An environmental group wants state regulators to consider Fibrowatt LLC's problems with its poultry-waste burning plant in Minnesota when the company applies for permits to operate its three proposed plants in North Carolina, including one in Surry County.
Fibrominn, the Fibrowatt plant in Benson, Minn., will pay a $65,000 fine and install a sulfur-dioxide monitor that will cost nearly $80,000 as part of an agreement it reached with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The fine and agreement will resolve the company's past failure to comply with state air-quality rules and permit conditions, according to the Minnesota agency.
Fibrominn began operating in May 2007. The company could not be reached this week for comment.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League has sent letters to Marion Deerhake of Raleigh, a member of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission, and Robert Gruber, the executive director of the public staff for the N.C. Utility Commission.
David Mickey, a spokesman for the league, urged Deerhake and Gruber to consider Fibrowatt's experience in Minnesota "and avoid the problems encountered there."
"Unfortunately for Minnesota, permitting has proceeded with a trial-and-error approach that resulted in an ineffective permit and still unresolved emission limits," Mickey wrote. "The league does not want to see the Minnesota experience repeated in North Carolina."
Fibrowatt, a Pennsylvania company, offers renewable energy generated by burning chicken waste.
Fibrowatt and utilities are facing deadlines, but Fibrowatt has not applied for any state permits for its planned plants near Elkin and in Montgomery and Stanly counties because it has not reached purchase agreements with Duke Energy Corp. and Progress Energy Corp.
The N.C. General Assembly passed a law in 2007 that requires utilities to begin getting some energy from hog and chicken manure by 2012.
The law also requires that at least 900,000 megawatt hours of electricity sold to retail customers by 2014 must come from poultry litter.
State Rep. Sarah Stevens of Mount Airy represents Surry and Alleghany counties in the N.C. House. Stevens said she is considering adding an amendment to a bill in the General Assembly next year that would suspend the law that requires utilities to get some energy from animal waste by 2012.
Stevens said that the measure may be necessary because Fibrowatt has not applied for any state permits to operate its planned plants, and she doubts whether the company or the utilities will meet the goals outlined in the law.
Stevens said she questions whether consumers will see any cost savings from electricity generated from chicken waste and she is concerned about the plants' potential effects on the environment.
Several community groups have said that the planned Fibrowatt plants would produce noxious odors and toxic emissions. Fibrowatt denied those claims, saying that its plants would not add any additional pollutants to the environment and that they would remove polluting chemicals from the chicken litter.
Poultry farming is a $3.4 billion industry in the state, and North Carolina has nearly 5,000 poultry farms. The planned Fibrowatt plant in Surry would be near a Duke Energy substation, poultry producers, Interstate 77 and N.C. 268.
Surry officials have said that the planned plant would be called FibroHills and would add $140 million to the county's tax base and create about 100 jobs. Surry has spent about $800,000 to buy and develop the plant site.
jhinton@wsjournal.com
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