DTE Energy: Black Soot Irks Residents of Cassville, Wisconsin

- by Jeff Mont­gomery, March 22, 2014. Source: THOnline.com

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CASSVILLE, Wis. — Lin­da Hulst said she began notic­ing the soot short­ly after a near­by bio­mass plant start­ed operations.

For three years, the black, char­coal-like mat­ter has sprin­kled her prop­er­ty. “Every fresh snow is cov­ered with it,” she said. “It gets on our deck, on our fur­ni­ture, on the hoods of our cars.”

Hulst and her hus­band, Ron, have owned and oper­at­ed Eagles Roost Resort since 1977. They also make their home on the prop­er­ty, 1034 Jack Oak Road.

Hulst said she is cer­tain that the soot-like sub­stance results from process­es occur­ring at DTE Ener­gy’s Stone­man Sta­tion bio­mass plant, 716 Jack Oak Road.

Her sense of cer­tain­ty, how­ev­er, is not shared by com­pa­ny officials.

Ran­di Berris, a spokesper­son for DTE Ener­gy, acknowl­edged res­i­dents’ con­cerns about the plant, but she said the source of the sub­stance remains unknown.

“We are inves­ti­gat­ing the soot com­plaints, but do not have any indi­ca­tion that it has orig­i­nat­ed at our facil­i­ty,” Berris said. She added that there are a num­ber of things in the Cassville area, oth­er than the plant, that might be pro­duc­ing the substance.

“You get lots of peo­ple using wood-burn­ing stoves. There are dozens of trains that run through the area,” she said. “It could even be from agriculture.”

For many res­i­dents, how­ev­er, the arrival of the plant timed with the appear­ance of the soot is more than a coincidence.

DTE Ener­gy pur­chased the Cassville pow­er plant, long known as Stone­man Sta­tion, in 2009 and offi­cial­ly began com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in Octo­ber 2010.

Before that, Stone­man Sta­tion was a coal-burn­ing facil­i­ty. In 2009-10, DTE Ener­gy Ser­vices con­vert­ed it into a renew­able-ener­gy facil­i­ty that, accord­ing to plant man­ag­er James Richard­son, pro­duces 40 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty a day — enough to serve near­ly 30,000 homes.

To pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty, the plant each day burns 10,000 tons of wood waste that comes from many sources, includ­ing rail­road ties.

Richard­son stressed that numer­ous pre­cau­tions are tak­en to ensure the clean­li­ness of these materials.

“When it comes to our facil­i­ty, all the mate­r­i­al gets screened and goes through a chem­i­cal analy­sis so we know what is going into the boil­ers,” Richard­son said. “We don’t want to intro­duce any­thing with tox­i­c­i­ty that could be a haz­ard to our­selves or our facility.”

Richard­son also stressed that the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in full com­pli­ance with the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources.

That has not always been the case, however.

Last June 4, DTE Ener­gy was ordered to pay $150,000 in for­fei­tures, fees and costs to the state of Wisconsin.

The com­plaint against DTE cit­ed the com­pa­ny’s inabil­i­ty to con­trol par­tic­u­late mat­ter emis­sions.  In response, DTE made oper­a­tional changes and mechan­i­cal enhance­ments to improve its fugi­tive- dust-con­trol pro­gram and upgrade its par­tic­u­late-mat­ter emis­sion controls.

In terms of neigh­bors’ con­cerns, Richard­son said he was first made aware of com­plaints regard­ing the black soot on Jan. 7. How­ev­er, Vil­lage Pres­i­dent Keevin Williams said con­cerns sur­faced much earlier.

“With­in the first year of oper­a­tion, that is when the com­plaints start­ed,” Williams said. “The cit­i­zens that live near­by com­plained about prob­lems from the very beginning.”

Williams not­ed that the issue was fre­quent­ly raised at vil­lage board meet­ings, dur­ing which rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources often were present. Dur­ing meet­ings last sum­mer, Williams recalled, some res­i­dents com­plained that the soot was appear­ing on cloth­ing that had been hung out­side to dry.

Williams said that the board does­n’t have the pow­er or mon­ey to do much about it.

“Our hands are tied,” he said. “There is noth­ing we can do except to keep relay­ing the con­cerns to reg­u­la­tors here in Wis­con­sin … the DNR and the EPA, they are the ones that mon­i­tor that.”

Sev­er­al efforts on Thurs­day and Fri­day to secure com­ment from the DNR were unsuccessful.

Cassville res­i­dent Ruth Adri­an, who lives on Main Street, said some­thing needs to change. She said the soot-like sub­stance has appeared on her prop­er­ty count­less times.

On one occa­sion, she col­lect­ed a sec­tion of stained snow from her yard and placed it in her freez­er to pre­serve the evidence.

She has phoned the EPA and raised con­cerns at sev­er­al vil­lage board meet­ings before final­ly grow­ing dis­cour­aged. “We final­ly quit going to vil­lage board meet­ings because no one would help us,” she said.

DTE offi­cials said that fur­ther analy­sis of their equip­ment will be con­duct­ed this fall.

“While we don’t know whether (the sub­stance in ques­tion) came from our facil­i­ty, there is some work that will be done dur­ing our reg­u­lar main­te­nance out­age in Sep­tem­ber,” Berris said.

Lead­ers in Cassville, mean­while, will con­tin­ue to hope for a pos­i­tive resolution.

“We are not against this plant,” Williams said. “It cre­ates jobs and adds to the tax base and those are plus­es. A lot of the cit­i­zens here just were not aware that there were going to be these types of concerns.”