Oregon Biomass Battleground

Ore­gon: Bio­mass Battleground

- by Saman­tha Chir­il­lo, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

Tim­ber Town Eugene, Ore­gon buzzes along near­ly obliv­i­ous to the for­est destruc­tion and her­bi­cide poi­son­ing around it. Much like a frog in a pot of water brought to a slow boil, the tim­ber indus­try relies on what anthro­pol­o­gist and author Jared Dia­mond referred to as “land­scape amne­sia” in his book, Col­lapse — slow envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion that would be offen­sive if only at a faster pace.

The sce­nario with the Seneca Sus­tain­able Ener­gy bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ty, locat­ed adja­cent to the Seneca tim­ber mill, is dis­turbing­ly sim­i­lar. The State and local air author­i­ties might let Seneca have its way, but no ad cam­paign on the part of Seneca is going to hide the real­i­ty that bio­mass ener­gy, like the chem­i­cal clearcut regime it emerged from, is a dirty, destruc­tive dead-end.

The Seneca cogen­er­a­tion facil­i­ty, first per­mit­ted in Octo­ber 2009 under Title V of the Clean Air Act, is apply­ing for a per­mit mod­i­fi­ca­tion to be reg­u­lat­ed as a major source of pol­lu­tion and increase its Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter (PM)10 pol­lu­tion by 3 tons per year. Although Seneca uses the best avail­able con­trol tech­nol­o­gy (BACT) for PM10, it does not for the more dan­ger­ous PM2.5, which would also increase with the modification.

How­ev­er, the recent fed­er­al appel­late court rul­ing end­ing bio­mass indus­try exemp­tions from the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agen­cy’s (EPA) tai­lor­ing rule, which lim­its CO2 emis­sions, might be a spoil­er for Seneca. With the mod­i­fied per­mit not due till Sep­tem­ber and local author­i­ty per­mit­ting deci­sion not till Decem­ber, there may be time to appeal. The exemp­tion sun­sets July 2014, and the if the mod­i­fi­ca­tion would increase CO2 by more than 75,000 tons per year, then CO2 and oth­er pol­lu­tants would be reviewed and BACT applied.

Too bad Eugene Water and Elec­tric Board (EWEB), which buys Seneca’s bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty, recent­ly cut its con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy pro­gram that was reduc­ing ener­gy demand and help­ing ratepay­ers. Although a pub­lic util­i­ty, EWEB has kept most of its con­tract with Seneca secret. A reli­able source claims that EWEB is buy­ing elec­tric­i­ty from Seneca at $80 per megawatt, when it could be buy­ing it from Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion for $30 per megawatt.

Besides a bad deal for ratepay­ers, the Seneca facil­i­ty is life-threat­en­ing deal for the peo­ple liv­ing clos­est to it. The “West Eugene Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice — Envi­ron­men­tal Health Assess­ment Report,” recent­ly released by Beyond Tox­i­cs, shows that 99 per­cent of air tox­i­cs in Eugene are emit­ted in west Eugene. This EPA-fund­ed research also showed that chil­dren in the west Eugene zip code, where Seneca is locat­ed, have a 14.3 per­cent asth­ma rate, ver­sus 8.1 per­cent in schools in oth­er Eugene zip codes. The west Eugene zip also has the high­est lev­el of res­i­dents below the pover­ty line and the high­est per­cent­age of His­pan­ics, as com­pared to the oth­er five zip codes that com­prise Eugene.

To the south­east, in Lake­view, Ore­gon, Iber­dro­la is soon to sub­mit its per­mit appli­ca­tion for a new bio­mass ener­gy facil­i­ty. Per­haps too soon to ben­e­fit from the recent court rul­ing, this would be the third time that Iber­dro­la was allowed to be grand­fa­thered under old­er, weak­er State rules, result­ing in three-fold more PM2.5 pol­lu­tion than if it had to abide by new­er, fed­er­al rules.

