PORT ANGELES — The City Council upheld an earlier Planning Commission decision that allows Nippon Paper Industries USA to continue toward its $71 million biomass cogeneration project.
Five points of law were debated in Monday evening’s 3½-hour council meeting.
But in the end, council members voted 5-1 to uphold the Planning Commission’s Sept. 21 decision to grant the project a shoreline development permit.
A written decision will be issued at the Dec. 21 council meeting.
The decision covers one regulatory hurdle for the biomass project at the base of Ediz Hook.
Nippon also needs air quality permits from the state, and waste discharge, stormwater and building permits from the city before construction can begin.
The only member of the City Council to vote no was Max Mania, who said the Planning Commission’s decision was unsupported.
Council member Brad Collins was absent from the meeting because an emergency took him out of state.
The debate came down to whether or not the biomass boiler would be considered a utility or an accessory to the mill.
The cogeneration project is expected to produce steam for paper production and about 20 megawatts of electricity, said Nippon’s attorney Thomas Backer.
The power will be put back into the Bonneville Power Administration’s grid, earning credits for the paper mill, said Harold Norlund, mill manager.
“The council understood that the was a 286-page environmental impact statement that addressed all the appellants’ concerns,” Norlund said.
“Many of the issues in their case were addressed in the [statement] and the burden of proof lies on the appellant.”
Mania and Toby Thaler, attorney for the seven environmental groups filing the appeal, argued that selling the electricity could overtake the primary use of the mill.
“Obviously they listened and carefully considered their decision,” Thaler said.
“I think they are wrong, but they listened carefully.”
The environmental groups — Port Townsend AirWatchers, Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Environmental Council, No Biomass Burn of Seattle, the Center for Environmental Law and Policy of Spokane, the World Temperate Rainforest Network and the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club — said the assessment was incomplete.
“It is hard to evaluate what isn’t there,” said Diana Somerville of Port Angeles, who works with the groups in the appeal.
In all of the other four legal issues, the City Council voted unanimously that the commission had acted correctly.
The other votes were:
• That the Planning Commission had adequate procedures and time lines.
The council determined that the commission meeting was fair because the same amount of time was given to each of the 25 people commenting, and a five-day period prior to the meeting was held for written comments.
The environmental groups said the time at the hearing was inadequate.
• The commission’s action was not clearly erroneous, as had been claimed by the appellants.
• The commission acted within its jurisdiction.
Nippon, which employs nearly 200 people, hoped to begin construction this year and have the facility ready for testing in the second quarter of 2012.
The groups which filed the appeal said they also are planning to file an appeal of the city’s environmental assessment of the project with the state Pollution Control Hearings Board after the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency approves air-quality permits for the project — something they don’t expect to see until spring.
Five environmental groups also have filed an appeal challenging a state permit allowing Port Townsend Paper Corp. to expand its biomass generation.
The appeal against the Port Townsend project, filed Nov. 22 with the state Pollution Control Hearings Board, is in response to the state Department of Ecology’s granting Oct. 25 of a “notice of construction” permit for a $55 million project and its July finding that the biomass project had no probable adverse environmental impact, allowing the mill to move ahead with the plans to install a steam turbine.
The Port Townsend mill plans to produce up to 24 megawatts of electricity for sale.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
