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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Biomass Plant Permit Given Boost

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
    After two days of hearings in Moriarty, a state Environment Department attorney said the department can issue an air quality permit for the Estancia biomass power plant under certain conditions.
    The conditions still need the approval of the Environmental Improvement Board at its next meeting Sept. 10 in Santa Fe. Public comment will be accepted until then.
    The EIB conducted the hearings Monday and Tuesday at the Moriarty Civic Center, where board members listened to both expert testimony and public comment regarding an appeal of the state Environment Department's denial of a permit for the proposed plant.
    The $74 million, 35-megawatt plant would produce electricity by burning trees, shrubs and other materials harvested from forests and rangeland.
    After state Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry denied the air quality permit in May, plant developer Western Water & Power Production LLC appealed the decision to the EIB.
    At issue was whether the plant is subject to Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations because of its use of natural gas to start its boiler. Curry cited natural gas emissions in his denial.
    Tracy Hughes, Environment Department general counsel, said Tuesday the department will support issuing the air quality permit if conditions are added.
    David Cohen, president of WWPP, said the PSD issue was the one thing "that separates the parties from solving this."
    Taking up most of the two days of hearings, Cohen called four expert witnesses, who each addressed different critical points.
    Gary D. McCutchen, who worked for the EPA for 26 years and said he was responsible for implementing the PSD program nationwide in 1986, said the PSD program was deliberately set up with a two-tier threshold— either 100 tons or 250 tons per year— to limit particulate emissions from any particular plant.
    McCutchen cited a "somewhat famous" and "key" 1990 EPA memo that, in effect, set a limit for use of fossil fuels like natural gas of 10 percent or less, and plants that used more than that would be deemed fossil fuel plants.
    "Applying these criteria, the Estancia basin facility would not be a fossil fuel boiler," McCutchen said.
    He said the Estancia plant would use natural gas as fuel "less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the time," because it will only use gas to start its boiler, which is anticipated to be once a year— unless there is a forced outage.
    Charles Tyburk, Cohen's third expert witness, addressed the idea of unscheduled or forced outages, which could be caused by lightning strikes or equipment failures.
    "A plant like this could possibly have one or two per year. Sometimes more per year," Tyburk said.
    Cohen's second expert was Jack Maddox, president of Maddox Engineering Services and vice president of WWPP. Maddox is responsible for planning, designing and developing several power plants in the state, including the Raton and Estancia biomass plants, and has a master's degree in nuclear engineering.
    He said the WWPP partners applied for an air quality permit for a similar biomass power plant in Raton, identical in size to the Estancia plant and also using natural gas as a start-up fuel.
    An appeal of the permit resulted because a nearby rancher was concerned about poisoning his cattle with pine needles, not because natural gas was used as a start-up fuel.
    The Environment Department issued the permit.
    Hughes' expert witness, Richard Goodyear, manager of permit programs within the state Air Quality Bureau, also testified that "because the Estancia Basin facility would fall within the 100 tons per year threshold, it therefore would not be subject to PSD."
    Hughes handed out a sheet listing four proposed conditions to be added to the air quality permit:
   

The design capacity of the plant's natural gas burners shall not exceed 175 million Btu per hour, and gas used in the boiler shall not exceed 0.184 million standard cubic feet per hour.
   

The company must continually monitor the natural gas used with a flow meter.
   

It must record the cumulative flow of gas to the boiler at least every 60 minutes during operation.
   

Every six months, it must report to the Environment Department all instances when the natural gas flow rate exceeds the allowable amount.
    An attorney for plant opponent Forest Guardians said that group has asked to add another condition: that if WWPP changes the fuel used in the plant from that in its permit, the change can be grounds for a new permit proceeding.
    Goodyear repeated that the Environment Department decision on the permit was based on air quality issues and not forestry issues, which many members of the public had brought up.
    "We are constrained by statute and limitation to deal with the authorized issues," Goodyear said.
    Jan Eshleman of Mountainair, who attended both days of hearings, said she was not comfortable with changes to the permit of which the public was not made aware.
    "It sets a dangerous precedent," Eshleman said.
    Green decided to leave the record open for public comment on the four changes and for any additional legal briefs.
    Green will allow a short time at the beginning of the EIB's Sept. 10 meeting for anyone who cannot respond in writing to speak. The meeting will be at 9 a.m. at the Wendell Chino Building, 1220 S. St. Francis Drive, Porter Hall.
    For more information, contact Joyce Medina at 827-2425 or e-mail joyce.medina@state.nm.us.
    Journal staff writer Jack King contributed to this report.
    Other views
    Citizens weigh in with their thoughts on the new biomass plant Page A7