SEQUIM — The $73 million biomass cogeneration facility expansion at Nippon Paper Industries USA in Port Angeles is none of Sequim’s business, and the city is going to stay out of it, the Sequim City Council decided Monday.
Nippon mill manager Harold Norlund made a presentation to the council during a special work session before the regular meeting Monday.
The council decided by consensus to cancel a town hall forum that had been planned May 14 on the Nippon project.
The plant has met all legal requirements, has the permits in hand and isn’t in Sequim’s area of influence, council members said.
“It clearly meets all the applicable rules,” City Manager Steve Burkett said.
However, the city has no idea what the air quality is like in Sequim, Councilwoman Candice Pratt said, adding that more information on how to monitor local air quality would be useful.
The council directed Burkett to contact the appropriate agencies to research what it would take to install a monitor.
The nearest air-quality monitors to Sequim are in Port Angeles and Port Townsend.
A coalition of environmental groups is fighting both the Nippon expansion and a $55 million expansion at the Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill.
Both projects have withstood several legal challenges from the groups.
Both are expected to be completed in 2013.
Biomass facilities have stirred concerns over particulate pollution, especially tiny “nanoparticulates” that biomass opponents say can lodge in people’s lungs and that are not separately regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency or the state Department of Ecology.
Proponents counter that biomass facilities generate less pollution than conventional plants and that nanoparticulates come from a variety of sources, including wood stoves.
Norlund provided statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency — or ORCAA — that included the most common sources of particulates in the air in the North Olympic region.
The vast majority of particulates comes from slash burning, marine vehicles and ships, and wood stoves, according to ORCAA.
Industrial and commercial sources account for 10 percent of the particulates in the area, ORCAA said.
The new plant will release fewer particulates than the plant’s existing biomass burner, further reducing the plant’s contribution to pollution, Norlund said.
Burning biomass in the new plant will be far cleaner than burning slash on logging sites, as is done in current practice, he added.
Current results of air-monitoring stations can be viewed at www.orcaa.org/air.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
