Gary environmental group to file petition over air permit issued for upcoming biofuel plant
Environmental group Gary Advocates for Responsible Development announced that the group would be filing a petition Friday with the Indiana Office of Environmental Adjudication in response to air permits issued to Fulcrum BioEnergy LLC.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management approved the permit for a new biofuel plant in Gary on Aug. 16. The plant will produce jet fuel from feedstock processed from municipal waste at two future facilities, one on either side of the Illinois-Indiana border.
GARD is filing the petition due to public health concerns over the plant’s potential air emissions standards.
“The petition charges that the permit was issued based on inadequate information about the feedstock that will be used,” Kimmie Gordon, GARD member and founder of the nonprofit Brown Faces Green Spaces, said on Thursday.
Fulcrum representatives have said the $600 million biorefinery is expected to process 700,000 tons of feedstock per year in order to produce around 31 million gallons of low-carbon jet fuel.
Feedstock is comprised of nonhazardous organic and carbon-based fraction of household trash. Between 90 and 100 trucks per day will deliver the feedstock in enclosed trailers. The feedstock is then gasified, a commercially proven technology that breaks down the feedstock at a high temperature turning it into a gas, officials said. Nothing is burned or incinerated. The gasification process is an enclosed loop.
“We are confident in IDEM’s decision on the merits of our application and will continue to work with the state as the process goes on,” Flyn van Ewijk, director of project development at Fulcrum BioEnergy, said in a statement.
But GARD believes that feedstock is a potentially harmful source and could lead to further polluting in what is already one of the most heavily air polluted regions in the country.
“The people in the community surrounding the proposed Fulcrum facility are already overburdened with numerous other sources of pollution and have a higher risk of cancer and respiratory disease,” environmental consultant Doreen Carey said.
The group’s petition requests the air permit be revoked until Fulcrum provides more information regarding the composition of feedstock and the basis for all emission calculations, and IDEM does a full evaluation of the risk to public health.
“The bottom line is that Fulcrum and IDEM are saying ‘trust us’ without providing the facts or information that would allow us to do that,” Carey said.
