All posts in the topic Mid Town Burner in now in Southeast?: A short theatrical play in poor planning

2008 Jun 09 19:00 UTC

I enjoyed this piece by Steve Brandt,
http://www.startribune.com/local/19620124.html?location_refer=Minneapolis, "No
burner in Phillips"  I especially liked the part where the new plan is to plop
an unwanted incinator in SEMI. You know-- next to Como, Prospect Park, St.
Anthony Park, the University of Minnesota & Marcy Holmes, because the folks
over here are looking for a new boondoogle to add to the list.

So the funny part comes in that when you have a facility that was as ideally
suited as any, and you have(had) an end user for the energy produced, and you
can't get that model to work dispite $2M put in and 10 years of "good"
intentions.  If it fails under those circumstances, then how could it possibly
succeed now where their is no end user (customer), no facility, and a similar
type of disperate population that would be affected?

Anyone can look up census data and they should for the area, what a person who
is concerned about emission sources should do is map out TRI sources (Toxic
Release Inventory).  If you do you will find that Southeast is loaded with
them, some of the largest in the county have historically been located here.
Southeast Como and Prospect Park have actively engaged emitters in reducing
toxic emissions and have signed two good neighbor agreements with industries in
SEMI--the most recent was in May of this year with Greatbatch Globe tool to
reduce TCE (Trichloroethylene) emissions by about 70%.  Ritrama back in 2003
agreed to route all their toxics through an RTO (Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer)
which reduced 92,000lbs of Tolune from being spewed into the neighborhood.
Check Scorecard, you can see where the top polluters are--the historically were
in SEMI and in the industrial areas of SE & NE.
http://www.scorecard.org/community/who.tcl?fips_county_code=27053&name=HENNEPIN&zip_code=55414

Pushing a bad model and poor planning off onto another community is just not
acceptable.  Let the project die an honorable death.  Fair cop--its over, done.
This new emissions source did not make sense for Philips under the best
conditions.  It continues not to make sense in an area where there is a new
Gopher Football Stadium going in for 50,000+ people, in an area where 40,000
plus young students (children of someone) come to learn every day and where
many choose to make there home at night riding their bicycles to and from
campus along the way. It hardly makes sense to locate a new source in an area
where the Minneapolis Diagonal Bike trail runs through and where there has been
active planning to complete the Grand Rounds parkway through (Theordore Worth's
vision).  Organizing students can be a challenge, but on an issue that is black
or white (do you want to see black clouds and smokestakes or biketrails and
birds?), I find they act with swiftness unequaled. Oh that reminds me.  I
should talk with the Mn Daily about this.

Como, Prospect Park, and St. Anthony Park are already involved in dialogues
regarding the Rock-Tenn Biomass Burner just over the border in St. Paul.  This
is a replacement source (unlike the Mid-town source proposed) of steam that
stems from the loss of steam the from the former coal-fired Highbridge plant (a
conversion Como helped organize on and make possible).  The community has been
asked and required to help decide what should happen at that facility in an
open process which is the polar opposite of what the people have experienced
with the Midtown project. One burner at a time please.

People want to propose things--good--just do your homework first.  Coming to
this part of Minneapolis now with this type of proposal is looking a lot like
"the dog ate my homework" excuse to me.  Sustainability grade = "F"

Justin Eibenholzl
works in SE Como full time as Environmental Coordinator and Green Village
Coordinator