ROCKPORT, Ind. —Stern warnings of environmental harm clashed with appeals to create badly needed jobs Wednesday night at a public hearing about a proposed coal gasification plant in Spencer County.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management public meeting and hearing attracted about 200 people to South Spencer High School.
At issue: whether the state agency's Office of Air Quality ultimately will issue an air permit for the proposed $2.65 billion plant, which would be located about 30 miles east of Evansville. The facility is intended and designed to convert Illinois Basin coal and petroleum coke into pipeline-quality substitute natural gas and liquefied carbon dioxide. The developer is Rockport-based Indiana Gasification, LLC; a subsidiary of the New York investment firm Leucadia National Corp.
Proponents, a group that included several labor union officials, touted what they said would be new jobs created in what they called the most environmentally friendly way feasible.
"When the rubber hits the road, this is about jobs," said Ferman Yearby, president of the Rockport City Council, which passed a resolution of support for the project.
Afterward, Yearby said construction jobs alone could number in the thousands, and many of those workers could buy homes in the area for jobs that could last as long as four years.
"That will indirectly create many associated jobs within our community," he said afterward. "Once the (facility) is built, you're going to have at least 300, maybe 400, permanent jobs, and these are $75,000 a year jobs."
Opponents said they value economic development and new jobs, too, but not at a cost of harming the environment by the questionable use of coal.
Ryan Zaricki, a North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners-certified solar thermal installer based in Wadesville, pointed to what he called a hard reality.
"The coal that we dig out of the ground, no matter how we process it, no matter how we turn that rock into power, it has the same elements coming out of the ground and going into the air no matter what the process is," said Zaricki, a native of Rockport.
"If we process it to burn more cleanly in our existing power plants, it doesn't mean that the elements of dirtiness aren't there. It just means that they're left in the coalfields in West Virginia, they're left in the sludge ponds above elementary schools in Tennessee, and then they're going to be left in the strip mines and in the water in Southern Indiana."
Wendell Hibdon, business manager for Plumbers and Steamfitters U.A. Local 136, said environmental perfection isn't possible or practical.
"There's no such thing as clean coal, I agree — but there is cleaner coal," Hibdon said.
But Owensboro Ky., resident James Lacy Kamuf, who said he is a former power plant pollution monitoring engineer, questioned why Indiana has no proposed solar and wind-powered electric generation plant.
"People are saying you can't do solar, but look at Germany. They're leading the way, and they have a latitude equal to Alaska," Kamuf said.
The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in November approved the Indiana Finance Authority's 30-year contract to buy synthetic natural gas from the plant. Gov. Mitch Daniels promoted the deal as one that would be locking in low rates for Indiana's natural gas users, increasing the use of Indiana coal, and creating about 200 jobs.
Environmental permits are not the only hurdle still facing the project. The developers have sought a federal construction loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, but that has not yet been approved.
IDEM has drafted a roughly 800-page air permit, which the public may view on the IDEM website at www.idem.IN.gov or locally at the Spencer County Public Library in Rockport.
The state agency will consider written and oral remarks delivered Wednesday night and issue a written, final response to them. IDEM can make changes to the proposed permit based on the public input.