PORT ANGELES — The state Pollution Control Hearings Board has sided with Nippon Paper Industries USA in a challenge from several groups, including PT AirWatchers, to its $71 million biomass energy project.
Environmental groups are fighting biomass expansion projects at the Nippon mill in Port Angeles and the Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill.
In June, seven of the groups appealed a construction permit for Nippon that was granted by the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, alleging it was based on faulty data.
In a summary judgment, the board ruled Jan. 4 that the groups failed to prove that the emissions calculations used by the agency were incorrect.
“This ruling substantiates the excellent work that Nippon did to make sure that the biomass boiler project had the best environmental controls available,” said Harold Norlund, mill manager, in a written statement.
Darlene Schanfald, a spokeswoman for the Olympic Environmental Council, one of the groups that joined the appeal, said the groups are considering their next option for appeal: Thurston County Superior Court.
In addition to PT AirWatchers and the Olympic Environmental Council, groups who joined the appeal are Protect the Peninsula’s Future, No Biomass Burn, the North Olympic Group of the Sierra Club, World Temperate Rainforest Network and the Olympic Forest Coalition.
The groups have until Feb. 3 to file an appeal, Schanfald said.
Port Townsend project
Also in June, Port Townsend AirWatchers, No Biomass Burn, the Olympic Environmental Council, the Western Temperate Rainforest Network and the Olympic Forest Coalition filed an appeal of Port Townsend Paper’s $55 million biomass project to Thurston County Superior Court.
That appeal challenges a review by the Pollution Control Hearings Board that sided with the mill and its biomass project that could produce up to 25 megawatts of electricity.
The company could then sell credits for the electrical power.
A trial is set for March 23.
The expansion of Nippon’s biomass boiler, expected to be finished in April 2013, would produce up to 20 megawatts of electricity by burning wood waste from logging sites and sawmills.
Schanfald said the groups still feel they have the “merits of the case,” despite the loss of the appeal of the Nippon project.
“We have a fabulous expert air witness,” she said, referring to Bill Powers, an engineer from San Diego who testified for them.
“If the Pollution Control Hearings Board didn’t pay attention to what he provided them, we wonder if the board just doesn’t understand these cases and doesn’t want to handle them.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
