Landfill permit granted to Wolverine

by Richard Lamb, Advance Editor

The next piece to the puzzle has fallen in place for Wolverine. But the waiting game is still on for the major permit needed before the construction of a 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant is to be built in the Calcite Quarry. On Monday the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) issued a permit for construction of a Type III landfill to Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative. ?Based upon our review of your application, your construction permit was granted,? said Steven R. Sliver, chief of the storage tank and solid waste section of the waste and hazardous materials division (WHMD) of the DNRE in a letter dated March 15.

According to the permit, the expiration date of the construction permit is ?one year from the date of issuance unless development of the facility begins within the year.? THERE IS NO word on the air quality permit, the major permit needed by Wolverine. The state regulatory agency had promised a decision on the permit by the end of 2009, but as of today the DNRE has yet to say yes or no to the request filed by Wolverine in September, 2007.

A possible grant for some $150 million of stimulus funding might be left on the table, should a decision not be made by April 15. That is the deadline Wolverine has to apply for Phase II funding grant for construction on a carbon sequestration system for the proposed coal-fired power plant. The Wolverine Combustion Byproduct Disposal Facility, as it is called in the permit, consists of 221.95 acres located in the boundaries of the Calcite Quarry. It consists of three parcels of land in Section 25 and 36 of Rogers Township and section 30 or Pulawski Township.

THE NEW disposal area cannot by utilized until the DNRE issues an operating license. Under the categories of special conditions and variances appears the word ?none.? The DNRE also included a list of comments made in public, both for and against the landfill, and the staff response to each one. There were 30 comments against the landfill and nine comments included in the report which were in support of the landfill. Included here are a few of those:

AGAINST

Comment questioner in public forum: Landfill should be one mile further from Lake Huron. Written response from WHMD staff in final report: Closest distance to Lake Huron is 3,200 feet, which exceeds minimum distance by 500 feet, as established by the Presque Isle County Solid Waste Management Plan (County Plan). Comment: The area has karst geology and should not be used for landfill. Response: Hydrogeological studies using a number of advanced techniques did not identify any active karst features either at or below the ground surface. Comment: Quarry is bad location because groundwater below is in unprotected aquifer. Response: The location meets or exceeds the location criteria in the County Plan, as does the interior design. Groundwater below the site would not be hydraulically connected to area drinking water supplies. Comment: Cancer rates are too high in Rogers City and the landfill would add more toxics to area. Response: Waste disposed in a landfill would be contained and managed in an environmentally safe manner. The WHMD is not aware of any studies on cancer rates in the Rogers City area. Comment: The Department of Natural Resources, the predecessor to the DNRE, was opposed to this site in the 1980s. Response: A March 14, 1988 analysis indicated the site could be developed as a landfill, if the state rules for liner requirements were met. Comment: Fluidized bed technology which may produce hydrogen bromide in the air and degrade the liner of the landfill. Response: High-density polyethylene is a chemically inert liner material and is widely used nationwide. DNRE staff does not anticipate concentrated bromine concentrations in the ash or leachate. Any bromine that may be released would be neutralized by the large amounts of unreacted lime in the combustion byproducts. Comment: Children in area will be at risk because landfill will contain mercury, arsenic and other toxics: Response: Typical combustion byproducts contain a variety of metals at low concentrations. The application promised containment of the waste with a double-composite liner system to prevent contaminant releases to the water, ground or air. This system meets or exceeds requirements. Comment: State should defer decision until new federal rules on coal

ash are finalized. Response: DNRE cannot by law defer a decision on the application. The DNRE has 120 days to make the final decision. Comment: American Indian grave sites may be impacted by the landfill. Response: No historical settlements were identified in the environmental assessment. The area has never been mined like the rest of the Calcite Quarry and during the 1930s; unused rock from the quarry was deposited there, raising elevations above the natural grade. Therefore, the base grades of the proposed landfill will be approximately 10 to 20 feet above the original ground surface.

SUPPORTING

Comment: A number of people expressed support for the application, citing the need for jobs in the area. Response: Jobs and economic growth are not factors that may be used directly in the WHMD?s decision. However, statements of local officials who support Presque Isle County?s previous determination that the application is consistent with the County Plan can be considered. Comment: Wolverine has proven that it is a responsible company and has proposed the best available technology for the landfill. Response: WHMD staff agrees that Wolverine has proposed a liner system consistent with the best landfill designs in the nation for nonhazardous waste. Comment: The proposed landfill meets or exceeds all regulations and all isolation distances in the law. Response: WHMD staff agrees that the proposed landfill meets or exceeds required isolation distances under Part 115 and in the County Plan. Comment: Wolverine did extensive borings around the quarry and found no evidence of active karst formation. Response: An independent review of the data by staff found that there is no evidence of active karst features at the site that could impact the stability of the proposed landfill. Comment: Groundwater below the proposed landfill becomes channelized and is easy to monitor. Response: WHMD staff acknowledges the channelized condition of the groundwater at the proposed landfill site and believes that the monitoring program is sufficient to detect a significant release from the proposed landfill, should it occur. So with the landfill permit in hand, another step in the long process has been made. ?Five years is a long time to be in the development cycle and obviously things ebb and flow in the world. The important things about what haven?t changed are what is keeping us in this fight,? said Eric Baker, president and chief executive officer of Wolverine at a community update last month. The wait has been costly for Wolverine, he said, but Wolverine has no plans of backing off. ?It seems remarkable how much time has been spent to get where we are today and how much we have yet to do,? Baker told a group of some 70 invited community leaders in February. ?We knew it was going to be a long race, but we didn?t expect that we would be running the whole race with people hanging on to our legs as much as they are. But we will keep working through it.?

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