A group of concerned citizens is asking the government to defer its decision on whether to allow Atlantic Power Corporation (APC) to burn up to 50 per cent rail ties at its biomass energy plant in Williams Lake.
During a community meeting held Thursday, April 14, at the Gibraltar Room that attracted about 80 people, Peter Smith discussed the group’s request.
“Atlantic Power’s current contract with BC Hydro runs out in 2018 with the possibility of two five-year extensions,” Smith said. “They are going to be around.”
In the deferral request the group is suggesting the plant be continuously monitored for a year, that the boilers be retrofitted and the emissions testing equipment be upgraded to the latest technology.
Smith said in 2013 a company called TSI in the U.S. developed a monitoring system that is relatively inexpensive that can be bolted on to stacks at a plant to measure ultra fine particulates coming out.
“My question is whether the monitoring equipment at Atlantic Power can measure what modern science says it cannot do,” Smith said.
If the decision is deferred and the plant is monitored for a year to see what’s coming out of the stack and what’s in the ash, Smith said that’s a better situation than the group fighting the issue.
Atlantic Power said it has been directed by the Ministry of Environment to do an evaluation of emissions technology for the plant.
“Part of that is looking at the cost and the availability,” said Terry Shannon, director of environmental health and safety for Atlantic Power. “We expect to get that report Friday of this week.”
Interior Health air quality specialist Greg Baytalan was invited to the meeting to answer questions from the public.
One person asked if other people have declined the opportunity to have rail ties burned in their communities.
“I was involved with a proposal in Kamloops,” Baytalan said. “There was a considerable amount of work that went into it and it was public pressure that caused the company to move out.”
Research done by IH showed if the company had burned rail ties it would have amounted to about the equivalent of two CSA-emission certified wood stoves into the environment, Baytalan said.
From an environmental aspect IH does not want to see rail ties strewn across the country, laying in swamps or gathered up to be used in landscaping, he noted. “We’d much rather see rail ties being handled and dealt with in a controlled fashion.”
At the meeting Smith invited the public to attend the next city council meeting on Tuesday, April 26 where the group will make a presentation to council on jobs and fibre flow information regarding Atlantic Power.
In 2015 APC submitted an application to amend its permit to burn more rail ties in anticipation of a decline in fibre due to anticipated reduction in the Allowable Annual Cut.