Can Evergreen Board of Trustees be Trusted?

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Mike Coday

Has Evergreen Been Misleading the State and the Public
About Their Biomass Feasibility Study and Construction Plans?

First, a little history of biomass: Biomass was included in national clean energy legislation in 2009. The devil is definitely in the details with biomass as a clean energy source. Quick growing biomass fuels such as grasses or algae type of fuels that could reliably be shown to replace the burning of fossil fuels have the most promise as a biomass fuel that could help to slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but burning biomass for energy is essentially regressive. The incineration or gasification of biomass creates large amounts of new greenhouse gases under a theoretical scheme of carbon neutrality in a time that calls for an absolute reduction of greenhouse gas production. The building climate crisis will force us to get this right sooner or later. When we get it right, biomass will not be part of the solution. It may be ten years before that is clear or it may be 50 years, but in geological and climate change time frames, that is a bullseye. You are invited to mark my words on that.

Governor Chris Gregoire's office announced grants of 31 million dollars as part of the State Jobs Act Awards on October 7, 2010. At the top of the list with the largest single grant award was a grant to The Evergreen State College (Evergreen) for 3.7 million dollars to “Install a biomass gasification plant that will allow the college to significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and replace failing steam converters, steam valves and condensate piping.” Jason Wettstein at Evergreen has stated that this application was submitted to the State in September. Evergreen issued no press release regarding this grant funding and Wettstein was unable to cite a single instance in which Evergreen received a grant of this size and did not issue a press release.

Evergreen continues to claim that they are engaged in a feasibility study of the biomass conversion and have made no decision at this time to proceed with the construction of the biomass plant. When asked about the feasibility study Jason Wettstein responded on November 4th, “We indicated to Works in Progress previously that we would be exploring funding for this project in parallel with our feasibility study, but that we would return funds if we find this project is not feasible with regard to sustainability criteria. That has not changed. Use of grant funds for construction is contingent upon our being convinced that we have found a more sustainable outcome. Achieving progress toward a carbon-neutral campus is the goal in conducting this feasibility study. The grant topic was not intentionally omitted... we appreciate the opportunity in your publication to emphasize that while achieving funding is part of what would make this project feasible, it is far from the sole or most important criterion. Funding gathered will be returned if the technology under consideration does not meet the goal of bringing us closer to carbon neutrality."

When the Governor's Office and the Department of Commerce were asked about the possibility that Evergreen's feasibility study might result in the return of this funding, Penny Thomas at Commerce had this to say: "In their application, TESC does not mention the possibility of returning the grant funds to Commerce for any reason, and Commerce did not make the award to TESC with any such stipulation. These Jobs Act projects are sometimes complicated and require state-of-the-art engineering and construction solutions. Additionally, permitting is sometimes problematic. So in the event that any of our grant recipients finds out that their proposed project doesn’t meet the design standards or goals that they set out in the application, then it is possible they could “return” the award.

Bottom line - this grant was not awarded with the understanding that the grant monies might not be needed. We assume that the project is moving forward. Additionally, we have not had any Jobs Act awards returned to us to date, nor are we aware of any that might not be moving forward as planned."

Evergreen spokespersons have not responded to questions about these conflicting stories at deadline.

Evergreen did hold a public meeting with an opportunity for the public to speak directly to the Evergreen Board of Trustees on Wednesday, November 17th, but the spokespersons for Evergreen failed to broadcast this opportunity across the media and listservs that they monitor. Many folks who clearly would have liked the opportunity to speak directly to the Trustees were denied the opportunity. Informed and energized citizens who showed up a minute late to the poorly publicized meeting with the Board of Trustees were denied the opportunity to speak.

Citizens who have doubts about the wisdom of biomass power generation are organizing at this point to request that the Governor's office and the Department of Commerce freeze the funds for construction of the Evergreen biomass plant pending an investigation of whether Evergreen misrepresented the status of the project in their grant application to the Department of Commerce. A move to ask the Evergreen Board of Trustees to schedule another open meeting with the public is also underway.

For more information on that process or to learn more about why people oppose biomass, I encourage you to visit the following websites:

www.nobiomassburn.org – Biomass opposition in Washington State
http://sheltonblog.net/ - Biomass opposition in Mason County
www.nobiomass.org – Biomass opposition in Wisconsin
www.nobiomassburning.org – Biomass opposition in Massachusetts
http://www.nobiomass.com - Biomass opposition in Australia