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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By JUSTIN SCHECK and IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN
BLUE LAKE, Calif.—Malodorous brown smoke from a power plant enveloped this
logging town on April 29, 2010, and several hundred residents fled until it
passed.
Six months later, the plant got $5.4 million from a federal program to
promote environmentally preferable alternatives to fossil fuel.
The plant, Blue Lake Power LLC, burns biomass, which is organic material
that can range from construction debris and wood chips to cornstalks and
animal waste. It is among biomass plants nationwide that together have
received at least $700 million in federal and state green-energy subsidies
since 2009, a calculation by The Wall Street Journal shows.
Yet of 107 U.S. biomass plants that the Journal could confirm were operating
at the start of this year, the Journal analysis shows that 85 have been
cited by state or federal regulators for violating air-pollution or water-
pollution standards at some time during the past five years, including minor
infractions.
Blue Lake Power is a wood-fired plant in Blue Lake, Calif.
Biomass is growing as a source of electricity, its production up about 14%
in the past 10 years, according to the Department of Energy. Alternative
electricity-production sources as a whole generate about 13% of power in the
U.S., and biomass is about 11% of the alternative production.
As federal and state governments promote such sources—largely to cut
emissions believed to affect the climate but also for related goals such as
providing cleaner air to breathe, preventing acid-rain harm to lakes and
reducing reliance on energy imports—biomass plants generally qualify along
with wind and solar.
Although the biomass plants inevitably produce emissions, since they burn
things, what they burn replenishes itself, qualifying them as renewable
power.
They also count as carbon-neutral, on the notion that the carbon released
when they burn a material such as scrap wood eventually would get into the
atmosphere anyway, when the wood decays.
The Biomass Power Association says any emissions noncompliance lies with a
small number of plants. "The idea that members of my association are out of
compliance with environmental restrictions on a regular basis is totally
wrong," said Bob Cleaves, president of the group, which represents more than
80 power plants that burn wood, not including Blue Lake.
More than two dozen truckloads of wood arrive each day at Blue Lake Power.
Mr. Cleaves, who declined to comment on specific plants, said biomass is
cleaner than the fossil fuels because it is carbon-neutral, and produces "
clean energy" efficiently. Mr. Cleaves said the biomass industry gets a
disproportionately small share of public funding in relation to the amount
of energy it generates.
Michael Van Brunt, director of sustainability for a division of Covanta
Holdings Corp. that owns eight biomass plants, said such power is a vital
piece of the nation's renewable-energy supply and gets less in government
support than fossil-fuel sources. Fossil-fuel industries also receive
government subsidies, but these generally aren't intended to improve the
environment.
Some in the industry say a range of issues, from inconsistent fuel supplies
to age, can make compliance with emissions standards challenging at biomass
plants. "It's goddamn hard to stay in compliance," said Kevin Leary, co-
owner of Blue Lake Power.
Mr. Leary—who blamed its smoke release on low-quality fuel—said a problem
some biomass plants face is simply that they are old, tracing back to a
Carter-era program to spur alternatives to imported oil, and weren't
designed to meet today's more stringent emissions rules.
"Without the ability to change the geometry of the furnace, you've got to
pull a rabbit out of a hat" to meet limits on nitrogen-oxides emissions, Mr.
Leary said, and use strategies such as large smoke scrubbers and precise
monitoring of fuel and oxygen levels.
Blue Lake is 27 years old. It was idle for a decade until Mr. Leary helped
restart it in 2010. Since then it has had emissions violations, a machinery
fire and an explosion that blew a 6-foot hole in a concrete wall. For a
while last year it was on an EPA watch list of plants with compliance issues
. Now, Mr. Leary says, it is operating within its permit.
Nearly all U.S. biomass plants receive government support from subsidies,
grants or state-approved power contracts. The federal economic-stimulus act
of 2009 provided more than $11 billion for renewable power, of which about $
270 million went to biomass plants, in grants administered by the Treasury
Department. Other federal agencies involved in such subsidies include the
departments of energy and agriculture.
