Residents Plan to Battle Community Energy System

By 250 News

Residents start to take their seats at a community meeting to talk about the community energy system

Prince George, B.C. –  City Hall is facing another battle over  air quality, and this one  will centre on its own plans to build a community energy system. The system is being billed as using bio mass to create energy to heat   the City’s buildings downtown.  The plan claims the process will create less than 1 tonne of fine particulate in exchange for the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is one tonne too many says Dr. Marie Hay. 

The local paediatrician says  while the City claims  the emissions will be no worse than  8 city buses,  she points out  that would be “Eight city buses running 24-7, just 85 metres from this school”( Sacred Heart on Patricia Boulevard) She  told a gathering of about 50 concerned residents that  pm 2.5 is the worst particulate, that it gets  to the very depths of  the lungs and into inner ears,  she says it causes  chronic infections,  asthma and  cancers. She says pm2.5 can pass through the placenta to the fetus and can cause hardening of the arteries.  While she is trying to mobilize the  medical community against the community  energy plant, she says  those she has spoken to  within Northern Health think   adding  fine particulate to the Prince George Airshed is “madness.”

Dr. Hay also wonders what will be wafting in the air when thousands of tonnes of woodchips are dumped at the site of the energy system. “Wood chips are full of spores, mould and fungi and if they waft into the air, they can cause all sorts of other health problems.”  She says it is inevitable the community energy system will eventually be creating electricity that will be sold to B.C. Hydro and that means the use of electro magnetics and high voltage lines, elements she says have been linked to increased risks of leukemia. 

All in all, not a pretty health picture.

It is for these reasons some residents of the Miller Addition want to raise awareness about the impacts of the $5.3 million dollar energy plant that is supposed to be built on Scotia between Fourth and Fifth Avenues.

There is a significant deadline.  The residents want to force a major environmental assessment, and they want to halt the project before June 30^th which is the deadline for the Federal Government handing over its share of the project.

PACHA, the Peoples Action Committee for Healthy Air says it will support all efforts to stop the energy plant.

According to Dr. Hay, the European experience has such plants built outside of urban airsheds, closer to a biomass source.  One woman in attendance said the real question is not is this is a bad idea for the bowl area of Prince George, but should such a facility be built in Prince George at all?

Former City Councillor Dan Rogers told the group he  is still a member of the Board  of the Community Energy Association. Rogers says  there are  many alternatives to a bio mass  burning system, like  geo thermal, and heat exchange. Rogers says while the City's plans to reduce greenhouse gases are admirable and ambitious,  the plans are not what the average person  supports  "I think if you ask the residents of this community if their priority is to reduce greenhouse gases and save the planet, or  to improve our air quality and save lives, the answer would be no surprise."

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