PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles City Council will conduct a hearing Monday on an appeal of a shoreline development permit granted to Nippon Paper Industries USA Inc. for its $71 million biomass project.
The meeting will be at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
It will be a closed-record hearing, meaning that no further testimony or comment will be taken that day.
The seven environmental groups that filed the appeal contend that the shoreline management permit should have listed Nippon’s proposal as an electric utility.
The Nippon cogeneration plant would produce 20 megawatts of electricity for sale.
The proposed facility would replace an existing oil- and biomass-fired boiler that is 50 years old with a new biomass boiler, steam turbine generator and associated facilities.
It would burn wood waste from sawmills and logging sites to produce steam and electricity.
Nippon, which employs nearly 200 people, hoped to begin construction this year and have the facility ready for testing in the second quarter of 2012.
The groups filing the appeal also are planning to file an appeal of the city’s environmental assessment of the project with the state Pollution Control Hearings Board after the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency approves air-quality permits for the project, something they don’t expect to see until spring.
The environmental groups — Port Townsend AirWatchers, Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Environmental Council, No Biomass Burn of Seattle, the Center for Environmental Law and Policy of Spokane, the World Temperate Rainforest Network and the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club — said the assessment was incomplete mainly because it didn’t address the possible effect removing wood waste, known as slash, from logging sites will have on the forests.
The coalition members have appealed the city’s shoreline development permit decision because of several concerns, they said in a statement.
They listed the following concerns that the biomass project would:
• Draw millions of gallons of water every day from the Elwha River that flows from Olympia National Park.
• Threaten the sustainability of forest ecosystems.
• Increase air and water pollution.
• Negatively impact public access to, and enjoyment of, the shoreline and Waterfront Trail.
• Add more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the proposed plant and associated truck traffic.
Five of the environmental groups — Port Townsend AirWatchers, Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Environmental Council, No Biomass Burn of Seattle and the World Temperate Rainforest Network — also have filed an appeal challenging a state permit allowing Port Townsend Paper Corp. to expand its biomass capacity.
The appeal against the Port Townsend project, which was filed Nov. 22 with the state Pollution Control Hearings Board, is in response to the state Department of Ecology’s granting Oct. 25 of a “notice of construction” permit for a $55 million project and its July finding that the biomass project had no probable adverse environmental impact, allowing the mill to move ahead with the plans to install a steam turbine.
The Port Townsend mill plans to produce up to 24 megawatts of electricity for sale.