Lakeview Biofuel Plant Proposal Raises Air Quality Concerns

- Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014, Ore­gon Pub­lic Broadcasting

A project pro­posed in Lake­view, Ore­gon, would turn woody bio­mass from log­ging into bio­fu­els for South­west Air­lines, the U.S. Navy and Marines.

The bio­fu­el would have few­er green­house gas emis­sions than tra­di­tion­al jet fuel and diesel, but some wor­ry the project might add to exist­ing air qual­i­ty prob­lems in south­ern Oregon.

Red Rock Bio­fu­els of Fort Collins, Col­orado, received a $4.1 mil­lion design and engi­neer­ing grant from the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense ear­li­er to help devel­op the project.

On Fri­day, the depart­ment announced new con­tracts with the com­pa­ny to sup­ply fuel to the U.S. Navy and Marines. This week, South­west Air­lines announced plans to buy 3 mil­lion gal­lons of the company’s low-car­bon jet fuel.

The bio­fu­el refin­ery has yet to be built, but it’s clear­ly gain­ing momentum.

Bet­ty Riley, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the South Cen­tral Ore­gon Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Dis­trict, said most peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty are “ten­ta­tive­ly opti­mistic” that the project will be built as planned. But they’re cau­tious about new devel­op­ments – par­tic­u­lar­ly after Iber­dro­las decid­ed to halt con­struc­tion on its $100 mil­lion Lake­view bio­mass plant in 2011.

“It’s a new tech­nol­o­gy, so its always chal­leng­ing to see if they can make it pen­cil,” Riley said. “But appar­ent­ly they’ve done a lot of back­ground work, and with the con­tracts and the sup­port of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, it is some­thing that hope­ful­ly can sus­tain itself over time.”

But Lake­view res­i­dent Chris Zin­da sees a prob­lem loom­ing. The area already has too much air pol­lu­tion, he says, and a bio­fu­el plant would add more.

“Lake­view already has poor air qual­i­ty as it is,” Zin­da said. “We’ve per­mit­ted a bio­mass facil­i­ty in our already poor air qual­i­ty. Now we have a pro­posed bio­fu­el plant to boot.”

Zin­da recent­ly joined the North­west Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Cen­ter and sev­er­al oth­er envi­ron­men­tal groups in peti­tion­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency to reclas­si­fy Lake­view as a “non-attain­ment area” – or an area that doesn’t meet air qual­i­ty stan­dards under the Clean Air Act. If suc­cess­ful, the peti­tion would result in new rules that would require Red Rock Bio­fu­els to reduce or off­set its air emis­sions so it doesn’t add to exist­ing air pollution.

The Ore­gon Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty has rec­og­nized Lakeview’s air qual­i­ty prob­lem. The lev­els of par­tic­u­late mat­ter in the air exceeds the fed­er­al­ly allowed lim­it – most­ly because of wood stove pol­lu­tion that gets trapped in the area dur­ing weath­er inversions.

The agency has pro­posed a plan that aims to avoid an EPA “non-attain­ment area” des­ig­na­tion. The plan acknowl­edges that addi­tion­al indus­try pro­posed in the Lake­view area will bump up against air pol­lu­tion lim­its, pre­vent­ing the state from issu­ing devel­op­ment permits.

“Any inter­me­di­ate size to large indus­try wish­ing to expand or estab­lish in Lake­view is restrict­ed from doing so,” the agency states in jus­ti­fy­ing its plan.

So, its plan rec­om­mends replac­ing old wood stoves and shift­ing peo­ple away from wood-fired heat. It also pro­pos­es allow­ing com­pa­nies to buy wood stove emis­sions offsets.

But Zin­da says the DEQ hasn’t gone far enough. He wants the EPA to require all major pol­luters in Lake­view to reduce their emis­sions, as it would if the area were clas­si­fied as “non-attain­ment.”

“Why should the cit­i­zens pay in their health and pock­et­book while indus­try con­tin­ues to pol­lute?” he said. “Cor­po­ra­tions should at least be required to pay to wors­en our air quality.”