More than 30 states require utilities to buy a percentage of their power
from sources that are renewable, generally letting the utilities pay more
for this power than they would for electricity generated by fossil fuels.
Blue Lake sells its electricity to a San Diego utility that pays it about
twice as much for coal-fired plants' energy.
In Old Town, Maine, a facility called Old Town Fuel and Fiber has received
more than $5 million in federal funds to develop renewable fuels since 2007,
most recently $377,000 from the state for equipment.
Old Town also has exceeded state-mandated limits on sulfur or another
pollutant in every quarter since the end of 2009, federal records reviewed
by the Journal show. Violations continued after the plant paid almost $300,
000 in fines between 2008 and 2011.
Company president Dick Arnold said the violations should stop once the plant
receives a new state permit, which he said will increase its allowable
carbon-monoxide emissions. A spokeswoman for the Maine Department of
Environmental Protection said such a permit is in the approval process. She
said the department and Old Town are in the process of negotiating a "six-
figure settlement" in which Old Town will pay fines for prior violations.
Old Town hasn't been required to pay back its grant funding or subsidies. In
almost all cases, green-power subsidies aren't linked to environmental
compliance.
Mary Booth has studied biomass power for the Environmental Working Group, an
organization that calls for stricter regulation, and the Partnership for
Policy Integrity, a smaller group that is critical of biomass plants. She
says government agencies should withhold grants from plants that violate
emissions standards. "Why are we subsidizing and incentivizing something
that's dirtier than coal power in certain ways?" she said.
Daniel Kammen, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who
also studies renewable energy, says that in the long term, creating
electricity by burning organic waste should help reduce greenhouse gases.
But he says much recent government funding has gone to projects that were
already online, old ones that are more prone to break down and are "not
necessarily the best in terms of local air quality."
Some violations are attributed to regulatory standards that are still being
ironed out. Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co. of Tacoma, Wash., which mills lumber,
got an $18 million federal grant in February toward the cost of a new wood-
burning boiler that produces electricity and heat. Since it started up in
2009, the boiler has emitted higher levels of nitrogen oxides than its
original state-issued permit allowed, according to state regulators and
Simpson.
Washington state bases permits on the emissions levels achievable by the
best boiler technology. Simpson's permit was based on claims the
manufacturer made about what its emissions should be, but the nitrogen-oxide
emissions turned out to be higher, said a Simpson spokesman, Dave McEntee.
The company has done a study to figure out whether the permit should be
changed to allow higher emissions.
Robert Carruthers, a Washington Department of Ecology engineer, said the
higher emissions rate is a "nuanced ongoing issue" that may be resolved by
increasing the plant's allowable emissions.
Mr. McEntee said the plant currently is in "full compliance" with a
temporary limit the state set. He added that EPA calculations show that
since the plant started operating it has helped avoid 179,000 metric tons of
carbon emissions, versus buying conventionally produced power.
California, with 33 biomass plants, has nearly a third of the nation's total
. In the Central Valley, four biomass plants received more than $10 million
in state clean-energy subsidies from 2009 through 2011 while accruing more
than $2 million in fines during the same period.
Crown Disposal runs a biomass plant near Fresno called Madera Power, which
the owner's website describes as producing "green renewable electricity."
Crown took it over in 2004. Since then, state regulators have cited the
plant more than two dozen times, fining it several times from 2004 to 2009
for failing to perform emissions tests and emitting excess sulfur and
visible smoke.
Madera Power nonetheless qualified under a California program that used a "
public goods" surcharge on utility bills to fund a "self-sustaining
renewable energy supply for California." From 2009 through 2011, when that
program ended, Madera Power received nearly $6 million in subsidies, state
records show.
