Here’s my stand on ACC plant

I dropped in on Arjun Singh’s Your Kamloops blog earlier today to read a post in which he concludes that I’m in favour of the ACC plant but don’t want to say so, possibly as some sort of editorial gimmick. I posted a comment to the item on his blog, but I’ll expand on it here.

When I’m in favour of something, I don’t mind saying so. I haven’t taken a position for or against the ACC project yet because I prefer to base my opinions on something other than false assumptions. However, the more I learn about the proposal, the more I lean toward supporting it.

I don’t have the analytical mind of an engineer, nor an engineer’s education, so I can’t pretend to understand all the technical details of incinerating railway ties at ultra-high temperatures and creating syngas for use as energy. Not that I haven’t read a fair amount of material on it, but I’m not ready to write a PhD thesis on it either.

But here’s what I do know. The Interior Health Authority, Interior Science Innovation Council, and the Ministry of Environment, agencies that employ highly qualified people in the areas of health sciences, biomass energy and environmental impact on our airshed say there’s no health risk, no appreciable emissions, and no danger from the creosote.

Setting aside the more hysterical claims about the project, since it’s a sensitive matter right now, the experts brought in to buck up opposition to the project are not experts in the specific gasification technology that will be used in the ACC plant. No doubt, they know a lot about airsheds and about close cousins of this particular technology, but they aren’t experts either in our airshed nor on the system developed at the University of North Dakota. That goes for the local doctors who’ve come out in opposition, as well.

As it becomes more and more apparent that there’s nothing to fear from the ACC project, and that its emissions pale in comparison to the exhaust coming out of the cars driven to work each day by TRU political science profs, for example, the tactics are shifting. Now, the rumour mill is all about how ACC can’t possibly complete the project, how it’s too small, how it doesn’t have the resources, how it doesn’t have a market for its energy.

Now, it would seem, everyone wants to write a business plan for ACC. I say, let ACC president Kim Sigurdson worry about those things. The issue at hand is whether he should have been granted an environmental permit, not whether he’ll make money. As I said in last week’s Armchair Mayor column, some influential people are involved in this campaign, and it’s all rather tawdry.

At the same time, those who are no longer able to question the gasification technology are spreading their net wider, trying to raise concerns about things such as dust, the supposed potential for mixing creosote ties with PCP ties, etc., even though those things are addressed in the application and permit.

In other words, nothing that has been raised as a challenge has stood up thus far.

Do I, or do I not, support ACC? Maybe. I hope I’ll know for sure after Sigurdson comes to town March 11 for the chamber of commerce public forum, at which time he’ll stand up and answer anything that’s thrown at him. How well he does so will make up my mind.