Neighbors challenge burner

BY LEO CASHMAN

Amid concerns over high toxic emission limits in an air quality permit, concerned neighbors are mounting a challenge designed to slow down, if not stop, a proposed southside wood burning power plant. The plant, touted as an answer to our need for clean, sustainable energy, is officially called Midtown Eco Energy Facility (MEE). It would burn only waste wood and other urban “biomass,” and its developers vow never to burn garbage. But some neighbors, alarmed by a seemingly lax and permissive air quality permit from the Minnesota Air Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) are seeking a contested case hearing for a more public airing of concerns about the project.

The proposed wood burner would be located near East 28th Street and 20th Avenue South, in southeast Phillips neighborhood and close to Lake Street and the Powderhorn Corcoran neighborhood. In this Lake and Hiawatha area, many residents are still waiting for state help in remediation of the arsenic contaminated soil in their yards. Why, then, the citizen activists are asking, does the draft air quality permit for this burner allow yearly air emissions of up to 69 pounds of arsenic? Other pollutant limits are lead (up to 15 pounds), mercury (up to 5.5 pounds), benzene (up to 13,000 pounds), styrene (up to 6,000 pounds) and formaldehyde (13,000 pounds). Even the burning of wood releases fine particulate matter and the air quality permit allows up to 65 tons annually of fine particulate matter (under 2.5 microns), so small that it can go deeply into the lungs.

Faced with the seeming indifference of MPCA to the environmental impacts of this project, and seeing the laxity of the draft air quality permit, activist Nancy Hone has filed on behalf of the group Neighbors Against the Burner for a contested case hearing to challenge the permit. The group, which includes citizens in St. Paul as well as Minneapolis, is challenging the proposed biomass burner at the Rock Tenn