Note: Industrial biomass is bad for forest health, bad for human health, and as study after study is beginning to show, is a significant driver of climate change due to its greenhouse gas emissions.
This news from Oregon comes just as the biomass industry in the US Southeast is embarking on a spate of biomass plant construction, which would be powered by greatly expanding monoculture tree plantations in the region. This would have devastating effects on native forests, especially if they include invasive genetically engineered eucalyptus trees.
You can help us stop this risk by clicking here to sign GJEP’s petition to Stop GE Trees.
-The GJEP Team
By Christina Williams, February 6 2013. Source: Sustainable Business Oregon
One of Iberdrola Renewables biomass facilities would be built adjacent to its natural gas plant in Klamath Falls. Photo: Sustainable Business Oregon
A spate of air pollution bad enough to be in violation of the Clean Air Act and comparable to the well-known pollution in Beijing has prompted an activist group to request an emergency moratorium on biomass plant development in southeastern Oregon’s Lake and Klamath counties.
Save Our Rural Oregon announced Wednesday that the group had sent letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Gov. John Kitzhaber requesting that biomass and biofuels projects in Klamath Falls and Lakeview be put on hold and no new or modified air quality discharge permits related to the projects be issues.
The group singles out three such projects in the works. Klamath Bio Energy is working on approval for a plant in Klamath Falls. Iberdrola Renewables has two in the works, one in Lakeview and another in Klamath Falls.
Iberdrola announced last October that the proposed Lakeview plant — which halted construction in 2011 — would emit twice the originally proposed amount of emissions. Continue reading
Christy Rodgers
Global Justice Ecology Project
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Jeff Conant
