Inside IP's tire burn
Candace Page, Burlington Free Press
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TICONDEROGA, N.Y. -- Twin screws will begin to turn in a rented metal hopper sometime Monday, pulling little nuggets of ground-up vehicle tires onto a conveyor belt at the International Paper Co. mill beside Lake Champlain.
The tire chips will be mixed with bark and wood chips. Pneumatic tubes will suck the mixed fuel to the top of the plant's six-story powerhouse, where the fuel will be blown into the boiler. The chips will ignite and burn during the fall toward the grates far below.
International Paper's long-planned, long-disputed test of used-tire fuel will have begun.
The state of Vermont says the test is a slap in the face of public health. Gov. Jim Douglas and others say emissions from tire-burning will contain more of the tiniest particles of soot and heavy metals most damaging to human respiratory systems.
"We maintain there are environmental hazards to this burn," Attorney General William Sorrell said as he went to court last month in an attempt to stop the test, a petition denied Friday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "There may be increased emissions of 21 pollutants, some of which may be cancer-causing."
International Paper says the test is a safe, two-week experiment with a less-expensive substitute for some of the No. 6 fuel oil the mill burns to manufacture high-quality white office paper.
"In a time when our country is facing critical energy issues, tire-derived fuel offers an EPA-approved alternative to fuel oil and begins to solve the issue of landfilling millions of tires every year," said Donna Wadsworth, the mill's spokeswoman. "Displacing a portion of oil fired in the boiler with tire-derived fuel would save an estimated 5.16 million gallons of oil and $4 million annually."
Vermont urged the paper company to install a new pollution-control system, an electrostatic precipitator, before testing the tires. IP said only the test-burn can determine whether the device is needed.
Addison County opponents reacted with disappointment to Friday's court decision and said they plan to assemble at the New York plant Monday.
"It's not really a plan of attack, it's a funeral for clean air," said Joanna Colwell of the intentions of People for Less Pollution. "I'm sure there will be at least a group of people going over to have a vigil to recognize what's happening and stand witness."
For all sides, the test-burn will produce reams of data about emissions, air quality and public health, data that might change minds -- or reinforce positions -- in a debate that appears unlikely to end when the 14 days of the burn are done.
Here's a look at just what is scheduled to take place.
Ramping up the burn
Inside the sprawling paper factory complex, a squadron of mill employees, independent technicians and government regulators from New York, Vermont and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will hover over the tire burn.
Chipped tires will be fed from the hopper at slowly increasing rates -- "a teaspoon at a time," Wadsworth said -- as operators in the powerhouse control room adjust equipment to handle the new fuel mix. It's a big boiler, generating enough power every day for a city the size of Plattsburgh or Rutland.
Tire fuel will be burned only on weekdays, during daylight hours, and never more than 3 tons an hour. At that rate, the chipped tires will make up about 10 percent of the fuel fed to the boiler, according to International Paper, with wood waste and No. 6 fuel oil providing the rest.
Emissions testers will work upstairs, in a little laboratory on the windy roof of the powerhouse, where smokestacks tower overhead and green Vermont fields gleam to the east.
Conduits from high on the main stack will pull air samples continuously to the rooftop lab, where automated equipment will measure nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and particles in the stack's emissions. The two gases are common air pollutants, contributors to smog and precursors of acid rain.
If levels of any of the pollutants approach the plant's permit limit, the feeding of tire fuel will be slowed or ceased.
$145,000 worth of tests
As the rate of tire fuel fed to the boiler increases, and once a steady state is reached, an independent testing firm will run a battery of additional emissions tests. They will clamber up a ladder to an enclosed walkway high on the powerhouse stack, open a porthole and take an air sample to test for pollutants including dioxin, PCBs, zinc and other heavy metals.
Lower in the stack, other air samples will be captured to determine the size distribution of tiny unburned particles of fuel, the pollutant of most concern to Vermont opponents of the burn.
Wadsworth said this test will help International Paper to determine how much of the finest particulate -- particles smaller than 2.5 microns, 1/30th of a human hair -- is being emitted.
On the roof, specially trained observers will judge the opacity of the plume rising from the powerhouse stack, a visual measure of pollutant levels in the emissions.
Other technicians will sample ash from the boiler furnace; still others will test for chemicals in water from the smokestack's wet scrubber, a pollution-removal device.
"In all, we're doing $145,000 worth of air sampling and analysis," Wadsworth said.
Meanwhile, in Vermont ...
Dr. Jack Mayer's pediatric practice in Middlebury draws many of its patients from downwind of the paper mill.
He said he doesn't know what to tell parents about their children's health during the tire burn.
Mayer saw a couple last week whose baby was due Nov. 1. "They are asking, 'What do we do? We'll have a week-old baby.' It breaks my heart. I don't want them to be scared, but I don't know what to tell them," he said.
The state Health Department will monitor whether the test burn causes any health problems in Vermont, acting Health Commissioner Sharon Moffatt said. The department has issued no health warnings and has not offered advice to downwind residents.
"The (mill's) permit is clear about the levels it cannot exceed -- there are some precautions already in place," said state epidemiologist Dr. Cort Lohff. "We don't know how protective those levels are for the health of the population. If we see something alarming, we'll definitely respond."
Vermonters' concern is that substituting tires, a solid fuel, for fuel oil, will mean an increase in the invisible particles emitted from the paper mill stack.
An increasing body of evidence shows that particles of soot smaller than 2.5 microns can penetrate deep into the lungs. Fine-particle pollution in urban areas has been linked to increased asthma, heart attacks and strokes. Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to dramatically tighten the 24-hour ambient air standard for fine particulates.
International Paper said it believes emissions during the test burn will meet the limits set in its air pollution permit. Vermont says those limits are not adequate to protect public health.
Which way will the wind blow?
Vermont will try to keep close tabs on the effect of burning tire fuel just across the narrow stretch of water from Shoreham.
At two monitoring stations in the town, equipment will collect air samples to measure the concentration of PM2.5, as the fine particulate is called, and larger particles as well. Other equipment will measure wind speed, direction, air pressure and additional weather data, said Rich Poirot, an air pollution expert at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
Poirot said the public should not expect big changes in ambient air quality.
First of all, any pollutants will be carried over Vermont only if the wind blows from the west.
"That will be hit or miss," he said.
Second, there may be only relatively small changes in the kinds and amounts of pollutants.
For example, tire fuel contains more zinc than fuel oil, so zinc particles in the air might increase. No. 6 fuel oil contains more nickel, so that element might decrease when tire fuel is substituted for part of the oil.
"My guess is these will be fairly subtle changes, that's why we need sophisticated sampling devices," he said.
Meanwhile, the Health Department has expanded a daily reporting system from hospital emergency rooms in Rutland and Burlington to include Porter Hospital in Middlebury and two Addison County primary care offices, Lohff said. They will report the number of people who come in for emergency visits with specific kinds of complaints.
"We are going to use that same data and look more closely at the respiratory complaints," Lohff said. "If we find anything that would be a risk, we would have an advisory."
More likely, he said, "We will look at the data every business day, but won't be able to make any good determination until after the tire burn is complete whether it had any effect on specific respiratory complaints."
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