Kla­math Falls, where Paul Fouch and oth­er Save Our Rur­al Ore­gon activists defeat­ed a facil­i­ty recent­ly, and Lake­view, Ore­gon, had among the high­est PM2.5 par­tic­u­late pol­lu­tion in the U.S. for sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive days ear­li­er this year. On Thurs­day, April 25, 2013, EPA Direc­tor of Ecosys­tems, Trib­al and Pub­lic Affairs, Region 10 and Ore­gon Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty (DEQ) Air Qual­i­ty Admin­is­tra­tor Andy Gins­berg were in Lake­view to dis­cuss the com­mu­ni­ty’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EPA’s new PM Advance Pro­gram. Stat­ing that Lake­view has met nonat­tain­ment sta­tus but is not yet for­mal­ly des­ig­nat­ed under this Pro­gram, Lake­view will avoid des­ig­na­tion and pol­lu­tion restric­tion under the Clean Air Act for yet anoth­er EPA plan­ning cycle (2014–2019) by devel­op­ing its own PM reduc­tions plan. Find more on this pro­gram at: http://www.epa.gov/ozoneadvance/basicPM.html

The lack of infor­ma­tion from either Iber­dro­la or DEQ Air or Water Qual­i­ty Divi­sions address­ing the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed aquifer under the applicant’s pro­posed facil­i­ty is yet anoth­er issue. Legal­i­ty is ques­tion­able on the for­est end, too. Fed­er­al agen­cies have already com­plet­ed Mem­o­ran­da of Under­stand­ing to feed the facil­i­ty, in part from the Fed­er­al “Sus­tained Yield” Unit, what was once a ground-break­ing forestry model.

Iber­dro­la is look­ing at the for­est burned by the near­by 2012 Bar­ry Point Fire as an obvi­ous source of bio­mass. The Collins Pine Mill there, retool­ing to han­dle larg­er diam­e­ter trees, has its eye on this burned for­est, too. So much for the indus­try claim that log­ging and bio­mass burn­ing are used to pre­vent fire! Orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty and the John Muir Project have been work­ing to estab­lish this burned for­est area as crit­i­cal habi­tat for the black-backed woodpecker.

Both the Seneca and Iber­dro­la facil­i­ties are exam­ples of how Ore­gon’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty may have failed to meet the rigid­i­ty of Con­gres­sion­al intent under the Clean Air Act, accord­ing to Chris Zin­da, cit­i­zen activist of Save Our Rur­al Ore­gon in Lakeview.

Top bio­mass pro­mot­ers in Ore­gon, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Kitzhaber (D), Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden (D), and Con­gress­man Peter DeFazio (D), tout Ore­gon as a huge, under­uti­lized bio­mass fuel and pow­er region. How much will the pub­lic ben­e­fit from the lat­est extrac­tive indus­tri­al ploy? How many jobs will it bring in con­trast to med­ical bills from the increased pol­lu­tion? How much rev­enue will it return to at least off­set pub­lic subsidies?

The Seneca facil­i­ty requires huge vol­umes of chips and even whole trees, hav­ing stor­age for only two weeks of fuel for its burn­er. The Ore­gon Depart­ment of Ener­gy is revis­ing its Bio­mass Pro­duc­er and Col­lec­tor Tax Cred­it pro­gram. The cred­it for agri­cul­tur­al crop and woody bio­mass pro­duc­tion and col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly stands at $10/green ton. Not only are the log­ging and log­ging roads pub­licly sub­si­dized, so was con­struc­tion of the Seneca facil­i­ty and is the nev­er-end­ing trans­port of bio­mass to the facility.

Seneca is get­ting trees from as far as For­est Ser­vice “stew­ard­ship” con­tract projects, col­lab­o­ra­tions between the tim­ber indus­try, agency, and envi­ron­men­tal groups, east of the Cas­cades, 150–200 miles away. These sub­si­dies will attract more Senecas to Ore­gon. They already are help­ing oth­er wood prod­ucts busi­ness­es, like Bear Moun­tain Wood Pel­let facil­i­ty. Bear Moun­tain gets much of its wood from Seneca and received a state cred­it for its dry­er, has export­ed pel­lets to Japan and shipped as far east as Massachusetts.