During that time, it emitted excess sulfur, particulates, carbon monoxide
and nitrogen oxides and at one point was found to be burning plastic and
rubber, which weren't allowed.
A second Crown Disposal plant nearby received $3.1 million in state
subsidies from 2009 to 2011 and had multiple violations. The San Joaquin
Valley Air Pollution Control District fined Los Angeles County-based Crown $
1.875 million in 2010 for the violations.
Since then, regulators have fined the Madera plant for continued excess
sulfur and carbon-monoxide emissions, regulatory documents show. The air
district fined it for excess visible smoke in December, and this year it has
had two citations for excess carbon dioxide.
Crown's owner, Thomas Fry, said the Madera plant hasn't been producing power
in recent months. "It's pretty darn hard to stay in compliance with
anything any more," he said.
Mr. Fry said that officials from the Air Pollution Control District "just
come out, decide they need money, and write a citation."
A district spokeswoman said that before levying a fine, officials hold
multiple meetings with plant managers to figure out how they can come into
compliance. The plants were fined, she said, because they had a pattern of
violations and "were burning literally tons of illegal materials" like
plastics.
Two nearby Central Valley power plants, in El Nido and Chowchilla, received
more than $2.5 million in state clean-power subsidies from 2009 to 2011 and
violated restrictions on nitrogen, sulfur and carbon monoxide at various
times during those same years. The EPA last year fined them $835,000.
A problem was inconsistent fuel supplies, said a person who had a management
role with the plants. They had mainly burned building debris, but the
construction slowdown reduced that and forced plants to use more
agricultural waste, including orchard trimmings that didn't burn cleanly.
A spokeswoman for the plants' current owner, Akeida Capital Management, said
they have been running without violations since it acquired them in
December. She added that the plants provide employment for 41 people and use
waste that might otherwise go to landfills.
Blue Lake Power, the plant that once sent residents fleeing, was resurrected
with the help of federal funds.
Blue Lake co-owner Kevin Leary opens a window to the plant's boiler, where
wood chips are burned to heat steam.
Built in 1985, it closed in 1999. Hoping to get into the growing renewable-
power industry, Mr. Leary, a former fiber-optic-cable engineer, decided to
buy the plant with several partners.
Mr. Leary's group received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service
and more than $16 million in investments to buy and refurbish the plant,
knowing a provision of the federal stimulus act would refund 30% of the
investment, amounting to subsidies of over $5 million.
Mr. Leary lived for months in the plant's dusty offices, making deals with
logging companies for wood waste and getting permits in line. The plant
fired up on April 29, 2010, and immediately began spewing dark smoke.
Curtis Thompson, who works at the Mad River Brewery across the street,
picked up his wife and young daughter and fled, as did several hundred other
residents. "We were smoked out," Mr. Thompson says. The people returned
over the next couple of days as the air cleared.
The plant went idle. The North Coast Air Quality Management District
investigated and found several violations. It reached a settlement with Mr.
Leary requiring Blue Lake to pay $1.4 million but allowed it to spend most
of the money buying new pollution-control equipment and developing better
operating practices rather than paying the agency.
"It has been painful for us to realize that our performance has not been
good at all," Mr. Leary wrote in 2010 to the air board's general manager,
Rick Martin.
Blue Lake briefly reopened last year, closing again after a wood-loading
conveyor belt caught fire. Last summer the EPA put the plant on its watch
list of problematic polluters with unresolved compliance issues. It was
removed in October.
The plant restarted again in March 2012 and promptly had a pipe explosion
that blew a hole in the boiler and a concrete wall. These have been fixed,
and the plant is operating again.
Mr. Martin of the air board says he hopes it can stay in compliance. There
are four power plants in his district. Three have been fined for
environmental violations over the last two years. They all burn biomass and
get subsidies or charge customers a premium for their electricity.
A fourth plant, Mr. Martin says, has a clean environmental record and no
renewable-energy subsidies. "It burns natural gas," he says. |
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