um. These peti­tions were non-bind­ing, but the mes­sage to our elect­ed lead­ers was unmis­tak­ably clear. The mora­to­ri­um lan­guage as sub­mit­ted by PCM had been mod­i­fied by coun­ty staff in a ver­sion that was put togeth­er to an extent as to be vir­tu­al­ly unwork­able in address­ing this pro­pos­al, or in pro­tect­ing the coun­ty from lit­i­ga­tion by the devel­op­er. PCM implored the com­mis­sion­ers to recon­sid­er their deci­sion to mod­i­fy the lan­guage of our version.

At the July 22 BOC meet­ing, both ver­sions were pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion­ers for a vote. The Coun­ty Com­mis­sion vot­ed 3–2 in favor of the ver­sion offered sub­stan­tive­ly by PCM. The only mod­i­fi­ca­tion of note was the reduc­tion in the length of the mora­to­ri­um from 18 to 12 months. More than 200 sup­port­ers were in atten­dance to wit­ness the moment.

We con­tin­ue to work with the coun­ty on devel­op­ing the high impact pol­lut­ing indus­tries ordi­nance and are hope­ful of its pas­sage. The rela­tion­ship we have devel­oped with them has enabled us to have input in the debate. Time will tell if this ordi­nance will be enact­ed by we con­tin­ue to use all meth­ods at our dis­pos­al to be an instru­men­tal part of the conversation.

We con­tin­ue to main­tain a pres­ence at not only the Com­mis­sion meet­ings, but oth­er coun­ty board meet­ings that may impact the future of our community.

Events

A series of pub­lic fundrais­ers were held, gen­er­at­ing the funds we need­ed for pur­chas­ing tee shirts, bumper stick­ers, adver­tis­ing, etc. Music and the arts were the meth­ods cho­sen, as we are blessed with an abun­dance of tal­ent here. Booth space at sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty fes­ti­vals was acquired, and manned by vol­un­teers dis­pens­ing lit­er­a­ture, sell­ing fundrais­ing items, gath­er­ing peti­tion sig­na­tures, and encour­ag­ing our let­ter writ­ing cam­paign to our elect­ed offi­cials, local­ly and statewide. Oth­er infor­ma­tion­al events were orga­nized, pre­sent­ed, and filmed.

A May 22 pub­lic meet­ing was held at a local com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter. A stand­ing room only crowd lis­tened as a pan­el dis­cus­sion was held between two mem­bers of PCM, a coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, and the local part­ner in the devel­op­ment firm about the mer­its of the pro­pos­al.. A ques­tion and answer peri­od fol­lowed that opened the eyes of many to the fal­la­cy of the proposal.

A “jobs forum” on June 27 – Think “B.I.G” Beyond Incin­er­at­ing Garbage was held. Exhibitors shared their busi­ness expe­ri­ences, new eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives and new, clean indus­try ideas were explored. After an open com­mu­ni­ty hour, for­mal pre­sen­ta­tions were giv­en on sound eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment being prac­ticed by firms in the coun­ty, recy­cling mate­r­i­al mar­kets and their pos­si­bil­i­ties, waste diver­sion and reduc­tion, philo­soph­i­cal approach to con­ser­va­tion of resources, and a pos­si­ble dif­fer­ent vision as Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty moved for­ward. This was fol­lowed by an infor­mal ques­tion and answer peri­od with all of our speak­ers seat­ed at a podium.

As a fol­low-up to this event, Dr. Neil Seld­man of the Insti­tute for Local Self Reliance came to Tran­syl­va­nia Coun­ty to share his vision. He offered us a wealth of expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge on how we as a com­mu­ni­ty could take our fate into our own hands, indef­i­nite­ly extend the life of our land­fill, cre­ate jobs, prod­uct, and hope to many. Out of our present malaise, he offered a glim­mer of light, and showed a way to restor­ing com­mu­ni­ty pride and pos­ter­i­ty. The future is ours.

As an orga­ni­za­tion, and as respon­si­ble cit­i­zens, by gath­er­ing togeth­er we have learned to imple­ment change. By work­ing togeth­er with gov­ern­ment, we were able to voice a resound­ing no to the preda­to­ry prac­tices of those seek­ing to make a prof­it off of our mis­for­tune. And by work­ing togeth­er, we will ensure a bright future for our children.