REDWOOD NEEDLES
REDWOOD NEEDLES
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Blue Lake is a quaint, antique little town 5 miles east of Arcata in Humboldt County. Wandering off the highway into town, visitor's might find it unfortunate that a towering wood-chip-fueled electricity-generating plant was allowed to be built in 1985 on the banks of the river, within hailing distance of nearby homes. The decision to do so has, a decade later, come back to haunt Blue Lake in a new and threatening way.
In late 1995, Ultrapower 3, a subsidiary of North American Power Group of Colorado, sought permission to conduct a 90-day test of using tire chunks, along with wood chips, as fuel in its electricity-generating facility. It is well understood that burning tires creates a veritable stew of toxic emissions and environmentally unfriendly residues. Very few facilities in the U.S. burn tires for fuel because of the costly technology and difficulties involved in dealing with hazardous emissions and residues.
In early 1996 a negative declaration was proposed, an insubstantial document that raised far more questions than it answered. The Blue Lake Planning Commission conducted five lengthy, intense, and occasionally stormy meetings over two-and-a-half months. The residents refused to be bulldozed. They found their own experts, presented solid information, and asked hard questions during the process. And when they checked out a list supplied by Ultrapower of 10 tire-burning plants in the U.S., they discovered a surfeit of inaccurate and incomplete information and found that none of the facilities was comparable to Ultrapower's.
On April 29, after spending nearly five hours attempting to fine tune Ultrapower's proposal and increase environmental protections, the commissioners turned to broader considerations, for instance, the Blue Lake General Plan -- which, as one might suspect, is not toxic-waste-incinerator friendly. The vote was taken, the results of which were greeted with applause and roars of approval. Three out of four commissioners were apparently not entirely convinced that the health of the community could be assured. Unfortunately, however, the city planner failed to file a notice of action. Ultrapower was able to request and receive permission for another hearing before the commission.
Ultrapower asserts that it may be forced to close up shop if it is not allowed to use a cheaper source of fuel like tires after the imminent deregulation of the power industry, causing a significant impact on the town's finances. But the company's economic lament seems disingenuous when one considers that it bought the facility in 1994 and, therefore, must have been keenly aware that deregulation was in the cards.
During the April 29 meeting, a resident read a statement of Robert Coleman, CEO of Oxford Energy, Inc., which builds tire-burning plants: "If you can't convince a community that what you're doing is right, it probably isn't." Thank you, Robert Coleman.
-- Diane Beck, North Group
Conservation Co-Chair
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