PORT ANGELES — A regional pollution control and enforcement agency should move an existing air-quality monitoring station — now at Stevens Middle School — downwind of Nippon Paper Industries USA’s expanded biomass cogeneration facility or place a second monitor elsewhere in the city to monitor the plant’s pollution, the City Council recommended this week.
The biomass expansion project is slated for completion in April 2013.
The council voted 3-2 Tuesday for a resolution requesting that the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency move the existing air-quality station or put a second one in the city.
Mayor Cherie Kidd, Councilman Patrick Downie and Deputy Mayor Brad Collins voted for the resolution. Councilman Max Mania and Councilwoman Sissi Bruch opposed it.
Argued for second monitor
Mania and Bruch disagreed with moving the present monitor, arguing that Port Angeles should have a second air-quality monitor in addition to the one at Stevens, which is south — not downwind, or east — of the Nippon mill on Ediz Hook.
“I would push for a second monitor,” Bruch said. “It gives us two stations that can actually see a problem with air quality if there is one.”
Collins argued for one monitor.
“As a practical matter, both the state and the city are struggling with budgets,” he said.
Councilwoman Brooke Nelson was out of town, Kidd said. Councilman Dan Di Guilio did not vote because he is on the ORCAA board of directors, he said.
In biomass cogeneration expansion projects under way at Nippon and at Port Townsend Paper, the companies would burn wood waste to produce electricity — 20 megawatts at Nippon’s $71 million expansion project and 24 megawatts at Port Townsend Paper’s $55 million expanded facility.
Environmental groups have waged unsuccessful legal challenges to both Peninsula biomass expansion projects.
Nippon mill manager Harold Norlund said in an earlier interview that the biomass plant has extensive pollution controls and that ORCAA already addressed the pollution issue when the agency permitted the project.
Residents concerned about “ultrafine” particles and “nanoparticles” — saying they can be laden with toxics, can lodge in the lungs and are smaller than the 2.5-micron size that is regulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency — have requested new air-monitoring stations for Sequim and Port Townsend.
More than a dozen speakers
More than a dozen speakers during the Port Angeles City Council’s public comment period said they wanted a monitor located in the city east of the biomass facility, including some who were opposed to moving the Stevens Middle School monitor.
Mary Bedinger, who spoke in favor of two monitors, said Wednesday “a compromise is better than nothing” but that two stations are needed.
“I can truly understand the lack of funds,” she added.
Two speakers at Tuesday’s meeting also criticized ORCAA Executive Director Fran McNair for telling the Peninsula Daily News on Tuesday that “we don’t have any more monitors, and we don’t have any more money.”
Robert Sextro of Sequim said the agency has a “contingency reserve” for air monitoring.
McNair said in an interview Tuesday that she was referring to the fact that there was no money for new monitors “in my budget” and that the agency’s “reserve account” has $65,000 for new and existing air-quality monitors.
The monitors cost $17,000 to $20,000 each, and money in reserves does not cover staffing, estimated at $10,000 a year for each device, she said.
“The reserve account was really set up for replacement monitors,” McNair said, adding that the ORCAA board would have to approve the expenditures.
“We don’t want to strip that account,” she added.
“Having two monitors in any city is really overkill,” McNair said, adding that Clallam already has more air-quality monitors — one is also in Neah Bay — than Jefferson, Mason, Thurston, Pacific and Grays Harbor counties, over which ORCAA also has purview and each of which has one monitor.
McNair will make recommendations on the air-monitor requests at the ORCAA board’s August meeting, she said.
ORCAA already has approved the idea of installing an air-quality monitoring station at Grant Street Elementary School in Port Townsend and is considering how to fund it.
Fine arts center
In other action at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, council members gave their unanimous concurrence to interim City Manager Dan McKeen to move forward in hiring a new city fine arts center director in light of a $50,000 anonymous donation to help fund the $52,000-a-year position.
The new director — the name of the top candidate has not been made public — will work with city staff to develop short- and long-term strategic plans for the center.
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
