PUBLIC MEETING – MAY 4th 7-9pm

LABOR TEMPLE (Hall 8), 2800 1ST AVE. at Broad St.

Two Seattle Steam incinerators threaten to turn downtown Seattle into a Lethal Pollution Zone. One incinerator near Pike Place market is already burning “dirty” waste wood. The huge 50MW, $80M incinerator planned near Pioneer Square would emit killer particle pollution and more than 200,000 tons per year of CO₂.

click HERE to download this as a printable PDF document

Join us to fight both incinerators!! Stop pollution in downtown Seattle so lethal it can kill “on the very day” of exposure. _{Source: American Lung Assn.}

1. Pike Place Market incinerator: Burning wood emits more particulate matter (PM) than coal combustion. _{Source: industry fillings and analyses accepted by EPA}
2. Pioneer Square incinerator: Would emit 166 tons per year of PM. _{Source: DOE EIS, 6/10}
3. Both incinerators: “Short term exposure to particle pollution can kill”. _{Source: ALA State of the Air Report-2008}
4. Both incinerators: PM can kill on the same day as exposure, when PM levels are high. _{Source: ALA}
5. Both incinerators: PM is a health hazard with no safe level of exposure. _{Sources: American Heart Association & EPA}
6. Both incinerators: Health effects of PM: premature death, heart attacks, cancer, lung function changes in children, heart arrhythmias, chronic lung disease, higher ER admissions. _{Source: EPA}
7. Both incinerators: The smallest PM, nano-PM, is the most dangerous PM. Source: AHA
8. Both incinerators: No pollution control device can effectively reduce nano-PM. Sources: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD, Cambridge, MA, and Air & Waste Management Association.
9. Both incinerators: Nano-PM is completely unregulated. Source: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD and WA air pollution agencies
10. Both incinerators: Nano-PM is so small it enters our blood directly through our lungs—and attacks our bodies systemically. Source: American Lung Association State of the Air Report-2008
11. Both incinerators: Nano-PM is now being associated with birth defects, lupus, and Alzheimer’s. Sources: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD, Cambridge, MA and Dr. Graham Cliff, UK
12. Both incinerators: Nano-PM is not stopped by any human body barriers, including the blood-brain barrier and the placenta. Source: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD, Cambridge, MA
13. Pike Place Market incinerator: Proportionately more most dangerous nano-PM is emitted than PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 at the higher temperatures of modern biomass incinerators. Source: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD
14. Pike Place Market incinerator: Burning wood emits more CO₂ than burning coal, per unit of energy produced. CO₂ is the leading greenhouse gas causing climate change. Source: Manomet study, Boston, MA, 6/10.
15. Pioneer Square incinerator: 207,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide would be emitted. _{Source: DOE EIS.}
16. Both incinerators: No pollution control devices are available to reduce or eliminate CO₂ emissions.
17. Pike Place Market incinerator: Burning wood emits more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than burning coal, per unit of energy produced, according to industry filings and analyses accepted by the EPA.
18. Pioneer Square incinerator: Would emit 31 tons per year of NOx and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). _{Source; DOE EIS, 6/10}
19. Both incinerators: NOx and VOCs cause ground level ozone that causes asthma in children. Source: Dr. Wm. Sammons, MD, Cambridge, MA
20. Pike Place Market incinerator: Wood construction debris (“urban wood”) can be contaminated with toxic substances including asbestos, resins, and glues that defy industry attempts at removal.
21. Pike Place Market incinerator: Wood combustion emits dioxin. Dioxin has been shown to produce cancer at far lower concentrations than any of the more than 600 other chemicals EPA has studied. Sources: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry & EPA.
22. Pioneer Square incinerator: Seattle Steam has been awarded an $18.75M federal grant from the Department of Energy. _{Source: Seattle Steam website and press accounts}
23. Citizen bail-outs of a highly polluting industry make no sense in a time of budget free-fall—or ever.

Join thousands of ordinary folks across the state fiercely fighting incinerators proposed for their towns and cities. The campaigns have seen mass citizen meetings, street protests, confrontational government hearings, newspaper ads, front-page news coverage, and lawsuits filed by top environmental attorneys.

