An environmental group says that the proposed Fibrowatt plant in Surry County would release pollutants up to six miles from its plant as it burns chicken litter to make electricity.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League released its report last week based on a computer model that found that the Fibrowatt incinerator would exceed the state's toxic air-pollutant limits, contaminating the area around the plant with arsenic, chromium, mercury and other substances.
When ingested, those chemicals can damage kidneys, livers and blood cells in humans and can cause cancer.
In March, the Surry County Board of Commissioners rezoned 117 acres near Elkin along the Yadkin River for the $140 million power plant. It would create at least 80 jobs.
The site is near a Duke Energy Corp. substation, poultry producers, Interstate 77 and N.C. 268.
In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law requiring power companies to begin using renewable-energy sources. It also requires that at least 900,000 megawatt hours of electricity sold to retail customers by 2014 must come from poultry litter.
Lou Zeller, the league's science director and the author of the report, said that the Fibrowatt plant's emissions would threaten the environment and endanger public health in Surry County.
However, Rupert Fraser, Fibrowatt's chief executive officer and founder, said that the report "was complete nonsense" and that the defense league was "scare-mongering."
"We find it surprising that they don't think that the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources can do its job," Fraser said in a telephone interview from the company's headquarters in Langhorne, Pa.
Fibrowatt must adhere to the state environmental regulations to operate the plant, Fraser said. Fibrowatt is preparing its application for a state permit.
Stephen Lester, the science director of the Center of Health, Environment and Justice of Falls Church, Va., told about 50 people at a forum last night in Elkin that "Fibrowatt would not have any control or know what chemicals are in the chicken waste."
The waste would include organic arsenic, which farmers use to increase their chickens' growth, Lester also said.
Zeller based his study on Fibrowatt's plant in Benson, Minn., which uses a single boiler to burn poultry litter. The computer modeling using emissions data from this plant showed that Fibrowatt's plant in Surry would exceed North Carolina's toxic-air pollutant limits for chromium.
"The computer model indicates that the pollution leaving the smoke stack would create pollution levels at ground level as the poisons move downwind," the report says.
State air-quality officials generated a computer model for a hypothetical poultry manure incinerator. It showed excessive arsenic emissions that would come from the plant, according to the report. Those emissions would be three times the state's limit.
The group's report also projected that chromium emissions from the plant would be 265 percent higher than the state's limit.
Fraser said that the report's findings "are just wrong" because they are based on faulty data. The Fibrowatt plant would not add any additional pollutants to the environment, and it would remove polluting chemicals from the chicken litter, he said.
The plant would capture 99 percent of the dust particles from the chicken litter, Fraser said.
Two league officials defended their report, saying it is based on emissions' data from Fibrowatt's plant in Minnesota.
Janet Marsh, the league's executive director, said that her organization released its report so that the public would know about potential pollutants from the Fibrowatt plant.
■ John Hinton can be reached at 727-7299 or at jhinton@wsjournal.com.
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