Mountaire will not use poultry litter for fuel ♥

Published in the Courier-Tribune on September 14, 2011

by Hugh Martin

CANDOR — Just two days before the Town of Candor was to hold two public hearings Monday to address zoning changes to allow Mountaire Farms to burn poultry waste at a proposed biomass energy facility, the company chose to pull the issue from the table.

A Mountaire Farms contractor notified Mayor Richard Britt that the company would use wood waste as its fuel, not poultry waste.

Brownie Newman, managing member of CHP Solutions, an Asheville company that would operate the proposed facility, notified Candor officials of the change in an email on Saturday.

“Rather than utilizing poultry litter as the fuel source for the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system at the Mountaire Farms Feedmill, we believe the best approach is to simply utilize wood waste as the fuel source,” Newman wrote.

Bill Bruton of Candor, who has been leading the opposition to the facility, wasn’t impressed.

Citing research figures Bruton said, “Wood incineration is four percent more polluting than a new coal plant, only 11 percent less polluting than a chicken-litter plant, and 48 percent more polluting than an existing coal plant.”

Bruton is opposed to any type of biomass facility being located within the city limits.

“While I suspect it’s true that wood puts fewer heavy metals into play, with the exception of sulfur dioxide, wood puts more of these particles in the air than a new coal plant and more carbon monoxide than an existing coal plant or poultry litter,” he said.

In the email, Newman said, “While we believe that many of the statements made over the past several months about the proposal to use poultry litter as a renewable fuel have been inaccurate and misleading, rather than extending the debate on those issues, we would prefer to move forward with an approach that can receive broad community support.

“In terms of using wood as the fuel source for the project, these types of wood heating systems have been used for many decades in North Carolina. There is a very large number operating all across North Carolina, including the local area.”

Judy Stevens, executive director of the Montgomery Economic Development Corp., said that Jordan Lumber Company, near Mt. Gilead, has been burning wood at their facility for years.

The Candor Planning Board met twice in August to consider two separate ordinance amendments, one that would allow the change of fuel sources by local industries and allow the generation of electricity by an industry for their own use or for sale to the local utility.