!!MASON COUNTY DEFEATS HUGE INCINERATOR!!

Local citizens have defeated a giant transnational corporation planning a 65MW incinerator for Mason County. Adage announced on March 14, 2011 it was abandoning plans to build the highly polluting plant outside Shelton. The incinerator would have emitted 600,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide pollution and more than 100 tons per year of particulate matter. Furious citizens mounted a petition drive and hired Dave Bricklin of Seattle to lead a legal challenge. Three large incinerators are still planned for the Olympic Peninsula in Port Townsend, Port Angeles and another for Shelton. Lawsuits have been filed against two. A lawsuit is planned against the third.

!!EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE INCINERATOR DEFEATED!!

Local citizens and students have also defeated a biomass gasification incinerator slated for the campus of Evergreen State College near Olympia. Amid student protests and community uproar, the college announced on April 1, 2011 it was withdrawing plans for the controversial burner. It would have stoked climate change with its carbon dioxide emissions and threatened human lives with particulate matter (PM) pollution.

click HERE to download this as a printable PDF document

Local citizens have defeated a giant transnational corporation planning a 65MW incinerator for Mason County, Washington. Adage announced on March 14, 2011 it was abandoning plans to build the highly polluting plant outside Shelton. The incinerator would have emitted 600,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide pollution and more than 100 tons per year of particulate matter. Citizens mounted a petition drive against the plant and hired attorney Dave Bricklin of Seattle to lead a legal challenge.

This is a sensational victory for us! The Adage incinerator, like all biomass incinerators, would have stoked climate change, rained toxic pollution on the region, and decimated our forests.

BUT, four other large biomass incinerators are planned for the Olympic Peninsula plus the monster 50MW, $80M natural gas incinerator planned for downtown Seattle by Seattle Steam. The Seattle Steam incinerator would emit more than 200,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide and more than 160 tons per year of highly dangerous particulate matter (PM) pollution. The American Lung Association states PM can kill humans on the same day as exposure.

Proposed Washington’s biomass incinerators are bad for forests and climate

Guest columnist Duff Badgley argues that Washington state should stop plans for incinerators that burn biomass, such as waste from logging.

By Duff Badgley

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.

Ordinary folks in Gretna, Florida forced ADAGE to cancel its plans for a 55MW biomass incinerator—identical to the one ADAGE proposes for Shelton, WA.

“We had a thoroughly angry citizenry”, said James Maloy, president of Concerned Citizens of Gadsden County. “This is the single reason we beat ADAGE.” Here is a letter Maloy published on his blog site, December 31, 2009. http://floridiansagainstincineratorsindisguise.com/2009/12/31/an-open-letter-to-my-community/

“My only child, Jamie is a 3 and a half year old asthmatic. Although the job opportunity that brought me to this area is located in the City of Tallahassee, my wife and I chose to move to Gadsden County six years ago and invest our life savings in a quiet beautiful parcel of land just outside the city limits of Gretna, a place that we have called home for almost 6 years. I share everyone’s concern about our local and national economies, and I understand that an announcement any community about hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue is indeed good news.

Since the project was announced, I have been educating myself about the proposed facility to be constructed by ADAGE, LLC that has been labeled as “Clean, Green and Renewable”. What I have learned since that day has left me completely disturbed. The play yard that I built for my asthmatic son is 1.9 miles from the proposed Gretna Biomass Incinerator. His pre-school is 3 miles away. Gretna Elementary is 1 mile away. There are 5 schools within 4 miles of this proposed facility. There is a prison directly across the street that has an inmate population of 1,541 women – over 1,300 of those women are of childbearing age.

I do not believe that any of our elected county, city officials or local leaders would knowingly place these citizens and their children at risk, but the seemingly unanimous political support leads me to believe that a well rounded presentation of the facts have not been presented to them.

Although the application for an air permit to construct for the 50MW Gretna Biomass Incinerator project has not yet been submitted by ADAGE, LLC to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection,  I have read both the initial and revised applications for their 50MW Hamilton County Biomass Incinerator currently under evaluation.

