By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Emotions were high as the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Air Quality Division presented information on the Ridgeline project’s Air Quality Permit to a packed house Monday June 30th at the Canaan Valley State Park Main Lodge Conference Rooms.
Chief Communications Officer Terry Fletcher, Engineer for the New Source Review Permitting Department Joe Kessler and Engineer for the New Source Review Permitting Department Jerry Williams presented information on behalf of the DEP Air Quality Division. There were also representatives from the Enforcement and Inspection Divisions on hand at the presentation, as well.
The meeting was scheduled to run from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., but did not end until after 11 that night due to the high number of people signed up to ask questions. The main issue of the night was that of disbursement testing.
The Officials said that the Air Quality Division does not pay for or require disbursement testing on minor source permits.
Kessler said that the cut off for the testing parameters was the minor/major source designation. He also stated that the Division has never disbursement tested a minor source applicant.
Residents stated that they felt the unique topography of the area and local weather patterns such as weather inversions created unique hazards that would hold pollutants in the area leading to health impacts that other areas would not suffer. Some residents, who were health workers, spoke on what they feared would be long term cumulative effects on respiratory and cardiovascular effects of particulate matter and pollutants in the air.
Residents offered to pay for the testing themselves and urged the Division to reconsider the testing. The Division said they would look into the matter and reach out with their decision on the matter.
Concerns over diesel at the facility was also addressed. The panel maintained that facility would only be using diesel for backup fuel, but there was no explanation of how the fuel would be handled as it began to degrade in the tanks from disuse.
“The 15 million is the amount of diesel that can be unloaded from the trucks at the facility,” Williams said. “The amount of diesel that can be combusted on a maximum hourly basis is in the permit section 4.1. These are separate, they are separate items. There’s an unloading item and there’s a combustion for the turbine and then there’s a tank value, as well. There’s three separate items.”
Kessler was the first to present information on the Project and the permitting process. A PowerPoint presentation was supplied to illustrate the points that Kessler and Williams were making throughout the night.
On the matter of the redactions, Kessler and Williams would only say that the Divisions counsel had looked at the matter and determined the redaction met the classification for confidential material. Local attorney Brent Easton questioned the panel on the matter. Easton questioned the decision of the Division’s attorney on the redactions based on the turbines already being protected by patent law.
“It specifically excludes things that are patented,” Easton said. “If something is patented, it already has a protection built in, so they don’t need it as a secret. So it shouldn’t be redacted.”
Kessler said he did not think that there was anything in the redactions that would fall under the classification of patentable.
Kessler spoke on the criteria for a minor vs major source emitter, as well as the Federal and State regulatory processes that go into the decisions to approve or deny a permit. Kessler also addressed the criteria of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. Kessler said that Tucker County was classified as in attainment, or meeting, with each of the pollutants.
Kessler outlined what the permitting program does and does not cover by regulation. By regulation, Kessler said the program regulates pollution expulsion and how the plant can and does operate and that it stays within compliance with all state and federal air quality rules and regulations. It does not, however require a full Environmental Impact Statement or address Greenhouse Gases.
The program also cannot take into consideration by regulation any outside values or emotional factors such as jobs, property value, traffic, zoning, national energy issues, economics of the project, infrastructure, archaeology, natural beauty, history, water usage, etc.
The Officials relayed all Non-Air Quality Issues or what they termed “Non-AQ Issues” to local officials. A statement that elicited laughter from the crowd due to House Bill 2014 which took all local control away from counties and local officials in regards to microgrids and data center projects, which locals fear the Ridgeline project may well be a veiled attempt at.
“Read the Wall Street Journal, we all know,” one audience member shouted in reference to Fundamental Data’s Casey Chapman’s admission to his plan to construct data centers at the site. At one point in the meeting, Kessler even admitted that he suspected that the plant would be used to supply energy to data centers, however it was not in the application and they only had the application to work with. Kessler also said that data centers rarely affected an application because they rarely gave off emissions by themselves.
While the Minor Source Permit is listed as just being below the threshold of 100 tons/year of pollutants, Kessler and Williams said repeatedly that the evaluations and calculations were made for a “worst case scenario” of gas vs diesel usage at the plant and that real world operational emissions of facilities were always well below the calculations.
However, one speaker, who worked in the cyber industry said that he expected the facility to operate at 100% capacity 24/7 and warned the panel that their calculations may well be flawed. He advised the panel they would be well advised to revisit their calculations or look closer at the company, regardless to whether they disclosed the end user of the facility or not.
Kessler and Williams both said repeatedly that HB2014 had no bearing on the permitting process for two reasons. One is that it is independent of their department and has no bearing on them and two is that Fundamental Data has never disclosed in their application an end user for the energy that they are producing. Even if they did, Kessler and Williams said, it still would not effect how they approached the matter in regards to HB2014 because the bill has no bearing on their department. However, it was a matter that audience members could not let go.
Kessler and Williams were asked how many applications had ever been denied by the Division to which their answer was none. Kessler said that the Division works with companies to modify their permits and processes to meet standards and can be approved. He also said that there was never the possibility that a permit may never be denied in the future.
On the matter of inspections, one resident asked how often the facility, if built, could be expected to be inspected given the number of inspectors in the State. A representative from the Enforcement Division said that generally, they inspect similar facilities every two years. It was an answer that drew audible ire from the crowd.
However, Kessler and the Inspector said that in cases where the plant is suspect, more routine inspections are conducted. The two years are not set in stone, according to Kessler, more routine inspections can, and often do, occur.
