December 15, 2009
To: Marc Simpson, Air Quality Permit Chief
D E P Bureau of Waste Prevention
436 Dwight St.
Springfield, MA 01103
At this critical time in the history of our environment, the East Forest Park Civic Association of Springfield, Massachusetts, feels the time has come to ask our government to take action regarding our concerns for the environment. We depend on you to safeguard us against irresponsible and harmful practices and on our behalf to look to a safer future.
Twenty years ago, all new incinerators were banned to protect the environment and peoples’ health. Today, solid municipal waste is illegal in landfills. Has either changed? How does reclassification alter these two things? How, by merely renaming them, can they now be advantageous and legal for our environment or our health? When those same citizens can reason that burning wood produces CO2, which adds to greenhouse gases, that contaminate our lungs, weaken our hearts and then deplete the ozone layer which in turn burns our skin with cancers, where are our government departments?
Like Palmer Renewable Energy’s low-legal limit compliances to Air Quality specifications, the other wood burning biomass plants offer figures that are merely data projections - ONLY best guess hypotheses! What can possibly justify emissions from burning 700 to 900 tons per day into our atmosphere? Even slight, miniscule increases in emissions add to our Environmental and Health Crises !
The proposed biomass incinerators are meager but dangerous efforts at Massachusetts’ obligation to increase renewable energy production. It will produce ONLY 1/3 of 1% of MA's total power production and be ONLY 15%-25% fuel efficient - with the rest of the wood going up in toxic smoke. (For example, PRE projects burning two-thirds of the state's total demolition debris - 470,000 toxic tons - each year along with additional 'green wood chips' producing 50 times the present legal limits of carbon dioxide emission of the pre-existing Mt. Tom coal burning plant.)
These are tempting proposals in tough times, but ONLY a Proposal, NOT a Solution. As citizens we recognize that burning contaminated, solid municipal waste wood, or any wood for that matter, will only exacerbate our health problems when toxic lead, sulfur, mercury, arsenic and asbestos particulates - however miniscule a percentage of the projected figures-are released into the atmosphere.
For much too long we have given only token, cursory advocacy to protecting our Environment. We must begin acting on our convictions. Please consider clean alternatives to energy production and stop the emissions and acid rain that further deteriorate not only our air, fresh waterways, soil and oceans but also our forests that need to ‘re-sequester’ the carbon emissions that presently exist.
We ask you to redirect the state’s efforts toward a cleaner future. ALL carbon emissions must be counted. We must begin, and you can start another quietly resolved revolution, here in MA, for the Reduction of ALL Carbon Emissions!
We look to the $60 million in Stimulus Funds to be better spent meeting the Massachusetts Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative' obligation to increase power from Renewable Sources while realizing its goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 10%.
A portion of the stimulus money could initiate partnerships of hillside towns, channeling the rivers that flow into our valleys, to build small, clean hydroelectric plants (with bypass fish ladders) that would create local jobs as they are manned and maintained by an economy sharing power and profitable production of a true, clean renewable resource that quenches our thirst for much needed energy and reinvigorates the state’s economy.
Other Stimulus Fund renewable energy efforts should be wind and wave turbine sites. Though these may initially realize low profitability, their development would advance our commitment to RGGI and, combined, would slowly move us toward replacement of carbon emitting plants and make us less dependent on oil and coal.
Anther renewable energy effort that should receive Stimulus Funds - as well as Tax Credits - are participating government buildings, schools, colleges, and hospital that install solar panels to generate a portion of their own energy needs redirecting their funds to other regional and state entities.
And what of the construction demolition debris? Having that sector develop environmentally friendly processes to recycle waste wood as well as tree trimmings into usable building materials would enlarge and economize that industry - making it also renewable!
Respectfully submitted,
Francis G. Ryan, Secretary
East Forest Park Civic Association
