It’s About the Environment
Developers are currently proposing the construction of biomass plants in Greenfield, Springfield, Pittsfield, Russell, and Fitchburg that would burn more than 13 million pounds of green wood a day and would add only 1 percent to our electrical grid. But at what cost
Particulate matter and toxic pollutants emitted in large amounts by biomass plants cause asthma, heart disease, cancer and other illnesses. ?Air quality in our state is already significantly worse than the national average. ?The Massachusetts Medical Society is strongly opposed to permitting these incinerators due to the unacceptable risks that they pose to our health.
Biomass power plants also typically release 50 percent more CO2 than coal-fired plants. Add chainsaws, heavy logging equipment and large diesel trucks making their rounds every few minutes, and these plants’ carbon footprints start to look like brontosaurus tracks.
Then there’s the risk of fire. Spontaneous combustion of woodpiles at a biomass plant in Athens, Maine caused widespread illness and led to the permanent shutdown of the plant. Citizens living near a similar facility in Burlington, Vt. have also reported wood chip fires in addition to pungent odors, nauseating emissions, unbearable noises, vibrations, fugitive dust,?and?clear-cutting of forests.
Yes, clear-cutting. Together these plants would pretty much consume all of the forests in Western and Central Massachusetts in about 15 years. Once supplies of wood are depleted, it is likely that biomass plants would turn to incinerating construction and demolition debris and unsorted garbage, since state law categorizes these highly toxic waste streams as biomass.
Federal and state laws currently categorize biomass plants as “renewable energy” facilities, making them eligible for billions of dollars of taxpayer and electricity ratepayer subsidies (read “corporate welfare”). Every dollar spent on development of biomass is a dollar not available for truly renewable energy alternatives such as solar, tidal and wind power.
The Stop Spewing Carbon campaign is collecting signatures on a petition that would give us the chance to set a precedent for the country and the world by disqualifying polluting biomass plants from receiving renewable energy subsidies when we go to the polls in November. We need 11,000 signatures of registered voters by June 16 to get on the ballot. Please visitwww.stopspewingcarbon.com or call?(800) 729-1363 to help us reach our goal. We cannot afford to commit to decades of biomass incinerators fouling our air and clear-cutting our forests!
John Root
via email
For too many years, ordinary people have relied upon the state and the federal government regulatory agencies to protect our health and that of our wildlife and forests. You’d think by now we would have learned that they’re not really in it to protect anything but their own jobs and the profits of biomass industrialists. It’s time for ordinary people to resort to their own common sense (yes, some of us still have it) and let our legislators know that we don’t want our tax dollars to be spent subsidizing the biomass mess.
The new term they are using to whitewash reality is “biogenic carbon dioxide.” Let’s all be clear that whether its source is organic or inorganic, carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide. Newspeak cannot change the harmful chemical effects of carbon emissions on our air quality.
Keep in mind that every tax dollar spent on biomass incineration (old technology) is a dollar not spent on truly clean and innovative energy generation research and implementation.
Please visit www.stopspewingcarbon.com and download a copy of the petition to put this issue on the state ballot in November. We need the help of all people who know that this is not something we need or want. Grab a friend and spend a couple of hours asking people to sign on. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it is critical that 11,000 signatures be obtained before June 16th. Let’s let our state legislators know that we do not want our air contaminated or our forests depleted by the biomass industry.
Rachel Roy
via Web comment line
Since I moved to Shutesbury in 1996, I have considered the Quabbin Reservoir to be a prize jewel of the Pioneer Valley. I go there religiously at least once a week (snow permitting) to find peace, beauty and natural splendor.
Starting a few years ago, I was shocked to find some of my favorite locations in the Quabbin torn apart by chain saws and logging machines. I called the appropriate office to find out that, yes, indeed, the Quabbin will be “harvesting” more of its “tree products” in the months to come.? And now we learn that they are just getting started. The biomass plants have yet to be fired up!
I’m sure that I’m not alone in wondering why we are destroying the majestic trees of the Quabbin in such a brutal and thoughtless way.
There seems to be a war between industry and poetry, which is certainly not new. Putting up with the atrocities, the corruption and short-sightedness of the powers-that-be is not new, either.
What would be fresh, new and exciting at this time in history would be an impressive and effective gathering of concerned citizens who would insist on having their feelings and perspectives acknowledged by their government.
Even in these callous and desperate times, I still hold an allegiance to “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” All of my hopes for a better tomorrow come from my belief in the power of humanity’s basic goodness.
Dagen Julty
Shutesbury
Nuclear Poisoning
There are many reasons why all nuclear reactors, Vermont Yankee included, must be shut down, and one of them is their deadly connection with the military. Plutonium, produced from nuclear waste, is used to make nuclear bombs and some 5,000 nuclear warheads that we have spread around the world. Tritium, leaking from old reactors, is produced in a separate reactor just for the military since it “boosts the yield” of nuclear weapons and is therefore needed for those 5,000 warheads.
So-called “depleted” uranium is produced as a waste during the uranium enrichment process, but, because with enough time it has the greatest capacity of all weapons to kill people, it is given to the military. Thousands of tons of this radioactive material, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, have, according to many studies, unleashed a global catastrophe, not just for our soldiers and the people in war-torn countries, but for the entire earth.
In so many ways, all our children face a radioactive future forever, with governments like our own that will continue to protect the interests of two cunningly interwoven processes: the manufacture of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Someone said that if we discovered how to make weapons out of sunbeams, we would all have solar power. Instead we use nuclear power. Already in Iraq, because of depleted uranium, 25 percent of babies are born with birth defects, and by now, over 11,000 of our own soldiers have died, mostly from cancers. I stand in the corridors of high schools trying to tell kids that, if they go into the military, they will probably be exposed to a weapon used by their very own country that will cause sickness, death and genetic defects in their children. Could there be a worse war crime? And then I tell them that it comes from the process that makes Vermont Yankee’s fuel rods.
The world is watching us here in Vermont. Let’s not let our children down.
Jane Newton
South Londonderry, Vt.
