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Source: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15887651&BRD=2626&PAG=461&dept_id=536271&rfi=8
Group cites concerns with coal-to-oil plant GILBERTON — A Philadelphia-based environmental group working with local activists is raising questions about a proposed $612 million coal-to-oil refinery proposed for northern Schuylkill County. However, John W. Rich Jr., president of Waste Management and Processors Inc. and Reading Anthracite Co., Pottsville, who is working to develop the facility, says the group has overstated environmental hazards and is not considering the relative economic benefits of the effort. "There are a lot of concerns," insisted Mike Ewall, founder and director of ActionPA, a Philadelphia based environmental group that designed http://ultradirtyfuels.com, a Web site with an address playing off the address for www.ultracleanfuels.com, the site Rich's company has designed to promote the Gilberton Coal-to-Oil project. The company proposes to use the carbon in waste coal, or culm, to produce a fuel stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide stripping away other solid wastes and vaporizing contaminants like sulfur and mercury in the process to create paraffin wax to be converted into zero sulfur diesel fuel. Rich said the excess byproduct would be burned to power the self-sufficient plant or reintroduced into the process. "That's why the gasification process has become a buzz word in the industry for clean coal technology," Rich said. However, the Web site designed on behalf of Schuylkill Tax Payers Opposed to Pollution, a local group assisted to some degree by ActionPA, the plant could also produce up to 99.9 tons each of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter, including up to 15 tons of sulfuric acid mist annually. The Web site also claims the plant would generate 500 pounds of Mercury annually in various wastestreams and 38 pounds of vaporized Mercury into the air annually. Ewall cites various sources, including the draft environmental impact statement for the Gilberton project filed with the U.S. Department of Energy, documentation on the project in the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection Northeast Regional Office in Philadelphia and information on the composition of culm to be used in the process. The site also claims the plant would also generate 49.9 tons of volatile organic compounds, 100 tons of ammonia and an unlimited amount of carbon dioxide, a material environmentalists say contributes to global warming. Ewall plans to attend public hearings on the project slated for 7 p.m. Monday at Shenandoah Valley Jr./Sr. High School and 7 p.m. Tuesday at the D.H.H. Lengel Middle School, Pottsville, to voice concerns. However, when contacted at his Gilberton office, Rich insisted the environmental group is overstating the contaminants potentially produced by the process by listing upper permit limits in the company's environmental impact statement, which will likely not be reached. He also complained that substances like vaporized mercury, 4,000 tons per year of sulfur and 1,600 tons of slag were not going to be released into the atmosphere or landfills as claimed on the site, but captured during the process and re-marketed. "It's a saleable product. Why would you take it to a landfill?" Rich said. Instead, Rich said critics of the process are in fact opposing an effort that would help curb an estimated $630 million a day spent on imported oil and help create higher paying jobs in the region. Critics of the process, he said, are also ignoring the much higher environmental impact of domestic crude oil refineries used to process that imported oil. Rich said the fuel produced by the proposed process could be used to fuel diesel-powered trucks and trains and represented the front end of a new cleaner hydrogen technology. He said the plant would produce fuel an estimated 50 cents under the market price of conventional petroleum. |
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