Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 8, 1993 TAG: 9312080110
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE and CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Representatives from the Sierra Club, the New River Valley Environmental Coalition and the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste are upset about Tech's plans to build a steam-producing boiler that would burn 5.5 tons of coal per hour.
The opposition groups, who favor a gas-fired boiler, say emissions from a coal-fired boiler would have an adverse health effect on town residents and local vegetation.
"We demand that Virginia Tech and the state of Virginia halt this permitting process at once until environmental, economic and alternative solutions are explored," Pete Castelli, regional director of the citizens clearinghouse, said at a Tuesday news conference.
Spencer Hall, assistant vice president for facilities at Tech, said the university won't withdraw its application for a draft permit from the Department of Environmental Quality.
Plans for the $8.5 million power plant expansion have been in the works since 1978; and while alternatives - including a gas-fired boiler - were explored, another coal-burning boiler would be more cost effective, he said.
"We are professionals in the steam producing business," he said. "We're a coal-burning plant and always have been."
Tech already has one large-capacity boiler, but it doesn't produce enough steam to heat the 600,000-square-feet of new buildings built since 1980, Hall said.
"We need a more reliable source," he said.
The Department of Environmental Quality held a public meeting on the proposed permit Nov. 22 and a hearing is scheduled for Jan. 5.
Both of those meetings were advertised in the paper, as required by law, but Castelli said Tech should have done more to publicize the project.
"A university that is part of the community should make more of an effort to inform the public and the students of this major proposal," he said.
Hall noted that the Department of Environmental Quality, not Tech, was responsible for scheduling the meetings.
"They were not set up nor run by Tech," he said. The university did hold an informational meeting about the project in March.
Bob Merrill, environmental engineer with the Department of Environmental Quality's regional air division, said the permit is on track to be approved within a few months.
Hall said the university hopes to have the boiler in use by 1997.
The department has required that Tech install more efficient baghouses and scrubbers to remove sulfur and nitrogen compounds, Merrill said.
The boiler would then meet the state requirement for using "best available control technology," required of all new air-pollution sources, taking into account economic feasibility.
Pollution from the boiler each year would amount to: 4.8 tons of particulate matter, 39 tons of sulfur dioxide, 75.7 tons of nitrogen oxides, 53.6 tons of carbon monoxide and 0.6 tons of volatile organic compounds.
These levels, except for nitrogen oxides, are well below one set of federal requirements, Merrill said. The agency conducted a computer-model program on the nitrogen oxides that showed the level would not significantly deteriorate the surrounding air quality.
Bob Saunders, compliance and enforcement head of the regional air division, said the new boiler should not cause much of a concern. Rather, Tech's older boilers are "borderline, at best, with their visible emissions."
The university's major coal boiler was built in 1955 and is "grandfathered" in under federal law, so it doesn't have to meet the stringent emission standards required by the Clean Air Act.
Although state inspectors never have documented a violation, the agency has urged Tech to put in pollution controls on its boilers.
Hall said Tech studied the issue, but found the $1.5 million project too expensive.
The agency has received complaints over the years from Blacksburg residents about soot and ash from the coal-fired boilers falling on their homes and cars, Saunders said.
More than likely, Tech will have to install pollution-control devices on the older boilers in the next few years as the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 begin to take effect, he added.
by CNB