palmer renewable energy

- by Ryan Trowbridge, September 10, 2014, WGGB

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"138","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 180px; height: 134px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Wednesday night, the Springfield City Council took up the contentious issue of a planned biomass incinerator in the city.

Opponents claim the plant would only add more pollution to an already polluted city, but the state just ruled Springfield does not have the authority to stop its development.

It’s an issue several years in the making and Wednesday, the City Council met to vote on what it should do next in the battle to keep the plant from being built.

Palmer Renewable Energy is looking to build a $150 million biomass wood burning plant in Springfield. The biomass plant, near Page Boulevard and Cadwell Drive, Would produce 35 megawatts of electricity.

Opponents, however, say it’s dirty energy and would further pollute the Springfield area.

- by Michaelann Bewsee, August 21, 2014, Arise for Social Justice

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"250","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"375","style":"width: 333px; height: 260px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Arise for Social Justice","width":"480"}}]]Funny how bad news can make you want to fight even harder for justice.

Remember the community’s fight to keep a biomass plant out of Springfield? Yesterday we found out that the Land Court granted Palmer Renewable Energy’s request to reinstate their building permit, undoing the Springfield Zoning Board’s decision that the building permit was invalid. That means that PRE gets its building permit back unless we and/or the City of Springfield can find a way to stop them.

How can we stop them? Stay tuned for more on that, but if you know Arise, and the coalition we formed, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, then you should know by now that we don’t give up.

I’m still sorting out the legalities of the decision, but as I’m understanding it right now, the Court held that seeing as the City of Springfield didn’t require a special permit for other kinds of waste incineration, why start now? And the Court held that green wood chips are not waste, even though those wood chips will come from waste wood! Therefore, PRE’s Building Permit should be restored.

PRE’s intentions are to produce 35 megawatts of energy by burning waste wood. Some of you may remember that originally, PRE wanted to burn construction and demolition debris to produce energy, which would be very inexpensive for them, but the community uproar was so loud that the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) put a moratorium on all permits to burn construction and debris. That’s when PRE decided to burn waste wood instead. But of course waste wood still comes from trees—PRE has chosen to use the word “renewable” in its company’s name, but trees are not renewable [see factsheet here] in any time frame that makes sense when you consider the importance of trees capturing the carbon that is altering the climate of our planet.

With nearly one out of five kids in Springfield living (or dying) with asthma, we have come to the conclusion that burning anything to produce energy is a step in the wrong direction.