Citizen Editorial

Once again proponents of biomass understate the documented health hazards directly associated with emissions of particulate matter 2.5 microns and smaller, none of which will be filtered from the incinerating process under Best Available Control Technology (BACT) conditions. In typical overstated fashion Mr. Brunell exaggerates the position of environmentalists while attempting to co-join job creation with a highly polluting industry. Such sensational shortsightedness has already led to increased logging, creating new pathways for storm-water to carry ground pollutants to water bodies, some of which now boast an 80% mortality rate in shellfish seedlings.

Mr. Brunell also fails to consider the futility of attempting to sustain an ever-growing population on a natural resource based economy. The very fact the timber industry is running pell-mell looking for new and circumventive ways to obtain more control over more land to grow more timber is testament to that fact.

Moreover, innovation, like invention, is derived from necessity. The process of burning wood to produce electricity in the 21^st century is an insult to the true entrepreneurial spirit so many say they hold in so high regard, yet so few embrace in practice.

The bottom line is that burning wood is cheaper and easier than creating innovative, truly sustainable, energy production technology. To those “business types” who are so unimaginatively challenged I say, if biomass is your answer to our energy needs then perhaps you should find another line of work to which you are better suited. 

Tom Davis
Shelton

As usual, the President of The Association of Washington Businesses, Don Brunell, is right on the mark with his comments on biomass use.  His statement is particularly timely considering the recent release of the most up to date study by UW and DNR that tell us that we could consume fifty percent more of the biomass available in the state and still maintain sustainable healthy forests while significantly reducing fire danger.
 
Jay Hupp

The Mason County Commissioner’s meeting this morning was on the receiving end of some long standing and deserved frustration over lack of leadership and direction in handling water quality and sanitation issues.  These are symptoms of what is a pervasive inability to establish a proactive strategy to deal with growth and environmental pressure, and it’s time to get into the 21^st century.

Over the last four years there has been no shortage of crisis.  We’ve had fecal closures in Hood Canal, we’ve had zoning violations that are unattended to, we have septic systems that clearly fail, and it’s getting worse by the month.

It does not mean some of our county staff don’t make the effort.  I should point out that Debbie Riley of Environmental health, Barbara Adkins from the Land Planning office, and Steve Bloomfield, our newest commissioner, have demonstrated awareness, concern, and passion toward the “cesspool” that is becoming Mason County in general and Hood Canal in particular.  The problem is that these hard working people are not supported nor empowered by other leaders to reverse the pattern, follow through on the toothless decisions made by the commissioners on sanitation and land use, and get to the finish line.

So, we have lots of motion and little movement.  As General Patton surveyed the carnage at El Alamein he could have accepted the status quo or chosen to do something totally different.  He chose to change the culture of the situation and made a choice to deal with the situation decisively, quickly, and irreversibly.  He empowered people to plan and act, and our county leadership must compel their staffs to fulfill their tasks to a point of completion.

At the meeting this morning my comments were taken as “exaggerated”.  Folks, this is an excuse, it’s not taking ownership and accountability for what is a clear problem.  For years, the responsibility for water quality has been thrown to state agencies, and buy and large, they have been helpful once you get to the right person and the right agency.  But this has been citizen work.  There have been a handful of dedicated citizens who have committed hundreds of hours to point out needed solutions.  Their reward is indifference or resistance, passive and active  Where is the county when it counts?

Our leaders are in denial.  They will point the finger in any other direction and claim “ain’t my job”.  In doing so, they tear the heart out of the energy and momentum of their own staff to make a difference.  Why should the state or federal agencies have to shoulder the burden and the initiative?  The county is the grass root and they should be leading the charge, demanding the support, coordination, and collaboration of any other agency that can streamline results.

From the Puget Sound Partnership, to Department of Health, to other county governments, to our own citizenry, Mason County is regarded as a laughing stock of efficiency and effectiveness.  It can change, it must change.  If our commissioners do not feel up to shaking the trees to establish a new way of generating a new culture, then someone else needs to step in.
 
C. Scott Grout

When environmental organizations pushed WA voters to approve their renewable energy Initiative 937, they touted biomass energy, as one of their preferred alternatives to fossil fuel. They reasoned that biomass energy plants would help clear forests of flammable wood debris from dead and diseased timber, put idled loggers and millworkers back to work and produce cleaner, more affordable energy. But since voters narrowly approved the initiative in 2006, many of those same activists are battling against biomass projects.  They now claim that microscopic nanoparticulates created by incinerating wood waste are a health hazard, even though those plants have been approved by government agencies. They want to block all proposed biomass projects until nanoparticulates are fully investigated and the EPA can promulgate regulations. That could take years, but that’s okay with opponents because by then the plants will have been canceled because of indecision and delay. 
 
The opposition to biomass is disheartening to devastated timber communities on the Olympic Peninsula where unemployment ranges from 11.2 percent to 13.9 percent. Even before the Great Recession hit, these communities were decimated by deep cuts in state and federal timber harvests and endangered species regulations that put forests off-limits to protect the spotted owl.
 
Even with the vast woods put off limits, the University of Washington’s Olympic Natural Resources Center reports there is currently enough wood debris on the Olympic Peninsula to operate six biomass plants. Two of those biomass projects are attached to paper mills in Port Angeles and Port Townsend.
 
The Port Townsend Paper Company’s $55 million biomass plant would create 30 new jobs, save 1.8 million gallons of oil and cut particulate emissions by 70 percent. Nippon’s Port Angeles facility would cost $71 million and replace a 1950’s era boiler that was not designed to alleviate greenhouse gases.
 
For Olympic Peninsula workers and their struggling families, the opposition to biomass projects is both puzzling and frustrating. Fifty years ago, wood waste from state, federal and private timber harvests was burned in crude, inefficient cone-shaped burners, often blanketing the skies with brownish-gray smoke. But today’s sawmills and paper mills burn wood waste in efficient wood-fired furnaces that produce heat and steam for papermaking and create enough electricity to run the mills and provide power for neighboring homes.  
 
For example, Sierra Pacific, which has a modern sawmill at Aberdeen and a total of six biomass generating plants, turns wood waste into electricity for 150,000 homes and businesses.  Without income from power sales, the plants would have been forced to severely curtail operations, lay off workers or close.
 
Some activists would like to see our forests locked away, put off limits to all human activity. But like the rest of nature, forests are dynamic, always changing. Trees grow, trees die, and over the years, volatile wood debris builds up on the forest floor, creating fuel for mammoth fires. For example, in just two days during 1902, our state’s largest wildfire, known as the Yacolt Burn, destroyed more than 370 square miles of forestlands around Mt. St. Helens and killed 38 people in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties.
 
Today, we have the ability to prevent such massive destruction, but will we?
 
Biomass projects are an opportunity to recycle dangerous timber debris, create renewable energy, produce electricity for our homes and businesses, and create much-needed jobs in struggling rural communities.
 
With flammable wood remains collecting on the forest floor and timber workers collecting unemployment checks, it seems silly, wasteful and dangerous to oppose biomass, a solution that will reduce wildfires, increase jobs and produce cleaner, more affordable renewable energy.
By Don C. Brunell