The Fibrowatt Trade-off: Air Pollution for Water Pollution

Fibrowatt's Minnesota Plant

Yesterday I wrote that in my opinion, establishing a Fibrowatt plant in the Valley as a way to dispose of animal waste and by-products – specifically chicken litter, with the thought that this was an effective way to deal with downstream problems in the Chesapeake Bay, was simply exchanging a water pollution problem with an air pollution problem. If this is not true, why is a 300-foot stack necessary?


Last winter, when the Fibrowatt proposal first came up, I did a lot of research, thoroughly reading everything I could about the company, mainly on its own web page. I engaged Terry Walmsley, one of the company’s officials, in a dialog to learn more, and even have published a number of his explanations on this blog. You’ll find them under the label “Fibrowatt” associated with this post, or in the column over on the right hand side of the blog.

What compels me to write about Fibrowatt today? In the Waste-to-Energy Working Group meeting notes I’ve been reading, I saw the comment, “…deal with the misinformation that is out there” as one of the strategies for that working group. I recognize the quote as almost verbatim from comments that Terry made on the blog – a post I will go back over on Monday. For now, I want to repost what I found when I looked into air pollution violations at Fibrowatt’s acclaimed Minnesota plant – my purpose is to inform readers about my opinion that a Fibrowatt plant simply trades off one form of pollution for another. The summary of a past post follows:

Estimated line of sight to the proposed Fibrowatt plant from the Luray Caverns parking lot.

Following up on a conversation I had with Benson, MN officials, I thought I would look further into the reference to emissions problems at the Fibrowatt plant there. The permitting documents describe a range of chemical compounds and proscribe “acceptable” amounts of them in emissions – an issue to carefully weigh against any promise of new jobs. There was a citation during commissioning and shakedown operations at the Fibrowatt plant, and a resulting agreement by Fibrowatt to pay a fine and upgrade their equipment.

The Minnesota incident is reported on the Fibrowatt website under the headline, “MPCA & Fibrominn Settle Issues Related to 2008 Notice of Violation,” which says that Fibrominn and the MPCA have reached a Compliance Agreement that resolves alleged violations largely related to the startup, commissioning, and equipment and system optimization (”shakedown”) of the Fibrominn Biomass Power Plant in Benson, Minnesota. The compliance or stipulation agreement is often used to achieve compliance with environmental laws. These agreements consider whether violations are first time incidents or repeat violations, reporting promptness, seriousness of the environmental impact, and then assess fines and prescribe corrective actions.

Noting the use of the word “alleged” on the Fibrowatt page, I took a moment to ensure that I knew the definition; alleged has three definitions on the Webster.com site: asserted to be true or to exist, questionably true or of a specified kind, or accused but not proven or convicted. My take on this is the third definition applies, and the stipulation agreement stopped the process from going further, which may have resulted in a finding of violation or conviction - I am pretty sure that the record in Minnesota would show that the chemicals were present, so the question becomes more about whether this was a spontaneous incident or accidental. (2011 note: given Fibrowatt’s insistence that the agreement include the word “alleged” invites scrutiny of the word “misinformation” used in the working group notes, doesn’t it?)

I’ve scanned the Minnesota permit, and understand what the output of biomass combustion or incineration is comprised of – but I’ll quote from a New York Times article, which was written about a proposed Fibrowatt plant in Maryland: “…according to its air permits, the plant is a major source of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen sulfide.” In the permit itself, several other emissions are noted, including sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid.

The next step for me was to take a look at the risks associated with these outputs, and I consulted the Wikipedia articles on them. Here I have not sourced the Wikipedia articles specifically, but you could perform the same search using the chemical names below. In each case, there is a lot of technical information about the components, various uses, and risks from the chemicals. It turns out that many of these compounds are greenhouse gases, meaning they will impact visibility and have a long-term impact on the larger environment. But some of them are used as industrial corrosives and are also identified as health risks. Consider the following from Wikipedia:

• “Sulfur dioxide is associated with increased respiratory symptoms and disease, difficulty in breathing, and premature death.”
• “Sulfuric acid is a component of acid rain, and is highly corrosive.”
• “Hydrochloric acid - Both the mist and the solution have a corrosive effect on human tissue, with the potential to damage respiratory organs, eyes, skin, and intestines.”
• “Carbon monoxide is a major atmospheric pollutant in some urban areas, chiefly from the exhaust of internal combustion engines (including vehicles, portable and back-up generators, lawn mowers, power washers, etc.), but also from improper burning of various other fuels (including wood, coal, charcoal, oil, paraffin, propane, natural gas, and trash).”
• Finally, nitrous oxide was also noted to be a greenhouse gas.

Frankly, this is the trade off of the Fibrowatt plant. It may help mitigate pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, but the presence of these chemicals in the plant’s emissions means we get air pollution in exchange for that. Fibrowatt says it will be a good neighbor and try to control this pollution, but it was cited for them in Minnesota. They may have taken corrective action, but that doesn’t eliminate the risks of accidents, or the likely increased level of output during plant maintenance periods and restarts after downtimes.

This is a summary of the original post, which is located here: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/02/fibrowatt-plant-as-potential-source-of.html

That post has links to the sources I’ve referenced above.