What a 20-year Biomass Battle Tells Us About Environmental Justice Policy

- by Brentin Mock, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2015, Grist

It’s well-estab­lished that the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency has been quite flac­cid when it comes to enforc­ing civ­il rights issues. The online news out­let E&E recent­ly took the time to remind us how bad it is last week, report­ing from Flint, Mich., where envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­plaints about a bio­mass ener­gy plant built in a low-income, black com­mu­ni­ty have gone ignored since the ear­ly 1990s.

“In that cor­ner of Flint, there is just a lot of pol­lut­ing stuff that’s either in Gene­see Town­ship or the north­east side of Flint, and noth­ing has ever real­ly been done about that,” Rev. Phil Schmit­ter told E&E reporter Robin Braven­der. “The plant is about a mile from an ele­men­tary school and a low-income hous­ing complex.”

Back in 1994, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice activists in Flint asked the EPA to block con­struc­tion of the bio­mass plant, argu­ing that low-income African Amer­i­cans have already suf­fered enough from the con­cen­tra­tion of pol­lu­tion and pover­ty in the north­east­ern quar­ter. The EPA not­ed the request, and it’s on the agency’s list of civ­il rights com­plaints, filed July 1, 1994 as one of the few cas­es accept­ed for inves­ti­ga­tion. But here we are, over 20 years lat­er, and the sit­u­a­tion hasn’t been resolved. The plant has been up and run­ning since 1995, burn­ing wood to ener­gy to its mer­ry delight.

Now, the EPA’s lack of action on civ­il rights enforce­ment deserves scruti­ny, even as the agency has tak­en steps like cre­at­ing Plan EJ 2014, a detailed pro­pos­al for cor­rect­ing this prob­lem. And cer­tain­ly there are cumu­la­tive impact ques­tions that need to be answered in Flint. But as much as any­thing, the sto­ry of the Flint bio­mass plant reveals just how com­pli­cat­ed these issues can be.

If you want a glimpse of just how hard­scrab­ble Flint was/is for the black com­mu­ni­ty in the 1990s, you need only lis­ten to any record­ing or video from Flint rap groups Top Author­i­ty or the Day­ton Family:

Even before this plant was con­ceived, Flint was flush with pover­ty and pol­lu­tion. But I’m not sure that bio­mass is the vil­lain you want to use to make a point about envi­ron­men­tal dis­crim­i­na­tion. To put things in per­spec­tive, a bio­mass plant is being planned right now for Michigan’s much whiter Upper Penin­su­la, which is also over­run with old coal plants, and it’s most­ly being wel­comed.

But first, let’s acknowl­edge that bio­mass does not come with­out its prob­lems. Accord­ing to TheBiomassMonitor.org, there have been 25 fires and/or explo­sions at bio­mass facil­i­ties as of Decem­ber 2014, and the bio­mass indus­try has been fight­ing tighter safe­ty reg­u­la­tions. Bio­mass ener­gy also pro­duces asth­ma-caus­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter and diox­ins that cause addi­tion­al health risks.

The plant in Flint burns wast­ed wood and pel­lets from dying trees and old hous­es. Schmit­ter and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty activists are con­cerned that it could be using wood that is taint­ed with dan­ger­ous lev­els of lead-based paint — the kind of lead that some sci­en­tists attribute to the cri­sis-lev­els of vio­lence expe­ri­enced through­out the 1990s (as heard in graph­ic detail in Top Authority’s songs).

Also, bio­mass facil­i­ties might start out only incin­er­at­ing dead­wood, but what hap­pens when that sup­ply runs out and pur­chasers still need ener­gy? Do they then start chip­ping away at per­fect­ly good for­est, which we need to absorb car­bon diox­ide? Accord­ing to the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, “much of” Michigan’s bio­mass sup­ply comes from the state’s 19 mil­lion acres of for­est land.

