Potential savings of millions a year spur application to burn.
The four Norske Skog pulp mills in British Columbia are lining up to burn coal to help them deal with wet hog fuel and sludge, after the release in August of a report on the “test” of coal at Elk Falls Mill. The report chronicles a veritable miracle of clean air results — reduced dioxins, almost no impact on greenhouse gases, and less mercury than when burning natural gas. Predictably, the mill is also making much of the fact that the coal comes from Quinsam Mine, thus “keeping the money in Campbell River.”
The mill had received a three month approval to burn coal on an experimental basis in order to do the test. However only five days of results are reported to compare natural gas, oil, and coal as fuels. But for the majority of the pollutants tested for, there are only two hours of tests on coal emissions.
The Approval outlined strict conditions for the test – no more than 83 tonnes a day of low sulphur coal was to be burned in power boiler No. 5 for a three month period ending in early June. The boiler had recently been fitted with an experimental Wet Electrostatic Precipitator, which is supposed to be the pollution control equipment best suited to coal. In July, the mill applied for a permit to “add coal” to its fuel sources. The 30-day comment period was to end August 24th. On August 22nd the mill released copies of its report. Most copies given to the environmental community had pages missing. As Stan Goodridge and Don McIver of the Campbell River Environmental Council, noting the hundreds of pages of test results with no labels or page numbers, commented ironically, “We did not find this report to be user friendly.”
The mill subsequently officially re-advertised the permit, thus extending the comment period to September 24th. A flood of letters is expected at Ministry of Water, Lands and Air Protection in Nanaimo, since environmental readers are complaining bitterly about methodology and data problems in the report.
Some of the most notable issues include tests for hazardous air pollutants taken while the precipitator was clogged, data which is clearly not representative of normal operating conditions with natural gas, and improper statistical methods. Sierra Quadra notes a case of Volatile Organic Compounds where the gas tests were 1.34 and .05, averaged to present a picture of emissions from natural gas.
Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection Regional Manager David Brown says that the mill is paying Vlad Pomajzl, as an independent consultant to do a technical assessment of the report, for the Ministry. Pomajzl is the former Pollution Officer who wrote the original Technical Assessment for the Ministry, shortly before he retired in the recent cutbacks.
However, all this may well be mere smoke and mirrors, since the mill told the Watershed Sentinel they saved $3-to-4,000 a day by burning coal. Simple calculation shows that Norske Canada, no doubt to be followed by the rest of the industry, stands to save several million dollars a year if they are allowed to burn coal.