Biomass Opponents Take on Congress

Bio­mass Oppo­nents Take on Congress

Eighty-five orga­ni­za­tions from twen­ty-six states (and count­ing) have signed on to a let­ter to U.S. Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden (D‑OR), Chair­man of the U.S. Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources, insist­ing that the Sen­a­tor pro­tect Amer­i­cans from harm­ful air pol­lu­tion by end­ing his sup­port for bio­mass incineration.

The let­ter, writ­ten by the steer­ing com­mit­tee of the nation­al Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign, urges Sen­a­tor Wyden to “stop clas­si­fy­ing pol­lut­ing and human dis­ease-caus­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors as ‘clean,’ ‘renew­able’ or ‘sus­tain­able’ ener­gy” and to do every­thing in his pow­er to “end sub­si­dies for pol­lut­ing indus­tri­al-scale bio­mass facilities.”

Sen­a­tor Wyden has been a vocal advo­cate for bio­mass ener­gy, hail­ing as he does from Ore­gon, a state heav­i­ly influ­enced by the log­ging indus­try. At a 2011 town hall meet­ing, Wyden said Ore­gon could be “the Sau­di Ara­bia of bio­mass,” refer­ring to forests as “over­stocked timber.” 

Although jobs and rev­enue from tourism and recre­ation — which are large­ly depen­dent on intact forests and clean rivers (not to men­tion the eco­log­i­cal ser­vices of clean air, pure water and a liv­able cli­mate) — dwarf the lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tions of a heav­i­ly-sub­si­dized and often times destruc­tive log­ging indus­try, Ore­gon politi­cians are still dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly behold­en to the influ­ence of this declin­ing sec­tor of the state economy.

All of this clearcut kow­tow­ing in the wide­ly-forest­ed state of Ore­gon comes as no sur­prise: Sen­a­tor Wyden is the sev­enth largest recip­i­ent of cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from the log­ging indus­try of any mem­ber of the Sen­ate from 1990 to the present, accord­ing to OpenSecrets.com. 

In 2012, Wyden pock­et­ed $182,100 worth of tim­ber mon­ey. The Sen­a­tor was the third largest recip­i­ent of for­est prod­ucts indus­try cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in all the Sen­ate dur­ing the 2009–2010 elec­tion cycle, with his Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tee (PAC) receiv­ing the fourth largest amount. 

While Wyden’s weak stance on for­est pro­tec­tion seems unlike­ly to change any time soon, he has been a strong sup­port­er of pub­lic health. The Anti-Bio­mass Cam­paign let­ter cites a Jan­u­ary 30, 2013 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma signed by Sen­a­tor Wyden and fif­teen col­leagues in the Sen­ate which states that “pol­lu­tion can cause asth­ma attacks, heart and lung dis­ease, can­cer, dam­age to the repro­duc­tive sys­tem, strokes, and pre­ma­ture death.” The Sen­a­tor and his col­leagues pledged to “stand ready to work with [the Pres­i­dent] to use avail­able tools to pro­vide stronger safe­guards that will address dan­ger­ous air pollution.” 

The orga­ni­za­tions who signed on to the cam­paign let­ter hold the Sen­a­tor to his promise, ask­ing him to “expand upon your laud­able efforts on behalf of the health and well-being of all Amer­i­cans by end­ing your sup­port for the expan­sion of pol­lut­ing indus­tri­al-scale bio­mass ener­gy.” They remind the Sen­a­tor that bio­mass incin­er­a­tors “emit 98% as much nitro­gen oxides (NOx) as burn­ing bitu­mi­nous coal and high­er lev­els of the most dan­ger­ous par­tic­u­late matter.”

The let­ter refers to the first-ever Con­gres­sion­al brief­ing on bio­mass health impacts orga­nized by Save America’s Forests and the Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign in Sep­tem­ber 2012, where three med­ical doc­tors and a sci­en­tist tes­ti­fied on the health risks from bio­mass incin­er­a­tion. Sev­er­al health advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions who oppose bio­mass burn­ing are also ref­er­enced in the let­ter, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion and Physi­cians for Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty. 

Bio­mass incin­er­a­tors “are not clean ener­gy and will cause more dis­ease and dri­ve up already soar­ing health care costs for Amer­i­cans,” reads the let­ter. It goes on to explain that the brunt of these health impacts will fall on chil­dren, the elder­ly, those suf­fer­ing med­ical con­di­tions such as asth­ma, and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, “who often live in close prox­im­i­ty to these facilities.”

“This let­ter will help Con­gress learn the error of cat­e­go­riz­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tion as ‘clean ener­gy,’” said Carl Ross, direc­tor of Save America’s Forests and a steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber of the nation­al Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign. “It’s not. It’s a dirty form of ener­gy with real world con­se­quences and it’s going to make their con­stituents sick.”

The eighty-five orga­ni­za­tions from every region of the nation want Sen­a­tor Wyden to drop his sup­port for pol­lut­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tion and instead focus on cre­at­ing “more jobs in the con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, solar, wind, and ener­gy stor­age indus­tries that will not be a bur­den on our health care sys­tems and will pro­tect pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment.” Ore­gon is a bio­mass bat­tle­ground because of its vast expanse of forests, includ­ing Nation­al Forests and Bureau of Land Man­age­ment (BLM) lands. With demand for lum­ber remain­ing low due to the crash of the hous­ing mar­ket and over­all eco­nom­ic decline, the log­ging indus­try is instead push­ing to liq­ui­date forests on both pub­lic and pri­vate lands for bio­mass energy. 

The let­ter ref­er­ences bio­mass devel­op­ments in Ore­gon, includ­ing a bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­al for Lake­view, a recent­ly-can­celed pro­pos­al for Kla­math Falls (replaced by a sep­a­rate bio­mass pro­pos­al for the Kla­math Cogen­er­a­tion Plant by Iber­dro­la), and the exist­ing Seneca Sawmill bio­mass incin­er­a­tor in Eugene, Oregon.

Mean­while, indus­try, politi­cians and some gov­ern­ment agen­cies con­tin­ue to exploit the fear of nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring and eco­log­i­cal­ly essen­tial wild­fire in an attempt to open west­ern forests to log­ging, under the guise of “wild­fire pre­ven­tion” or post-fire “sal­vage” log­ging. Sound sci­ence, how­ev­er, demon­strates that the only way to pro­tect homes and lives from wild­fire is by mak­ing a home “fire­wise,” which means treat­ing homes and cre­at­ing defen­si­ble space 100 feet around the home—not log­ging back­coun­try forests.