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On a recent Saturday afternoon, Shane Turner, plant manager of Cox Enterprises’ biomass facility in Campbellsville, KY, gave organizers from the SEED Project a tour. The plant, founded fifteen years ago to deal with waste from Cox’s wood manufacturing facility, now accepts untreated lumber from ten to fifteen local sawmills and tree trimmers. It uses a closed loop system to minimize needs for water and electricity and, at peak capacity, burns 300 tons of wood and produces 5 megawatts of power daily. Leftover ash is sent to mulch producers or used for road beds, keeping it out of landfills. All workers own shares in the company and the most recent employee has been there for six years.
Tour of Cox Enterprises' Biomass Facility in Campbellsville, Kentucky
Biomass is being considered as an alternative energy source for the Coal River Valley, although community members and organizers have called in to question its sustainability and viability. Below, in bold, are concerns brought up at a recent community sustainability meeting in Whitesville. What follows are responses based on our tour and conversations with Devin Ceartas, a longtime Heartwood organizer. The responses should be viewed as part of an ongoing conversation, not as hard and fast answers.
Would biomass lead to deforestation?
Logging has not directly increased to feed the Cox plant’s need for wood: The plant started as a way to productively deal with waste from wood manufacturing facilities that Cox Enterprises owned. Additionally, there are 312 sawmills in the 90 mile radius around Campbellsville. The plant only deals with a fraction of these.
Ground up wood waiting to be brought to the incinerators by conveyor belt.
Opponents argue that biomass plants have been known to spur clear cutting: “The use of what would otherwise be waste material by biomass burners increases the overall profitability of logging, and can make the difference in financial feasibility for low-value logging operations such as clear-cutting young forests. This financial pressure on wood resources can include increased incentive for highly controversial logging on public lands,” says Devin Ceartas.
How high is water usage?
The Campellsville plant uses a closed-loop system to save water and energy. Water is pumped from Cox Enterprises’ own lake for the plant’s cooling process and a special system catches steam and water for reuse. That being said, 9000 gallons of city water are used per day and must first be treated for chemicals.
Shane Turner shows us one of the Hurst incinerators, which turn wood waste in to energy. Turner compared the biomass plant to a "large woodstove."
What’s air pollution like?
Detractors highlight air pollution as one of the main drawbacks of biomass. When a feed source that contains chlorine is introduced, dioxins and heavy metals will come out of the incinerators. Because this includes a lot of common wood waste, such as switchgrass and construction material, chlorinated lumber has been processed at even the greenest biomass plants. A plant burning only non-toxic, untreated wood will still release carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates. This is degrading to the environment and to community health.
It is unclear if “green and sustainable” biomass plants only burn untreated lumber. The Northumberland Cogeneration Facility in north central Pennsylvania is a “clean wood” burning power plant. However, their PA DEP permits have allowed them to take wood contaminated with chlorine-containing plastics (PVC), which they did for a time when they accepted wood with vinyl laminate from a Proctor and Gamble mill in the state. The PA DEP also encouraged the company to apply for a permit change that would allow them to burn tires. Northumberland Cogeneration tried this twice and were defeated both times. They now claim to only burn sustainably harvested, clean wood–but who knows what they’re really burning?
Leftover ash waste is donated to farmers or used to build road beds.
How about economic feasibility in the Coal River Valley?
The Campbellsville plant was affected by a downturn in the timber market and had to reach out to additional sawmills. The plant is in an area with an abundance of sawmills, so economic feasibility might be lower in an area where there is not a lot of wood processing. As we effectively end mountaintop removal, will we stop having cheap wood sources for a biomass facility?
Would it benefit many local people? Especially in terms of jobs created, and could local folks bring in wood scraps?
The plant employs 21 workers, all of whom have been there at least six years. How many individuals a plant in the Coal River Valley could employ depends on the size of the plant, which has not been decided.
Turner mentioned that his plant accepts wood waste from individuals, as well as branches and trees after storms. One challenge with accepting used wood is ensuring that it has not been treated by chemicals.
“My research suggests that even experts find it difficult to reliably distinguish treated from untreated wood waste — it’s much harder with used wood as opposed to new wood,” Ceartas says, although he recognizes that some test kits are available. One concern Ceartas mentioned to me is that most pressure-treated lumber sold before January 2004 has been treated with chromated copper arsenate, which contains arsenic.
- Dea G.
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