The Olympic Region Clean Air Agency should delay a decision on installing new air quality monitors on the North Olympic Peninsula so the agency’s regionwide air quality monitoring plan can be updated, ORCAA Executive Director Fran McNair said Wednesday.
Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend have requested monitors to measure particulate emissions from two biomass cogeneration plants that are expanding their operations in 2013.
McNair will ask the ORCAA board to delay a decision on the requests at the board meeting scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at 2940-B Limited Lane N.W., Olympia.
Nippon Paper Industries USA is expanding its Port Angeles biomass cogeneration plant in a $71 million project expected to produce 20 megawatts at the company’s paper mill and be completed in April.
Port Townsend Paper Corp. is expanding its biomass cogeneration plant in a $55 million project that will generate 24 megawatts at the company’s mill south of downtown.
It also is expected to be completed in 2013.
ORCAA has approved placing a second air-quality monitoring station in Port Townsend — at Grant Street Elementary School — to measure particulate emissions from Port Townsend Paper Corp. but has not decided how to fund it.
“It will be fall before there’s a decision on anything,” McNair said, adding that discussion on updating its regionwide air-quality monitoring plan will begin in late August for the first time in more than three years.
Holding off on the requests also will allow new senior air-monitoring specialist Odelle Hadley, who is replacing the retiring Jim Werner, to acclimate herself to her new job and look at the monitoring plan “with a new set of eyes,” McNair said.
“Port Townsend, Port Angeles and Sequim are all asking for changes,” McNair said.
“We want to look at all of them honestly, equally and do a really good evaluation to see what is needed, if anything,” she said.
“We need to hold off on any decisions until [Hadley] has had a chance to come on and get her feet wet.”
ORCAA board Chairman Phil Johnson, a Jefferson County commissioner, said this week the board should decide on the requests from Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend residents by September.
“I don’t like pushing this decision off forever,” Johnson said.
He said the state Department of Ecology had loaned a monitor to ORCAA, but no decision has been made on where it will go.
“We can’t be buying three new monitors,” he added.
Bob Lynette of Sequim, co-chair of the North Olympic Group of the Sierra Club, which has opposed Nippon’s expansion project, said he will attend the ORCAA board meeting.
“We’d like to get an idea exactly of what they’re doing,” he said, adding that he is disappointed by the delay.
“Some of us will be at the meeting to hear what staff are doing and some rationale.”
The Port Angeles City Council voted July 3 to ask ORCAA to place a new monitor downtown, east of Nippon, or move the existing monitor from Stevens School to the downtown area.
The Sequim City Council also has asked ORCAA to place an air-monitoring station in Sequim to measure emissions from Nippon, which is about 20 miles away from Sequim.
“I still believe Stevens is a good site,” McNair said.
“We are looking at ambient monitoring,” she added.
“Ambient monitoring is not site-specific. It looks at particulates, but it doesn’t tell you, no matter where you put it, specifically where it’s coming from.”
Biomass cogeneration plants burn wood waste to generate electricity, making it impossible to determine pollution source-points in the winter, when wood stoves are going full bore and cogeneration plants are also in operation, she said.
“Our technology is such that no matter where you put it, it’s not going to be able to say it’s from Nippon or Port Towsend Paper,” she said.
“We don’t want people to be falsely thinking, ‘This is the source.’ You can’t do that with ambient monitoring.”
But during summers, if large fires are not affecting the weather and the monitors show a spike in pollution downwind from a cogeneration plant, “then yes, you would take another look at it,” McNair said.
Holidays and distant fires also can affect air quality, she said.
From July 7-11, huge fires in Siberia increased pollution levels in air monitors throughout the Olympic region, and the monitors always spike on the Fourth of July because of fireworks, McNair said.
Both projects have survived legal challenges from biomass plant opponents.
Opponents have expressed concerns that toxin-laden “ultrafine” particulates and “nanoparticles” the size of less than 2.5 microns will be generated by the plants and are not regulated.
Proponents say the expanded plants abide by all existing clean-air laws and will generate less pollution.
The smallest monitors cost $17,000 to $20,000 and $10,000 annually to operate.
“No community is willing to put money toward this,” McNair said.
“They are all asking us to pay for the whole thing.”
ORCAA, one of seven regional air pollution control agencies in Washington state, regulates and enforces local, state and federal air pollution standards in Clallam, Jefferson, Grays Harbor, Mason, Pacific and Thurston counties.
Clallam County Commissioner Mike Doherty and Port Angeles City Councilman Dan Di Guilio also are on the nine-member ORCAA board.
Comments on the air-quality monitors can be emailed to McNair at fran.mcnair@orcaa.org.
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.