I have also read hundreds of pages of information provided to me by groups and individuals who have researched, gathered, and written the documentation that has been instrumental in forming recent regulatory and organizational opposition to Biomass Incinerators. I not only “feel” that this project “may be detrimental to our health”, I am “certain” of it.

Here are a few facts that have been left out of the discussion thus far:

“On October 14, 2009, the Hampden County Medical Society (MA) published formal opposition to the construction of the Russell (MA) 50 MW wood burning biomass plant on the grounds that it presents an unacceptable public health risk. Similarly, on July 14, 2006, the American Lung Association of Massachusetts stated “serious concerns” about the “significant impact of this project [Russell Biomass wood burning plant] on air quality”.  The Florida Medical Association issued Resolution 08-21 urging the State of Florida to adopt policies to minimize the approval of new incinerators such as biomass burners. The Oregon Chapter of the American Lung Association has also come out against biomass combustion, as has the Capital Regional Medical Association in Tallahassee, Florida . These are only some of the public statements from professionals around the country documenting biomass burning and renewable energy incinerators as a source of a new and growing public health threat.”

The most vulnerable among us are especially at risk. Our children, the elderly and those with already chronic health conditions will suffer the consequences and there is an overwhelming amount of scientific and medical research that factually supports this assertion and disputes many of the claims made in favor of Biomass Incinerators. I am “certain” that due to my son’s chronic respiratory condition, we will have to make a choice between remaining silent, being forced from our home and community or knowingly and willingly place my son’s life in jeopardy. I am “certain” that we are not the only family in this community who will be forced to make the same difficult decision.

I strongly urge you, our elected officials, local leaders, economic development organizations and every citizen in this county to take the time to educate yourselves before an irreversible error is made.— James E. Maloy, Jr.”

Adage’s proposed incinerator will rain toxic pollutants on the people of Shelton and Mason County. ADAGE’s permit application for a biomass incinerator proposed for Hamilton County, Florida—a plant identical to the one proposed for Shelton—lists 52 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that would be emitted from their incinerator. Lethal levels of particulate matter (PM) are listed, as well as dioxin, arsenic, mercury, lead, carbon monoxide, chloroform, formaldehyde, and sulfurous acid.

Air pollution controls will not protect us from lethal levels of Particulate Matter (PM) that can kill from a single exposure. Emissions of the smallest and possibly most dangerous PM are completely unregulated. Existing regulations for emissions of the next smallest category of PM are not sufficiently “stringent” to prevent “adverse cardiovascular effects”, according to the American Heart Association.

American Lung Association State of the Air – 2008 Report

(excerpts)

Ozone and particle pollution are the most widespread air pollutants—and among the most dangerous. Recent research has revealed new insights into how they can harm the body—including taking the lives of infants and altering the lungs of children.

Short-term Exposure Can Be Deadly

First and foremost, short-term exposure to particle pollution can kill.

Deaths can occur on the very day that particle levels are high, or within one to two months afterward. Particle pollution does not just make people die a few days earlier than they might otherwise—these are deaths that would not have occurred if the air were cleaner.

What Else Can Particles Do to Your Health?

Particle pollution diminishes lung function, causes greater use of asthma medications and increased rates of school absenteeism, emergency room visits and hospital admissions.

Other adverse effects can be coughing, wheezing, cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks. According to the findings from some of the latest studies, short-term increases in particle pollution have been linked to:

1. death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes;
2. increased mortality in infants and young children;
3. increased numbers of heart attacks, especially among the elderly and in people with heart conditions;
4. inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults;
5. increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including     strokes and congestive heart failure;
6. increased emergency room visits for patients suffering from acute     respiratory ailments;
7. increased hospitalization for asthma among children;
8. increased severity of asthma attacks in children;

What Is Particle Pollution?

Ever look at dirty truck exhaust? The dirty, smoky part of that stream of exhaust is made of particle pollution.

Particle pollution refers to a mix of very tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe. Some are one-tenth the diameter of a strand of hair. Some are so small they can only be seen with an electron microscope. Because of their size, you can’t see the individual particles.