But the state of Michi­gan con­sid­ers bio­mass to be a source of “renew­able” ener­gy. It’s not pol­lu­tion-free, like wind and solar, but it beats the most often-used alter­na­tive: As it stands, Michi­gan has reg­u­lar­ly gained over half of its ener­gy sup­ply from coal, though it pro­duces none of its own. Much of its coal is brought by rail from Wyoming and Mon­tana, accord­ing to EIA. It ranks among the 10 states that are most depen­dent on coal imports, accord­ing to a report from the Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists (jump to page 33 for the state profile).

Michi­gan is one of the 29 states with laws that man­date that a cer­tain per­cent­age of the ener­gy it pur­chas­es comes from renew­ables. That renew­able port­fo­lio stan­dard isn’t among the strongest in the land — it only asks for 10 per­cent renew­able ener­gy by 2015 — but that’s bet­ter than states that have, at best, a vol­un­tary pro­gram, or worst, none at all. Of Michigan’s 2013 renew­able sup­ply, 42 per­cent of that came from biomass.

Michigan’s bio­mass mar­ket is encour­aged by a con­sid­er­able tranche of finan­cial incen­tives, includ­ing the state’s Bio­mass Ener­gy Pro­gram and the Bio­mass Gasi­fi­ca­tion and Methane Digester Prop­er­ty Tax Exemp­tion, which is most­ly for farm facil­i­ties, but counts bio­mass gasi­fi­ca­tion equip­ment among its exemptions.

Gov. Rick Sny­der also includes bio­mass as part of his “no regrets” ener­gy future plan for rid­ding the state of coal-pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty. He is under fur­ther pres­sure from the EPA to bring the state into com­pli­ance with the Clean Pow­er Plan, which also has the goal of wean­ing us off of coal — and, yes, the agency counts bio­mass as part of its accept­ed renew­able ener­gy alter­na­tives. (In a recent report, experts at the World Resources Insti­tute agree that we could do worse than biomass.)

Which is all just to say that this civ­il rights thing is a bit com­pli­cat­ed. The civ­il rights group NAACP exam­ined Michigan’s ener­gy poli­cies as part of its Just Ener­gy series reports and said it was it “on the right path” for clean ener­gy devel­op­ment, and that the state’s “incen­tives rank among the most effec­tive for attract­ing clean ener­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing and research and development.”

The report also says that “Michi­gan should focus on solar, wind, and geot­her­mal sources as the best pos­si­ble options for clean ener­gy devel­op­ment, with dis­tinct health, envi­ron­men­tal, and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.” But it’s clear through­out that it is more con­cerned about the state’s cur­rent coal dependency:

In 2010, fos­sil fuel based ener­gy account­ed for 83% of the total ener­gy (elec­tric­i­ty and fuels) con­sumed in Michi­gan. Michigan’s renew­ables account­ed for 4.96% of in-state elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2013 and 56.5% came from coal. In spite of its abun­dant in-state clean ener­gy poten­tial, at $1.16 bil­lion in expen­di­tures, Michi­gan spent the 6th most, out of 50 states in the nation ‚on coal imports in 2012. Michi­gan has eight coal plants that received a fail­ing envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice grade in the 2012 Coal Blood­ed Report. Coal based elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion, from cra­dle to grave, has been proven to be unhealthy to humans and the environment.

Yes, it’s inex­cus­able that the EPA has sat on the Flint case for over 20 years. It’s also inex­cus­able that Michi­gan has been rely­ing on coal, when it real­ly doesn’t need to. After all, when you’re depend­ing on coal from oth­er cities and states, as Michi­gan is, you’re basi­cal­ly turn­ing a blind eye to the health prob­lems that fence­line com­mu­ni­ties in coal-pro­duc­ing states have to deal with.

This is why the issue is so com­pli­cat­ed. The EPA is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to get us off of coal in an attempt to address cli­mate change, which is also a civ­il rights issue giv­en that hits peo­ple of col­or and the low income the hard­est. It just goes to show that not all EJ issues are black and white. But after 20 years, the EPA, at the very least, owes Flint an explanation.