Laidlaw Biomass Plant

I run a local newspaper in Ellicottville, NY and over the past year the town has been fighting to keep a Laidlaw Biomass plant from starting up. There are a wide variety of concerns mainly the pollution associated with the plant.
I would apprecaite any comments from the people in your town regarding this matter.
James

Many people in the community aren't happy about it. The industry that has lived and torn our community apart for a century is being jammed down our thraot again. we have a website called coosconversations where most of the talking is going on. The Stacks are directly above the field that all of our kids play sports on. sad times in Berlin, NH.

Couldn't help not commenting on the misrepresentation of the facts about the environmental "friendliness" of biomass-powered facility that will be carbon dioxide neutral, i.e., it will maintain a net balance between carbon dioxide production (via air emissions) and consumption (via use of wood chips as fuel).
At the outset, it should be stated that the environmental benefits of woody biomass-produced electricity over its fossil fuel (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas) counterparts have been long-established by federal laboratory and academic institution scientific research and investigation, the results of which have been published, vetted and accepted as fact by the vast majority of the scientific community. Any suggestion to the contrary, by the purported experts or biased journalists or anyone else, must be viewed as highly suspect in the face of this overwhelming evidence.

The significance of carbon neutrality is important to us all. Greenhouse gases (“GHG”) are any of the heat-trapping atmospheric gases associated with the so-called “greenhouse effect” linked to global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most prevalent of these gases. Others, both man-made and naturally occurring, include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas about 1.5 times as dense as air, released by plant and animal respiration and consumed by photosynthesis in plants such as woody biomass. CO2 is the primary heat-trapping GHG associated with the threat of global warming.
As stated by leading researchers in the field, including some from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry:
"Woody crops influence global carbon cycles by taking up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and sequestering it in above- and below-ground biomass, and by displacing fossil fuels as a source of energy and products. Woody crops have the greatest impact on global carbons cycles by displacing fossil fuels, because woody-crop biomass used to generate electricity is carbon neutral. This means that the amount of carbon released during the production, harvest, transportation, and conversion of the biomass (to electricity) is at least equal to or less than the amount taken up by the growing crop. The production and conversion of woody biomass can therefore produce electrical energy with no net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. This is an important benefit, in view of the growing concerns about the impacts of increasing CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion."
Growing fuel: a sustainability assessment of willow biomass crops, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 2004: 2(8): p. 411-418, 415

All woody biomass renewable power generation technologies are acknowledged to produce no net GHG emissions, and to offset those of fossil fuel combustion. Woody biomass-fueled power generation is unique among renewable technologies in that it produces CO2 emissions during normal operations. The key difference is that its emissions result from combusting the residues of society’s agricultural, forestry and solid waste management activities, and woody biomass emissions are absorbed by the next crop of society’s forestry and agricultural activities. Fossil fuel combustion, by contrast, emits carbon into the atmosphere that would otherwise remain locked away in geologic storage where it has been sequestered for millions of years.
What does published research into woody biomass conclude? The U.S. Department of Energy – through its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (“NREL”)– is one of many institutions which have conducted extensive studies verifying and validating the carbon-neutral nature of woody biomass energy – the same type of energy proposed for Laidlaw’s facility. In 2004, NREL issued a seminal technical report comparing biomass and fossil fuel systems in terms of energy balance, greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and economics. That report concluded in part that biomass-produced electricity not only produces less GHGs than fossil fuel-based electricity per kilowatt-hour, but it is also a more cost-effective option.
When compared to coal, oil and liquid-fuels from coal gasification, woody biomass offers a renewable option which has significantly fewer negative GHG emissions such as SOx, NOx, and CO2.
Woody biomass technology actually reduces GHG emissions when the emissions from the alternate disposal fates of its fuel supply are taken into account. This is because land-filling, open combustion, or decomposition of biomass all release a fraction of the carbon, in a reduced form of methane (CH4), which is recognized as a 25-times-more-damaging GHG on an instantaneous basis than the almost pure CO2 emitted by biomass power facilities. The fraction released as methane varies from 5-50% of the total carbon depending on disposal method. Thus combusting pure methane to carbon dioxide, as occurs in a biomass power plant substantially reduces GHG potential in the atmosphere compared to not using the biomass wastes as power plant fuel.

