NY Times: Environmentalists Object to Turkey Waste Biomass Plant in MN.

[NNadir]

BENSON, Minn. — For anyone curious about what thousands of tons of turkey litter looks like, piled high into an indoor olfactory-assaulting mountain of manure, this old railroad stop on the extreme edge of alternative energy production is the place to be.

Derek Miller, a plant employee, extracting a sample of litter from the bed of a truck for testing.
Thanks to the abundance of local droppings, Benson is home to a new $200 million power plant that burns turkey litter to produce electricity. For the last few weeks now, since before generating operations began in mid-May, turkey waste has poured in from nearby farms by the truckload, filling a fuel hall several stories high.

The power plant is a novelty on the prairie, the first in the country to burn animal litter (manure mixed with farm-animal bedding like wood chips). And it sits at the intersection of two national obsessions: an appetite for lean meat and a demand for alternative fuels

But it has also put Benson, a town of 3,376 some three hours west of Minneapolis, on the map in another way: as a target of environmental advocates who question the earth-friendliness of the operation.

...A related issue is that the electricity is expensive, as called for in a utility contract that led to the plant’s construction, and that it requires a lot of input for a rather small output. Marty Coyne of Platts Emissions Daily, a newsletter that analyzes issues related to the energy markets, said it would take 10 waste-burning plants the size of the one here to equal the energy generated by one medium-size coal-fired plant...

...But biomass burning, as it is called, produces its own pollutants. According to information in one of its federal air permits, the plant is a major source of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen sulfide...

...We shouldn’t just assume that because something is called an energy source, it’s a good one,” said J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director at Fresh Energy, an advocacy group in St. Paul. “You have to evaluate: where did this waste product come from? You have to look at the whole life cycle, how the plants were grown, what the turkey was fed. You want to be careful about what you’re putting into the air and water.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/science/earth/06manure.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science

[XemaSab]

1. I was not happy with this article

It was really lacking in waste-to-energy information.

[NNadir]

2. I could write a book about energy reporting in the New York Times.

Their favorite nuclear "scientist" for many years was Ralph Nader.

[blueworld]

3. I would dearly love to see more debate about these alt. energy sources in MSM n/t

[Vogon_Glory]

4. It May Not Be Efficient, BUT

The plant may not be all that efficient, but it does do something useful with those tons of turkey litter that were piling up. Unless someone has a brighter idea as to what to do with the turkey waste, burning the stuff to generate electricity is as good a way as any to see to it that the waste doesn't get into the water supply.

Of course, burning coal also means strip mining the coal out of the western prairies, transporting it long distance on long, ground-shaking unit coal trains, then burning it in conventional, polluting, coal-fired power plants.