SPI cogen plan worries enviros

While a city council debate over a medical marijuana business raged upstairs at Anderson City Hall on July 21, about 30 people attended a scoping meeting in the community room for Sierra Pacific Industries' planned co-generation plant.

Several audience members disapproved of the project, citing environmental concerns.

Waving a handful of news articles at the presenter, neighbor to the project Ashley Wayman objected to the possibility that burning biomass could turn to burning garbage.

"They start by saying they'll just burn clean wood. That's how they get their foot in the door," Mike Davis alleged, who lives south of the larger co-generation plant (Wheelabrator) south of Anderson. "Wheelabrator is burning railroad ties now, coated with creosote - that's carcinogenic material. I think it's important to fight these things."

Michael Mitchell, who lives nearby the project site, said SPI was a good neighbor to him, but he asked that the study of environmental concerns be cumulative to include simultaneous use of the existing 4 megawatt SPI cogeneration plant along with the proposed plant.

By consuming wood waste, the proposed power plant on SPI's campus north of Anderson could produce 23 megawatts of electricity, according to Ben Ritchie of De Novo Planning Group, the Sacramento firm hired by Shasta County to conduct an Environmental Impact Report for the project. The final EIR, he said, would be completed in December this year.

The boiler would create steam to operate a turbine which would provide the 4 megawatts needed to power the SPI campus and also create heat to better dry the lumber on site, Pawlicki said.

Beyond providing the four megawatts needed to power the SPI complex, the remainder of the electricity produced would be sold back to the power grid. One mega-Watt hour produced can power about 750 average California households for an hour, said PG&E spokesman Kory Raftery.

The proposed plant would be 25 percent larger than SPI's existing 4 mega-Watt plant. It would include the construction of "a new fuel handling building, boiler building, turbine building, cooling tower, electrostatic precipitator, ash silo, and electric substation," according to the initial study documentation by Shasta County Dept. of Resource Management.

To create 200,000 pounds of steam for the turbines, the plant would also require 605 acre-feet of ground water per year, according to the county's initial study.

"We have not yet made the decision to build the plant," Pawlicki said, adding that SPI's plans were only to get the planning stages of the proposed plant completed. Pawlicki said the total cost and the project's return on investment were still being analyzed.

The scoping period for the project ends Aug. 3, and comments to be considered in the draft of the EIR must be submitted by then. Submit comments to Lio Salazar, 1855 Placer St., Suite 103, Redding, Calif. 96001.