City, county officials push UW to ditch coal power entirely

Kristin Czubkowski  —  6/25/2008 5:48 am

Madison and Dane County elected officials are adding their voices to the chorus of those pushing the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state to create cleaner power downtown and around campus.

Nine members of Madison's City Council and six supervisors from the Dane County Board sent a letter to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley and state Administration Secretary Michael Morgan last week after the university and state held a town hall meeting to get public input on a long-term feasibility study of potential power sources for the university and state Capitol.

The study is part of a federal court order that the Sierra Club won last year. The court found that the university and the state Department of Administration made unauthorized upgrades to their coal-burning Charter Street power plant that did not include proper pollution controls.

The city and county officials expressed concern in the letters that the state and university were not fully considering the most environmentally friendly options for replacing the power plants. In particular, they want to see a 100 percent biomass power plant, which would burn such materials as switchgrass, wood chips and other woody products instead of the coal-biomass hybrid that the university is considering.

Ald. Robbie Webber, whose district borders the Charter Street plant and includes the West Campus Cogeneration Facility on Walnut Street, said most of the council members who signed the letter were those nearest to the campus and Capitol, but she added that she expects support from other council members in the near future.

Council members who signed the letter were Tim Gruber, Julia Kerr, Brenda Konkel, Larry Palm, Satya Rhodes-Conway, Marsha Rummel, Brian Solomon, Mike Verveer and Webber. The County Board supervisors who sent a separate but very similar letter were Chuck Erickson, John Hendrick, Wyndham Manning, Patrick Miles, Kyle Richmond and Barbara Vedder.

"The closer you are to these facilities, the more likely you are to be affected by them," Webber said. "How we generate our power has so many implications ... it has implications for people both close and farther away. Air quality, even water quality, noise, and our energy future and global warming."

John Harrod, director of the physical plant for UW-Madison, said several options are under consideration and that a 100 percent biomass power plant has not been ruled out, but he added that the consultants hired to complete the study are considering the environmental impact, cost and reliability of all potential power sources.

"The folks are looking at biomass as a reliable product once the market is developed," he said, adding that a hybrid plant would help develop the market for biomass in Wisconsin while maintaining the flexibility to get energy anywhere from 100 percent coal to 100 percent biomass.

Jennifer Feyerherm of the Sierra Club said a hybrid plant would eliminate some of the primary benefits of using biomass energy, such as using the ashes from biomass to replenish the soil, because the mercury and sulfur dioxide emissions from coal would mean the ash would have to go to a toxic waste facility rather than back into the soil. Biomass power plants also do not require the expensive pollution controls that coal plants do, she said, and would rely more on locally produced power sources.

Webber said the global trend toward paying for carbon emissions would mean that a coal plant could become much more expensive in future years. Dane County is already above the Environmental Protection Agency's health recommendations for fine particulate matter, which includes sulfur dioxide. The city of Madison was ranked 81st out of the 100 largest urban areas in terms of its carbon emissions, according to a study by the Brookings Institution released in May.

"What looks like a good choice now, when a power plant's going to last 30 or maybe even 50 years, may not be a good choice in the future," Webber said.

Harrod said the opinions of the city and county officials would be taken into account during planning, much like those from city residents attending last week's town hall meeting.

"There's a number of players sitting at the table, looking at the options," he said.

He added that the university and the state are also considering a district heating program that would cover the entire Isthmus area, replacing the Charter, Capitol and Walnut heating plants with one natural gas- and biomass-fueled plant, and delivering heat via underground steam tunnels throughout downtown. All government buildings, including the city government, and possibly private-sector buildings downtown could then "plug into" the system, he said, meaning they would not have to have their own boilers and furnaces.

Feyerherm and the letters from city and county officials all endorsed the idea of a district system, particularly one that could run on 100 percent biomass.

Feyerherm added that she has rarely, if ever, seen a process for getting community input as diverse as what the university and state are undertaking, and that the university has been "solid" in that process since the lawsuit was settled. The study is required to be completed by the end of July, she said, adding that permits for a new plant must be applied for by November.

"We've had an ongoing community dialogue where folks are really weighing in to try to figure out what would be the best for Madison," she said. "And so it's not just about which fuel you burn and the associated pollution and things; it's how we want to develop our community."

Kristin Czubkowski  —  6/25/2008 5:48 am