Citizens Demand Statewide Biomass Moratorium!

BIOMASS WARS: GREGOIRE/GOLDMARK REPUDIATED BY SCIENTISTS

Washington Biomass Wars are heating up. Citizens across the state are demanding Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark agree to a statewide moratorium on biomass projects like Thurston County imposed in December, 2010.

A chorus of defiant protests are being planned now.  They come as three internationally acclaimed climate scientists debunk pro-biomass burning policies by Washington Governor Gregoire and Goldmark in a public letter saying, “simply declaring biomass power to be carbon neutral does not make it so

Scientists Mark Harmon, Timothy Searchinger and William Moomaw wrote to state legislators on Feb. 2 that state policy “makes it likely that greenhouse gas emissions will increase for many years where biomass replaces or displaces fossil fuels” and “biomass burning emits 150 percent the carbon dioxide of coal and 300-400 percent the carbon dioxide of natural gas…”

“Not only do biomass projects stoke climate change” said Duff Badgley, “they would decimate our forests and kill people.”

Badgley said biomass combustion emits more than twice as much highly toxic particulate matter as coal combustion, and five to 13 times more than natural-gas combustion, according to studies accepted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

This kind of exposure has been linked by the American Lung Association to a lethal brew of diseases and conditions: cancer, cardiopulmonary diseases including heart attacks, strokes, premature death, increased emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, birth defects, abnormal lung development in children, asthma in children.

The scientists’ Feb. 2 letter states: “…the number and scale of biomass facilities proposed in Washington strongly suggests that new trees will have to be cut to provide fuel for these plants…” There are at least 20 biomass incinerators existing or planned for the state. The Seattle Times on February 8, 2011 published an OP-ED by No Biomass Burn coordinator Duff Badgley that accused Goldmark of promoting biomass policies that “amount to a war on our forests, our climate, and our lives.”
Public outcry against biomass incinerators relentlessly promoted by Goldmark and industry is grabbing headlines in Mason, Thurston, Jefferson and Clallam Counties.

Lawsuits have been filed by citizen and environmental groups to stop three biomass incinerators proposed for the Olympic Peninsula — one of which is a “pilot project” in Port Angeles selected by Goldmark to showcase so-called “green energy.”

Another biomass project pushed by Goldmark is the incinerator slated for the campus of Evergreen State College in Olympia. This project has been stymied by the citizen-driven Thurston County moratorium on all types of biomass incinerators.

In September, 2010, Goldmark and Gregoire sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson arguing that all biomass sources of greenhouse gas pollution in Washington should be exempt from federal regulation.

The letter from Moomaw, Searchinger and Harmon exposes the Gregoire and Goldmark proposal as preposterous and exceedingly dangerous.