This reduction in GHG emissions is greater than the reduction due to the displacement of fossil fuel, which is common to all renewable generation technologies. In a California study of biomass plants combusting a typical mix of agricultural, forestry and solid waste management fuels, the avoided GHG emissions from its fuel supply base were greater than the avoided fossil fuel GHG emissions.
The first regulatory body to recognize this benefit was the California Public Utility Commission in the California GHG Emissions Performance Standard (D.07-01-039, implementing SB1368):
“In particular, the record shows that electric generation using biomass (e.g., agricultural and wood waste, landfill gas) that would otherwise be disposed of under a variety of conventional methods (such as open burning, forest accumulation, landfills, composting) results in a substantial net reduction in GHG emissions. This is because the usual disposal options for biomass wastes emit large quantities of methane gas, whereas the energy alternatives either burn the wastes that would become methane or burn the methane itself, generating CO2. Since methane gas is on the order of twenty to twenty-five times more potent as a GHG than CO2, and since methane has an atmospheric residence time of twelve years, after which it is converted to atmospheric CO2, trading off methane for CO2 emissions from energy recovery operations leads to a net reduction of the greenhouse effect.”
An extensive record of independent research points to the woody biomass proposed for use by Laidlaw as a far more environmentally beneficial (and carbon dioxide neutral) fuel source than the fossil fuel it will replace.

Thanks for the BioMass lesson. Its obvious you for work for Laidlaw. In your book report you dont mention anything about tiny shard particles , unseen by the naked eye, imbed themselves in the lungs of unsuspecting citizens, children of the community. Over the course of time this can cause serious damage to a person. With this said, it is imperative that if biomass is the wave of the future, their plants should be built in secluded areas of a community as to not pose a threat to a humans health and also to keep the Jet Engine noise out of our ears. But, Laidlaw is intending on putting their plant in the heart of our community. 100 feet from the outer rim of a 4 baseball/softball/soccer fields and a community park. This company has no motive than to feed its greed for money, energy, nad power that they are willing to steamroll into our community and ask for acceptance. Its not going to be pretty if it happens. I gaurentee it. So sad in my hometown. If a Biomass Plant goes in the designated location I will have to move my family elsewhere. Tough times lie ahead.

A citizens group has formed to open discussion in the local community regarding the Laidlaw Biomass Plant. We are very interested in the experieces at Ellicottville. Please see our website: www.citizensforanewvison.com . Any suggestions, comments and, especially, links to factual informaton regarding the impact of a Biomass plant would be greatly appreciated.

James Hunter wrote:

I run a local newspaper in Ellicottville, NY and over the past year the town has been fighting to keep a Laidlaw Biomass plant from starting up. There are a wide variety of concerns mainly the pollution associated with the plant.
I would apprecaite any comments from the people in your town regarding this matter.
James

In the interest of transparency, the BioMass advocate should reveal who is paying him to post these responses. But for the record, the people in Berlin are NOT anti-Biomass. In fact many people would like to see a biomass plant in the area if it was feasible. The problem is the specific location of the proposed Laidlaw plant in the heart of our downtown.

Can't they relocate it someplace else to a less populated area?

Any word on the Laidlaw appeal and lawsuit against elicottville??/

There is a new webpage to discuss this and track developments: www.thecitythatreesbuilt.com .

Can anyone tell me if a positive declaration was determined (SECR review) for the new plant and if an environmental impact statement was done? Also what organization was designated lead agency for the review?
Also, the links in the above comments do not work:
www.thecitythatreesbuilt.com
www.citizensforanewvison.com

http://www.topix.net/forum/city/corinth-ny/TR...

Try living close to a fertilizer plant, a far cry from renewable energy. Those who dont support renewable energy projects like this in my view are missing the greater picture, Anti american agenda is strong, I see it as a choice to support America right now, so you may smell wood chips better than coal or relying on oil from foreign sources who want to see the country destroyed, thats a worse smell.

David wrote:

Try living close to a fertilizer plant, a far cry from renewable energy. Those who dont support renewable energy projects like this in my view are missing the greater picture, Anti american agenda is strong, I see it as a choice to support America right now, so you may smell wood chips better than coal or relying on oil from foreign sources who want to see the country destroyed, thats a worse smell.

It would be much better to step on dried dog poop then to step on fresh dog poop. Either/or you would still need to clean off your shoe. We rely on foreign oil because of american corporate greed. Bark up the american corporate tree.