FORKS — Cleaner air, lower energy bills and job retention are all benefits of having a bioenergy plant in the West End.
Developing such a plant in Forks looks like a strong possibility according to preliminary results of a $100,000 feasibility study, said John Calhoun, a Port of Port Angeles commissioner.
Calhoun represents the Port of Port Angeles on the Bioenergy Power Plant Task Force that commissioned the study.
Other members of the task force include officials from the cities of Forks and Port Angeles, Clallam County, the Economic Development Council, Clallam County Public Utility District and Olympic Natural Resources Center.
Results of the study, which was conducted by the technology and power company Siemens, show there is enough wood debris produced by mills in the Forks area to run two bioenergy plants.
One plant would provide heat and power for city facilities in Forks, the other would add to the county’s energy grid, said Rod Fleck, Forks city attorney/planner and member of the bioenergy task force.
The plant that would provide heat and power to Forks, referred to as the “town plant” by those on the task force, would be the smaller of the two plants, Fleck said.
The plant would be about 5,500 square feet and service Forks City Hall, schools and Quillayute Valley Aquatic Center.
The plant could reduce the town’s energy costs by at least 25 percent, Fleck said.
“That’s huge to government entities not seeing an increase in revenues,” he said, because oil prices are skyrocketing with the war in Iraq and loss of refineries in the Gulf Coast after 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The plant would require one to two truck loads of wood debris a day — about 50 tons — to produce the amount of energy needed in running the facilities, Fleck said.
The 11 cedar mills in the Forks area produce enough debris to keep the town plant running, leaving about 65,000 additional tons of debris annually from other mills in the Forks area, Calhoun said.
The plant that would feed into the county energy grid would be built to burn off the additional debris, Calhoun said.
