Biomass Plant Needs Scrutiny

When the idea for a biomass power plant in Torrance County was proposed several years ago, it was widely hailed as a win-win situation.

The $74 million, 35-megawatt plant would create jobs and economic development for a poor rural region and provide more reliable electric power in an area that is sometimes prone to outages when the wind blows a little too hard.

The power plant would be fueled by biomass — woody material including trees removed from overgrown local forests as well as abundant pion and juniper harvested from rangeland throughout the region. Removing the trees from the dense woods would improve forest and watershed health and cut down fire danger, while clearing shrubs and brush from the wide open spaces would reduce demand on the area’s vital aquifer.

What’s more, excess heat from the plant would be used to warm a vast greenhouse operation adjacent to the power plant site south of Estancia — possibly allowing the greenhouse to expand and leading to still more jobs.

There wasn’t much not to like about the proposal, and many area residents and local officials — as well as this newspaper — clambered aboard the bandwagon.

Now, though, some Torrance County folks seem to be finding things they don’t like about the facility proposed by Western Water and Power Production LLC.

That kind of thing can happen when people start talking about smokestack emissions in quantities like tons — as they did when the New Mexico Environment Department held a public hearing in Estancia last month on Western Water and Power’s application for an air quality permit for the plant.

Air pollution is not the only thing that has some residents concerned.

Some say the claims that removing biomass from forests and rangeland will help the aquifer are unfounded, and a recent study commissioned by soil and water conservation districts across the region seems to lend credence to that argument.

Others worry the plant itself will use too much water for cooling, or that trucks hauling the woody fuel from hither and yon will clog roads and raise dust across the valley.

Still others fear the plan to harvest much of the initial biomass supply from 43,000 acres of state trust land near Gran Quivira could be harmful to the land as well as archaeological resources.

These are all valid concerns, but whether the biomass plant will actually cause any or all of these problems is difficult to say, and plenty of people are lined up on both sides.

The air quality public hearing begun in March will continue next week, beginning at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Estancia Community Center. While the scope of the hearing doesn’t include many of the issues raised by opponents, it is an opportunity for anyone on either side to learn more about what exactly is being proposed and how it might affect their lives.

The Mountain View Telegraph has supported the biomass power plant proposal in principle, while urging thorough research and due diligence in determining if indeed the plant is in the best interests of the Estancia Valley and its residents. That position has not changed, and clearly more scrutiny of the proposal is needed.

(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.