Proposed tire-burning power plant on Lake Erie creates controversy

Proposed tire-burning power plant on Lake Erie creates controversy
Tire-burning facility creates controversy
Monday, March 31, 2008
Michael Scott
Plain Dealer Reporter

Erie, Pa.- There's a tire fight smoldering along the Lake Erie shore, just 100 miles east of Cleveland. Whether it flares up - or flames out - might depend on whether Pennsylvania environmental officials grant an air pollution permit to a new $235 million power plant that opponents are calling the world's largest and most dangerous tire incinerator.

"This isn't just an Erie problem - it's a pollution problem for everyone, including Ohio and the rest of the nation," said Erie-area resident Randy Barnes, part of a citizens group opposing the plant.

Barnes and other opponents aren't suggesting that prevailing winds will carry air pollution to the Midwest, though they occasionally do. Instead, they're saying that building a new power plant to burn tires - rather than grinding them up for other recyclable uses - is a bad idea for the environment overall.

"Seriously, in a world concerned about greenhouse gases and ozone, here's a great idea," Barnes said sarcastically. "Let's just go ahead and build the world's biggest tire-burning plant."

Developer Greg Rubino, who represents Erie Renewable Energy LLC on the project, rejects that description. "We're going to be a power plant, not a tire plant," he said.

Rubino has submitted an air pollution permit application to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to burn tire-derived fuel -- basically pulverized bits of rubber remaining after the steel and fabric are removed from car and truck tires.

If built, possibly as early as next year, the plant -- 500 yards from Lake Erie on the city's east end -- would become one of a handful in the world that burns tires and nothing else. Some coal-fired power plants and cement kilns in Pennsylvania and elsewhere mix in some ground rubber to their fuel.

Each year, the plant would release 354 tons of nitrous oxides, nearly 180 tons of sulfur dioxide, about 230 tons of particulate matter and about 28 tons of volatile organic compounds, according to its permit application.

That's less than coal plants, supporters say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that tire-derived fuel releases more carbon but that generally it burns cleaner, hotter and more efficiently than coal in power plants. (Tires release 2 to 3 times the PAHs than burning coal does, and the PA DEP is not looking at it as required in the Clean Air Act)

"Maybe -- but it's not less than no incinerator at all," Barnes said, noting that other tire incinerators have been rejected in the last several years in Minnesota and Ontario, Canada.

Rubino, who has support from a coalition of local economic-development groups and Erie's mayor, said the plant also would generate electricity for 75,000 homes and rid Pennsylvania and surrounding states of millions of unwanted scrap tires.

Whether that electricity generation would translate into savings for Erie-area residents would depend on a number of factors. Those include the cost of transmission and connections and whether the power would be sold to a utility like FirstEnergy Corp. or directly to large customers in the area, power-grid experts said. The U.S. EPA reports that Americans produce nearly 300 million scrap tires a year and that about half of them are now used as fuel, often mixed in with coal.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection could decide on the air permit by late this summer, and the power grid manager is studying the company's application for the plant, to be called Port Erie Power, to tie into the power supply for that region.

But Barnes and an increasingly vocal group of environmentalists, activists and angry neighbors say their problem with the plant is both local and global.

They come to City Council meetings in matching bright green shirts, put up yard signs near schools and flood a Web site (stopburningtires.com) with environmental information about the hazards of burning tires.

They contend that officials don't yet know enough about pollution created by burning tires alone and that the plant will, in any case, bring unwanted air pollution to Erie, especially to a site near a dozen schools, day-care centers and nursing homes.

"I admit this started out as a not in my back yard' thing for me," said Judy Smith, who has put up a "Don't Poison the Children" sign in her front yard a block from where the plant could be built. "Now it's more that this thing shouldn't be built anywhere."

Members of "Keep Erie's Environment Protected" are angry that the power plant, proposed for a brownfield site where a paper mill once sat, will incinerate 20 million or more tires a year.

The plant could also store up to 1 million tires on site as they wait to be shredded and burned and will have to send 117 tons of ash daily to a landfill.

It will also draw about 1 million gallons of water out of Lake Erie a day, an allowable amount under both current law and the proposed Great Lakes Water Compact, which is designed to protect the lakes from diversions and overuse. About 80 percent of the water would be used up in steam generation. Opponents also say more than 70 chemical compounds are produced by burning tires. The company's permit lists dozens of other chemical emissions, such as cobalt (less than 5 pounds a year), barium (24 pounds a year) and chromium (14 pounds a year).

A Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman said the agency would determine sometime this summer whether those emissions would be under pollution standards. She said no universal standard exists for power-generating plants, and the Erie plant would have to meet only the standards set in its permit, if approved.

She also said the agency would test continuously only for sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide and for particulates in the emissions from the stacks at the plant.
"At this point, we've yet to determine all of the other pollutants that would be tested for because, frankly, we don't know of any other plants in the United States that burn only tires," spokeswoman Freda Tarbell said in a telephone interview.

But Rubino said the company knows exactly what its emission levels will be for every toxin, based on the emissions of a smaller plant in Connecticut and a nearly identical plant in Japan. He said the plant's pollution controls would be "literally the best available technology in the marketplace today."

"Our goal and objective is simple -- to meet 100 percent of the permits required at the state and federal level," Rubino said. "Then, we want to operate the plant as a good neighbor."

The Erie City Council appears to be moving toward ensuring that. Members this month asked the city solicitor to draw up a local law to make the proposed plant submit to "continuous emissions testing" for any pollutants the state would not monitor.

"We can't stop it from coming here, but we can make sure it's safer," said Councilman Mark Aleksandrowicz, who lives near the proposed power plant.

A coalition of six economic-development groups has come out against the city's plans, saying the tougher regulations would discourage prospective businesses from coming to their city.

Rubino has said the power plant would bring 200 jobs to the Erie area -- 140 temporary jobs from construction and 60 permanent positions at the plant.

Erie recently opened its $50 million convention center on the waterfront, and an adjoining $50 million hotel is near completion. Both are within a half-mile of the proposed power plant.

The three other holders of hazardous air pollution permits -- a hospital that burns medical waste, the city wastewater treatment plant, which burns its sludge, and a coke plant -- are within a mile or so of the proposed tire-to-energy plant.

Having another polluter so close would bother Bruce Kern, fifth-generation owner of Curtze Foods, whose 310 workers process beef, pork, lamb and veal about a block from the site of the proposed plant.

Kern is widely quoted by opponents of the tire-burning plant as saying that, after 130 years in Erie, he will move his plant out of the city if Rubino gets the environmental OK to build the plant.

"I never wanted it to sound like a threat, but our concern right along has been the emissions," Kern said. "I don't like the idea of what particles and nano-particles could come out of a tire-burning incinerator. And I don't really think that the [state] really knows everything about it yet, either."

Some opponents also cite ethical reasons to oppose the tire-burning plant.

The Rev. Jerry Priscaro of St. Ann Catholic Church, which sits about five blocks from the site of the proposed plant, said he has asked his bishop for permission to turn his personal opposition of the plan into a church-sponsored resistance.

Priscaro said placing the plant in a neighborhood with public housing occupied by a high percentage of minorities and low-income residents of Erie violates principles of environmental justice.

"We're standing on the right side on this matter," he said. "I have no doubt about that."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

mscott@plaind.com, 216-999-4148