High­light­ed recent­ly in the nation­al press and on an Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign net­work con­fer­ence call, in the South­east U.S. the bur­geon­ing bio­mass indus­try her­alds the final stages of for­est exploita­tion, punch­ing in new, heav­i­ly sub­si­dized, thor­ough­ly poi­soned tree farms, wood pel­let facil­i­ties, and ter­mi­nals for export to the Unit­ed King­dom. Although seem­ing­ly far from this dis­mal sce­nario yet, Ore­gon is on track to become the next Southeast.

Already manip­u­lat­ed like a third world coun­try, Ore­gon suf­fers from increas­ing raw log and chip exports. Accord­ing to Pub­lic Inter­est Forester and Direc­tor of Our Forests Roy Keene, heav­i­ly under­val­ued pub­lic old growth trees are chipped as “culls” because of rot or fire scars.

“Weak Ore­gon For­est Prac­tice Rules and an untaxed tim­ber indus­try are reduc­ing the pri­vate for­est to fiber suit­able only for burn­ing while putting more pres­sure on pub­lic for­est to pro­vide con­struc­tion-grade trees,” Keene explains. “What will be the effects of sub­si­dized bio­mass fuel har­vest be on our already con­test­ed forests?”

Roy Keene worked with for­mer Lane Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Rob Handy and cur­rent can­di­date for coun­ty com­mis­sion­er Kevin Matthews to start Con­ver­sa­tions on the For­est, a series of pub­lic dis­cus­sions that start­ed in Eugene, locat­ed in Lane Coun­ty, total­ing nine so far, to dis­cuss these mat­ters. The July Con­ver­sa­tion was on bio­mass ener­gy, and the next in Sep­tem­ber is titled, “Fire and Water.” Wild­fires are cur­rent­ly burn­ing in South­ern Oregon.

Con­gress­man DeFazio and Sen­a­tor Wyden both pro­pose aggres­sive­ly increas­ing log­ging on pub­lic forests in Ore­gon, DeFazio going so far as to pri­va­tize BLM-man­aged forests, under the guise of cre­at­ing jobs, fire risk reduc­tion, and “renew­able” bio­mass ener­gy. Bio­mass ener­gy oppo­nents in Lane Coun­ty and Lake­view agree that pub­lic mon­ey is bet­ter spent cre­at­ing defen­si­ble spaces around homes in the urban/wildland inter­face than in remote crit­i­cal habi­tat areas cur­rent­ly pro­posed to be logged.

How can we pro­tect pub­lic health, our pub­lic forests, and the cli­mate from the increas­ing­ly glob­al demand for ener­gy and bio­mass ener­gy and fuels? Espe­cial­ly from eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful coun­tries like Chi­na who con­sumed their own forests cen­turies ago and are already con­sum­ing ours?

These are the unspo­ken real­i­ties of the emerg­ing so-called “clean and sus­tain­able” bio­mass indus­try in Ore­gon. Ques­tions Sen­a­tor Wyden and Con­gress­man DeFazio, in their rush to do the bid­ding of their cor­po­rate mas­ters, are not ask­ing. Wyden is Chair of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources Com­mit­tee, and DeFazio is Rank­ing Mem­ber of the House Nat­ur­al Resources Com­mit­tee. As senior leg­is­la­tors in Con­gress, they wield the pow­er to open up pub­lic forests and water­ways to bio­mass extrac­tion and ener­gy pro­duc­tion, putting a dirty indus­try ahead of cost-effec­tive and job-cre­at­ing con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, heat pump, and solar technologies.

With help from its Con­gres­sion­al liai­son Carl Ross, Direc­tor of Save Amer­i­ca’s Forests, the Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign is pres­sur­ing Wyden and DeFazio. The Cam­paign is still gath­er­ing sign-ons to a let­ter to Wyden.

Saman­tha Chir­il­lo, M.P.A., M.S., based in Eugene, OR, is a Co-Coor­di­na­tor of the Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign with Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work. She is also coor­di­na­tor of Con­ver­sa­tions on the Forest.