Re: Power Plant Blues -- Dracut Information Resource Forum

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Date Posted: 11:11:17 04/12/01 Thu
Author: Dennis Williams
Subject: Re: Power Plant Blues
In reply to: Mary 's message, "Re: Power Plant Blues" on 13:09:22 04/11/01 Wed

Your questions are sound and they deserve the best answers we can provide. I'll do the best I can here, but maybe we should reserve the right to have a follow-on meeting to nail down some of the details. (Remember, this was two years ago, and I don't have all the data available to me where I am right now -- I'm on the road.) Anywhere I put (?) means that that is my recollection, but we may need to look it up in the special permit to be sure.

Also let me assure you that nothing you have asked below is a new issue, or one that we did not consider. You may or may not agree with our judgement and how we resolved these issues, but they were all discussed in great detail.

1. Best pollution control technology? Yes. The proposed plant will put out tiny fractions of pollution compared to older plants -- even plants designed as recently as ten years ago. Now, there is a question about ScoNOx as the latest technology, which I will discuss below in response to your separate question.

2. Noise mitigation technology? Yes. Additionally, very specific restrictions on both decibel value and tone quality have been established -- to be measured at the property lines by devices that we required in the special permit.

3. Clean Air Act Standards? Yes. although it's my recollection that some VOCs (volatile organic compounds) do not have standards set for them by the Act. There's really no choice here. It would be illegal to operate otherwise, and it wouldn't require any action from some little Board of Selectmen to stop them. EPA, MEPA, and various attorneys general would be all over them. Additionally, periodic measurement is required by our special permit.

4. ScoNOx? This was discussed at length. At the time of our permit, ScoNOx had not been demonstrated as a viable technology for a plant this size. There was only one application -- a test plant some 10% of the size of this plant.

I drafted a special-permit stipulation, which was adopted by the Board, that the plant must review the status of ScoNOx technology every two years and give the Town a report. If the present value of switching to ScoNOx in the future becomes less than $1,000,000 (?), then they must switch. This seems difficult, but remember that the present-value analysis must consider the savings of ammonia purchases over many years. This means that the actual retrofit could cost much more than a million, which would then be reduced by the purchase savings.

Other stipulations related to ammonia transport and storage: 1) A published transport route that must be followed. 2) Deliveries only between 3:00 and 5:30 in the morning (?). 3) A catch basin that will contain a complete failure of the on-site storage, 4) A new access road on to and off of Route 110 to improve the line-of-sight. I'm sure there are others; I can't recall them now.

Having said all that, I believe this ScoNOx issue is a red herring, promoted by people with other agendas (see below).

5. Two million pounds? Sounds like a lot, but compared to what? Cars idling at the mall? The IRS plant in Andover (a notorious polluter)? There are websites that document the polluters in the Merrimack Valley and elsewhere. This plant won't make the list! In fact, the people who track this stuff, like the Conservation Law Foundation, say that we should be building these kinds of plants.

6. Emotional? I understand people being concerned for their families' well-being. But there are some people who will not agree to this plant under any circumstances because they don't want it near them. Somebody else, okay. But not them. And they are constantly churning these issues and planting doubt to advance their hidden agenda. Never mind that people are dying because there are too many old dirty power plants still online. They live somewhere else so we don't care about them. Oops! Now, I'm getting emotional ...

Anyway, I'll review the special permit and correct or add to the above as necessary when I have a chance.

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