It’s Not a Fire, It’s Biomass

June 12, 2013. Source: Hib­bing Dai­ly Tribune

HIBBING, Min­neso­ta — The light­ing of the bio­mass boil­er by the Hib­bing Pub­lic Util­i­ties (HPU) Wednes­day has result­ed in smoke over the city.

The Hib­bing Fire Depart­ment and 911 have received numer­ous calls of per­sons report­ing smoke or fires in the area, accord­ing to Fire Chief Scott Nehiba.

“There is smoke waft­ing through the city, but it’s not from a fire,” he said. “Until it (the bio­mass boil­er) is burn­ing effi­cient­ly, there will be some smoke.” Nehi­ba said 911 and fire crews are aware of it, stress­ing there is no need to wor­ry or call.

HPU lit off the wood boil­er at 8 a.m. Wednes­day, which result­ed in a large amount of smoke com­ing from the stack, said HPU Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Gary Myers. HPU lights the boil­er about three or four times a year, and it does gen­er­ate smoke as work­ers slow­ly warm the wood and slow­ly increase the tem­per­a­ture until it comes online. This process takes four to six hours, Myers said.

There may be more smoke than nor­mal com­ing from the boil­er Wednes­day morn­ing due to wet wood. When the wood is wet, HPU needs to put more air on it to get it lit, Myers said. He added that the smoke will dis­ap­pear once the wood is burn­ing well, and area res­i­dents should notice less smoke by 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Nehi­ba said HFD has been in con­tact with HPU, adding that they have dis­cussed HPU giv­ing HFD notice of when they light boil­ers in the future. “That way we could give more notice out to the pub­lic,” he said.

Sub­mit­ted by Dr. William Bl… (not ver­i­fied) on Wed, 06/12/2013 — 22:00

A huge hoax perpetrated on your citzens

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the cit­i­zens of Hib­bing … even when the emis­sions from a bio­mass burn­ing plant are odor­less and col­or­less the bio­mass burn­er is dump­ing tons of tox­ic air emis­sions into your air and you are breath­ing it. There is no tech­nol­o­gy that stop the nano par­ti­cle and fine par­ti­cle now being inhaled in your lungs, pen­e­trat­ing lung tis­sue and blood ves­sel and caus­ing deep inflam­ma­tion lead­ing to heart attack, dia­betes mel­li­tus, stroke, asth­ma, emphy­se­ma and can­cer just to men­tion a few of the known increased risks.
The indus­try joke is to empha­sis the smoke­less and col­or­less man­ta … with them know­ing the real truth … cit­i­zens are being dam­age dai­ly … par­tic­u­lar­ly the fetus, new­born, chil­dren, ath­letes who play out­side and then of course, those with med­ical prob­lems already. The cit­i­zens could begin by bring a law­suit against this plant for dam­ag­ing your envi­ron­ment, prop­er­ty val­ues, your lungs, your chil­dren. You could join the buck­et brigade and col­lect air sam­ple, you could get your doc­tor to inves­ti­gate the tox­ic emis­sion and see if they think they are safe. I smoke is hang­ing over your site what is you pol­lu­tion con­trol agency doing with your tax­es to pro­tect you … or is this all about prof­it for a few at the expense of the aver­age citizen?

William J. Black­ley, MD Fel­low Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Fam­i­ly Practice

Sub­mit­ted by Anony­mous (not ver­i­fied) on Wed, 06/12/2013 — 23:54

Thanks Dr. Blackley

Thanks, Dr. Black­ley for hav­ing the courage to stand up for the health of all Amer­i­cans by call­ing out the air pol­lu­tion from bio­mass incineration.