Pellet plant options land: Citing economy, Liberty sawmill cuts back
By Ernest Herndon | Enterprise-Journal
Posted: 08/01/08 - 12:04:18 pm CDT
A wood pellet company paid Pike County $10,000 this week for an option to buy 10 acres in the Metro-Pike Industrial Park, officials said Thursday.
Indeck Energy Services of Buffalo Grove, Ill., plans to build the mill on a site on the west side of Highway 51 just south of the industrial park rail spur.
Supervisors approved the option and authorized Southwest Mississippi Planning and Development District to apply for a grant of up to $1 million to build a rail spur to the site.
A spur would cost an estimated $580,000, said Pike County Economic Development District executive director Britt Herrin. Supervisors agreed to provide the 10 percent local match required by the Katrina Supplemental Community Development Block Grant.
Indeck awaits Department of Environmental Quality approval for an air permit. The proposed plant would cost $10 million to $12 million and employ 15 to 20 people.
Herrin said the plant would buy waste wood material, ranging from bark to sawdust.
“It’ll certainly have some benefits for increased logging and increased hauling,” Herrin said.
Pellets are used as industrial fuel, with the main markets being in Europe, he said.
Board of supervisors president Tazwell Bowsky — who toured a pellet mill at Amory on Tuesday along with Herrin and supervisors Venton Ray Adams and Lexie Elmore — touted the environmental benefits of wood pellets.
“We can also say that McComb is going green, because that’s what this plant is all about,” he said.
John Mabry, who serves on a Mississippi Loggers Association committee to address loggers’ current economic woes, said the mill is welcome news for the battered timber industry.
“It’s another market for our wood,” he said. “As landowners it gives you another market to go to with your timber.”
Mabry is president of Sam Mabry Lumber Co. in Liberty, which shut down its planer mill and dry kiln in mid-July and has laid off 12 employees. Mabry said the cutback is “directly” a result of the economy.
He said the market for 2-by boards is down due to a weak housing market. The Mabry mill is producing 1-by boards using chip-and-saw logs and is not taking big logs, he said.
Meanwhile, the DEQ is accepting public comments on Indeck’s air emissions permit application, said Scott Hodges, chief of the Timber and Wood Products Branch of Environmental Permits Division.Hodges said the mill would emit “particulate matter.”
“It could be anything from sawdust down to really small particulate,” he said, citing nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides among emissions. “I think what their emissions are will be from burning of the wood. They have a dryer. We’re talking about fuel combustion particulates ... what you would typically find out of a wood-burning process.”
A copy of the proposed draft permit is available for public review at the Magnolia Library. The public has until Aug. 31 to comment. The DEQ typically issues a permit a week or two after the deadline unless there is opposition, in which case a public hearing may be held, Hodges said.
To comment, write Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Office of Pollution Control, 515 E. Amite St., Jackson, MS 39201, or call (601) 961-5171
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Robert wrote on Aug 2, 2008 10:53 PM:
That is all. "