Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Pollution concerns in Port Townsend trigger request for second air monitor



 
PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Board of Health will ask the Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency and the Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill to add a second air monitoring unit in town to increase surveillance of emissions from the plant.

The seven members of the Board of Health unanimously passed a motion to send letters to both the agency and the mill with this request at a meeting last week.

The motion was made after public comments that followed a presentation from the state Department of Ecology on nanoparticles, which are extremely fine particles that are produced during the high-temperature burning — such as that of biomass waste — that can lodge in lungs and cause heart and lung illness.

“We had a lot of concerned citizens,” said Jefferson County Commissioner Phil Johnson, chairman of the county Board of Health, who also serves on the clean air agency board.

About a third of the approximately 30 people who attended the Thursday meeting spoke against a biomass boiler upgrade at the Port Townsend Paper mill.

The company, which does not allow interviews with the media, says on its website that the $55 million upgrade is expected to be finished this year.

Johnson also said he plans to phone the executive director of Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency, Fran McNair, today to  (more)

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20120221/news/302219994/pollution-concerns-in-port-townsend-trigger-request-for-second-air

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