Our natural defenses help us to cough or sneeze larger particles out of our bodies. But those defenses don’t keep out smaller particles, those that are about one-seventh the diameter of a single human hair. These particles get trapped in the lungs, while the smallest are so minute that they can pass through the lungs into the blood stream, just like the essential oxygen molecules we need to survive.

Researchers categorize particles according to size, grouping them as coarse, fine and ultrafine. (1) Coarse particles fall between 2.5 microns and 10 microns in diameter and are called PM10-2.5. (2) Fine particles are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller and are called PM2.5. (3) Ultrafine particles are smaller than 0.1 micron in diameter and are small enough to pass through the lung tissue into the blood stream, circulating like the oxygen molecules themselves. No matter what the size, particles can be harmful to your health.

Particle pollution can damage the body in ways similar to cigarette smoking. A recent review of the research on how particles cause harm found that the body responds to particles in similar ways to its response to cigarette smoke. These findings help explain why particle pollution can cause heart attacks and strokes.

Imagine populating Washington with coal-fired power plants that rain disease-causing pollutants on us—while stoking our Climate Crisis with huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Imagine this scenario with a fuel source even dirtier and more dangerous than coal. This is what the government of Washington State is doing now. It’s opening our state forests to biomass incineration.

Join us, please, in our fight against four Washington State biomass incineration pilot projects that will spew carbon emissions much worse than coal into our air. Join us, please, in our fight against two bills in the Washington legislature that will throw the full weight of state government on the side of biomass burning with its endangerment of our population. The WA Department of Natural Resources is already a key biomass incineration supporter and mastermind of the biomass burning pilot projects.

These projects and bills, if enacted, will throw open all state-owned forests to industry for gathering of wood—either fallen tree parts left from logging, or whole trees– to burn in biomass incinerators. But the effects of burning wood from our forests will be enormously harmful.

1. Biomass burning is dirtier than burning coal. Per unit of power generated, burning wood emits 1.25-3.0 times as much carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) as coal.[1]

2. Biomass burning emits more particulate matter than coal, a pollutant associated with asthma, heart disease, and cancer.[2]

3. Wood burning biomass incinerators typically increase ground level ozone. Burning biomass produces hundreds of tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two ingredients of the ground-level ozone that causes asthma in children and exacerbates other pulmonary and cardiac disease problems.[3]

4. Biomass energy is woefully inefficient, averaging only 26% efficiency. Thus, 76% of the energy in the wood burned is wasted.  However, 100% of the wood burned generates pollution.[4]

5. Newly planted trees cannot absorb newly-emitted carbon fast enough to avoid a significant increase in atmospheric CO₂. According to the EPA, 50% of carbon emitted today will take from centuries to many thousands of years to remove from the atmosphere.

6. Biomass-produced electricity is NOT carbon neutral. Only ‘biomass loopholes’ in state and federal laws allow the federal Environmental Protection Agency to report carbon emissions from biomass incineration—worse than from coal—as zero. This defies common sense. What happens when a tree, or any wood, is burned? A pulse of carbon emissions, of course, much worse per kilowatt hour of energy produced than coal. Yet governments around the world—including Washington State– subscribe to the idea those carbon emissions don’t ‘count’. Federal and Washington State law deems electricity produced from biomass incineration to be “a renewable energy source”. So, all the CO₂ from biomass burning is ignored and is not currently regulated.

7. Cutting and burning a tree is a “double whammy” for the environment. The tree is no longer taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and burning the wood produces an acute spike in CO₂ levels.

8. Biomass incineration plants are ravenous. A single 50-megawatt biomass plant burns about 650,000 tons of trees a year, over a ton of wood a minute.[5]

Our good friends in Massachusetts are leading a wonderfully successful fight against biomass burning in their state. They have gathered 103,000 state-wide signatures forcing the Massachusetts legislature to either vote on biomass incineration or put biomass burning on the state ballot in 2010. They have pressured their state government to suspend for one year the Renewable Energy Credits for all biomass incineration plants proposed for Massachusetts.

Time is short. Washington State plans for biomass incineration are ramping up. Join us now!

Duff Badgley

NoBiomassBurn

www.nobiomassburn.org

duff@nobiomassburn.org