Business

Biomass plan lacks details, Transylvania leaders say

Transylvania County Commissioner Page Lemel addresses overflow crowd at the Little River Community Center.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 3, 2013

PENROSE — Two Transylvania County commissioners told an overflow audience last week that the proposed waste-to-energy plant here faces a lengthy permitting process before it could become a reality, and one of them said the developers seem to lack basic plans.

The two commissioners — Larry Chapman and Page Lemel — a partner in the energy venture, tree farmer Ken Allison, and three opponents of the plant spoke during an information meeting at the Little River Community Center on Thursday night.
It was standing room only in Little River when residents came out to learn more about a proposed biomass plant.Commissioner Lemel said she had tried to investigate just where the proposal stood, and had been flummoxed by the lack of detail. A Duke Energy official told the county staff that it knew of the proposal but had not been approached by the company, Renewable Developers-Penrose, about supplying power to the utility's grid.
Lemel, an honors graduate of Duke University with a degree in engineering, is the fourth generation owner of a summer camp. She said her experience getting commercial building permits and dealing with state environmental regulators has given her an appreciation of just how complicated it is to move forward with big projects.
"So I kind of come away from all of this knowing what it takes to actually build something in the year of 2013 on the commercial level and looking at the Renewable Developers, looking at their lack of plans, their lack of specific engineering, their lack of any kind of logical financial model, their lack of a business plan, and quite frankly I just have a hard time taking these guys very seriously," she said. "Because they've got to get their ducks in a row if they're going to deal with any of these bureaus on permitting, or to answer any of our questions. And we certainly have the ability to provide input and register a position on this."
Commissioners Chapman and Lemel, while not coming out against the controversial biomass plant, seemed to backpedal from strong support that Little River, Penrose and Pisgah Forest residents had perceived from the Board of Commissioners.
Chapman, who had just returned from a day of meetings with regulators in Raleigh, assured the residents that they would have time to make their concerns known. He had met with the high-ranking officials from the state Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, which has not yet received a permit application. The only application the Transylvania commissioners said they were aware of was one for the registration of a renewable energy facility the developers filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission on Feb. 28.
"The permitting process on this is astronomical," Chapman said. "DENR and all that (have) been involved in the biomass things around the state for a number of years now. They know what they're talking about and the issues they're dealing with."

Garbage as fuel requires review
Both Chapman and Lemel acknowledged knowing about a biomass proposal as early as last December, three months before the news broke in the Transylvania Times. But they said the fuel source — municipal garbage — was unknown to them. Chapman said he understood the plant would use wood chips and crossties as fuel.
Transylvania County Commissioner Larry Chapman met with N.C. regulators."The key is when you start talking about municipal solid waste, all kinds of permitting comes into question there because there's all kinds of studies done, engineering work on what's left. You know what's going in. You heard about sorting the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) coming in. That falls under permitting just to be able to sort and do that."
The materials recovery facility will sort 12 to 14 tractor-trailer loads of garbage or other feedstock per day to fuel the biomass plant, which developers say will generate up to 4 megawatts per hour of electricity. The pyrolysis process uses heat and not flame to convert the fuel into electricity, the developer says, and does not involve smokestack emissions.
Even so, the byproduct is another factor that will require a full evaluation, Chapman told the Penrose audience. Transylvania County officials have already told the developer it will not accept ash from the plant into its landfill.
"A big concern there is, Are there any heavy metals? If it's municipal waste you really don't know what's in there," he said. "You don't know what somebody puts in their garbage bag. ... Even if they have all the information, you're looking at a minimum of 12 to 18 months just to start down the process of permitting a facility like this. Nothing is going to happen fast."
Diverting the county's garbage to biomass fuel is "a two-edged thing," Chapman added.
"If this company were to go out of business and our landfill had shut down (and the county had) to reopen a landfill, it'd be beyond our capability probably even to pay for it."

Lack of zoning limits local authority
If the company can get state air, water and garbage permits, Chapman said, Transylvania County has limited ability to stop it.
"I will say, if they get the permits approved then there's not a whole lot we can do," he said. State regulators "were pretty upfront about that. It's a private developer, private landowner, there's no zoning down there. If they could get the permits, the financing and all that, then legally there's very little we can do."
Commissioner Lemel suggested that the project might not get that far.
"My basic stance when people have been contacting me is to reply that, when these boys grow up and figure out who they want to be, then let 'em come back and talk to us," she said. "But until then I'm tired of wasting my time on this because I just don't see that these boys have their lives organized and together."
Matthew Ross, a Washington-based attorney who specializes in permitting green energy facilities and represents RD-Penrose, said in an interview that the company would be filing more permit applications soon.
"We're still moving forward," he said. "We're waiting on some engineering to be completed first." A reporter mentioned Commissioner Lemel's doubts about the company's plans.
"Do we have our act together? Yes, we have our act together," Ross said. "Everything that needs to be produced will be produced."