August 9, 2010 – Students and community members gathered at Percivil’s Landing at 12 noon and at Red Square at The Evergreen State College at 2pm to protest the college's proposed biomass incinerator. Evergreen administrators are pushing a biomass incinerator as a “sustainable alternative to natural gas” but concerned community members feel that it is a step in the wrong direction.
Evergreen currently uses two main types of energy: electricity and natural gas. The college is planning to convert its existing natural gas boiler to biomass, eliminating the need to purchase natural gas. Evergreen's bio-mass energy solution involves burning chipped, dry wood in an oxygen-starved environment to create a combustible synthetic gas ("syn gas") as a substitute for natural gas.
The Washington Department of Natural Resources is a key biomass incineration promoter, as is the timber industry. There are two bills currently in the Washington State legislature that will throw open state-owned forests to industry for the gathering of wood to burn in biomass incinerators.
The wood chips used to power the incinerator are processed forest wood waste/slash and urban wood waste from construction. Although marketed as a renewable replacement for fossil fuels, the chips use fossil fuels for collection, transportation and processing. A single 50-megawatt biomass plant burns about 650,000 tons of trees a year, over a ton of wood a minute.
Activists warn that compared to the current campus boiler, the biomass incinerator would double carbon dioxide emissions plus rain particulate matter pollution on the community so toxic that a single exposure could kill. Biomass burning is dirtier than burning coal, emitting more particular matter than coal. Wood burning biomass incinerators typically increase ground level ozone, exacerbating pulmonary and cardiac disease problems.
Evergreen Junior Gabe Riggs explained why activists came out to protest the biomass incinerator, "The administration wants an easy quick solution, but they are not seriously looking into the impacts this will have on our community, our forests or our climate. Research, most notably by William Sammons, MD, shows that CO2 emissions would double with the incinerator."
Activists are concerned about the amount of particle pollution that would be emitted by the biomass incinerator. Particle pollution refers to a mix of very tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe. Some of the particles released by a biomass incinerator are one-tenth the diameter of a strand of hair. Others are so small they can only be seen with an electron microscope. Because of their size, you can’t see the individual particles.
Although small in size, these particles can be lethal. Our natural defenses were constructed so that we can cough or sneeze larger particles out of our bodies. Those defenses can’t keep out minute particles that are one-seventh the diameter of a single human hair. If these particles are trapped in the lungs, they can pass through the lungs into the blood stream, blocking the essential oxygen molecules we need to survive.
Massachusetts-based pediatrician Dr. William Sammons warned at a recent community meeting in Shelton that a biomass incinerator can release up to 100 tons per year of particulate matter. “Particulate matter will make sick people sicker and cause disease.”
Particle pollution diminishes lung function, causes greater use of asthma medications and increased rates of school absenteeism, emergency room visits and hospital admissions. Other adverse effects can be coughing, wheezing, cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks. Deaths can occur on the very day that particle levels are high, or within one to two months afterward. Particle pollution does not just make people die a few days earlier than they might otherwise—these are deaths that would not have occurred if the air were cleaner. Recent research has revealed how particle pollution can take the lives of infants and alter the lungs of children.
Unfortunately, emissions of the smallest and possibly most dangerous particulate matter are completely unregulated. According to the American Heart Association, the existing regulations for emissions of the next smallest category of matter are not sufficiently “stringent” to prevent “adverse cardiovascular effects”. Physicians are particularly concerned about the dioxin, arsenic, mercury, lead, carbon monoxide, chloroform, formaldehyde, and sulfurous acid found in particulate matter.
Biomass isn't just a problem in Olympia, the people of Shelton and Mason County have been busy fighting Adage Corporation's proposed biomass incinerator, which promises to rain 52 hazardous air pollutants onto the people of the region.
According to Evergreen Sophomore Matthew Pfeiffer, “The only way to stop this kind of rampant environmental destruction is with mass protests. We need people to speak out resoundingly not only against the Evergreen incinerator but against biomass incinerators all over our region!”
Students folded pamphlets and enjoyed a Food Not Bombs meal before the protest downtown
Community activists and students stood together to fight against incinerators.
Activists are demanding real solutions to climate change instead of biomass.
A group shot of the protest, notice the bagpipes on the right!
Activists wore respiratory masks to bring attention to the toxic effects of incinerators.
The protest moved to The Evergreen State Collage and protesters wrote eco-justice and anti-incinerator messages in chalk.
Many of the Chalk messages focused on the impact that biomass brining would have on forest ecosystems.
When the bag pipe players began playing a crowd gathered in awe and videotaped the spectacle.
Bagpipers on Red Square
The administration is claiming that the project is sustainable but the community begs to differ.
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