PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Board of Health will ask the Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency and the Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill to add a second air monitoring unit in town to increase surveillance of emissions from the plant.
The seven members of the Board of Health unanimously passed a motion to send letters to both the agency and the mill with this request at a meeting last week.
The motion was made after public comments that followed a presentation from the state Department of Ecology on nanoparticles, which are extremely fine particles that are produced during the high-temperature burning — such as that of biomass waste — that can lodge in lungs and cause heart and lung illness.
“We had a lot of concerned citizens,” said Jefferson County Commissioner Phil Johnson, chairman of the county Board of Health, who also serves on the clean air agency board.
About a third of the approximately 30 people who attended the Thursday meeting spoke against a biomass boiler upgrade at the Port Townsend Paper mill.
The company, which does not allow interviews with the media, says on its website that the $55 million upgrade is expected to be finished this year.
Johnson also said he plans to phone the executive director of Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency, Fran McNair, today to suggest that the present station be moved from Blue Heron Middle School to Grant Street Elementary.
The current air monitoring station has been located at Blue Heron since July 1995, Johnson said.
It was placed in that location because that was found to have the highest concentration of wood smoke in the area, he said.
A monitoring station located downwind from the mill would help to gather accurate data, according to several people who commented at the Thursday meeting.
“Putting a monitoring station near Grant Street Elementary may be a good idea because it is in the path of the mill’s emissions, and it is where small children are,” Johnson said.
The clean air agency, which operates air monitoring stations in six counties including Clallam and Jefferson, sent out a request about three weeks ago asking for suggestions on where to place air monitoring stations, Johnson said.
The request is on the agency’s website at http://tinyurl.com/7vywuwn.
Among those speaking at Thursday’s meeting were members of PT Airwatchers, who asked the county board of health to support a proposed moratorium on the Port Townsend mill’s biomass project until more information is gathered.
PT Airwatchers spokesperson Gretchen Brewer said the group would like to see action on expanding the mill’s biomass co-generation facility deferred until new air quality standards from the federal government are put into place, expected later this year.
“It’s unconscionable to go forward until new rules are put into place,” Brewer said.
The county board of health took no action on the request to support a moratorium.
PT Airwatchers are among the environmental groups protesting Port Townsend Paper mill’s $55 million biomass expansion project and Nippon Paper Industries USA Inc.’s $71 million cogeneration expansion project in Port Angeles.
Both will burn wood waste from logging sites and sawmills.
The Port Townsend project will create up to 25 megawatts of electrical power for which credits could be sold.
The Nippon boiler expansion, which is expected to be completed in early 2013, will produce up to 20 megawatts of electricity. The company could then sell credits for the electrical power.
Support of the mill’s biomass expansion project was offered by Bill Wise — chairman of Team Jefferson, an economic development organization.
He attended the meeting but did not speak, instead submitting his comments in writing.
“The $55 million investment in cogeneration includes $10 million for advanced emissions controls,” he wrote.
“With the installation of these controls, particulate emissions will be reduced by more than 65 percent.”
Hollin Stafford said that current burning at the mill has prompted people to move.
“In my opinion, if the biomass incinerator is allowed to happen, it will be the downfall of Port Townsend as we know it,” Stafford said.
Said Wendy White, who identified herself as a retired public health nurse: “The emissions will especially effect our most vulnerable populations, including children and elderly.
Garin Schrieve, the Department of Ecology’s industrial section manager, said on Friday the mill would need to comply with any regulation change implemented after the permit was granted.
“They will not be grandfathered in,” he said.
A hearing is set March 23 in Thurston County Superior Court on an appeal of permits for the Port Townsend project.
Environmental groups also have filed in that court an appeal of a construction permit for Port Angeles’ Nippon Paper Industries USA’s 20 megawatt biomass project granted by the Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency.
Port Townsend AirWatchers, No Biomass Burn, the Olympic Environmental Council, the Western Temperate Rainforest Network and the Olympic Forest Coalition appealed Port Townsend Paper’s project last year.
The appellants of Nippon’s project also include Protect the Peninsula’s Future and North Olympic Group of the Sierra Club.
The regional clean air agency has said that pollutants at the Port Angeles mill that will increase with an upgraded biomass facility are nitrogen oxide by 6 tons a year, volatile organic compounds by 36 tons a year and carbon dioxide by 231,000 tons per year.
It also said that emissions of particulate matter would decrease by 78 tons a year, carbon monoxide would decrease by 84 tons a year, and sulfur dioxide would decrease by 209 tons a year.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
