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COMMUNITY NEWS; ENVIRONMENT
By Adam Powell
Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL–On the evening of Thursday, Jan. 17, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality (NCDEQ) held a meeting at Chapel Hill’s Town Hall for public comments about a proposed change at the UNC-Chapel Hill cogeneration facility, located at 575 W. Cameron Avenue.
UNC proposes switching from burning coal and natural gas to a combination of coal, natural gas, and engineered pellets at the cogeneration facility. Those pellets contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (also known as PFAS), requiring UNC to conduct a series of tests and samplings to ensure that the facility does not emit more than 1.2 pounds of PFAS substances per year.
According to a press release prior to the meeting, NCDEQ indicated that PFAS pellets, while not considered solid waste, are expected to increase emissions of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide into the local atmosphere while reducing emissions of particulate matter and sulfur dioxide.
More than 50 public speakers attended the session, and practically all opposed the proposed changes at the cogeneration facility.
The list of speakers included State Senator Graig Meyer, who represents Orange, Caswell, and Person Counties in Senate District 23, Chapel Hill Town Council members Melissa McCullough and Camille Berry, former Town Council member Maria Palmer, local journalist Kirk Ross, and a variety of local residents, UNC students, and environmental experts. There were individuals with backgrounds in the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center, Haw River Assembly, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among many others.
State Senator explains long-term planning process
In his introductory comments, State Senator Meyer expressed to the spectators his gratitude for their attendance while also explaining the many months of planning and preparation during which local officials and UNC leaders have been collaborating together to get the UNC cogeneration facility on the other side of exclusive fossil fuels usage.
“If you haven’t heard about it yet, we have already been for a year in a very important planning process where all of our local government units, as well as many community organizations and the university, have been in a joint-planning process for what happens as the university transitions away from coal and burnable fuels and shifts to a cleaner energy mix,” said Meyer. “And what then happens to the rail line that connects the cogeneration facility through the rest of our community? And how do we transform that rail line into an opportunity for non-automotive transportation, for connection to new housing opportunities, for economic development opportunities? We’ve had an amazing process.”
Council members, community speakers implore NCDEQ to reject proposal
Town Council Member McCullough, who worked for three decades as an environmental scientist (now retired) at the United States Environmental Protection Agency and a community sustainability expert, spoke about the challenges the cogeneration facility has created for local residents in the form of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is an emboldened problem,” stated McCullough. “The surrounding neighborhoods have had to breathe the pollution from this plant since decades before there were even air pollution laws. This is an environmental justice issue of the historically black neighborhoods where the people who built and served our university have lived for generations.”
“UNC is at a turning point that mirrors the rest of the world: how to assure necessary heat and power into a future where coal is dirty, finite, and increasingly expensive,” continued McCullough. “Fracked gas is not better for the climate and renewable options aren’t always easy to retrofit into complex existing systems. We all know this is not easy, but not having an easy answer doesn’t justify this technological detour that will only delay actually finding a good solution. The requested permit would allow burning pellets. Definitely the existing plant is a known (with coal and natural gas burning) but controlled problem. But this permit application offers no way to reliably estimate the resulting pollution or the health and environmental impacts to the surrounding community.
“The emissions of PFAS would be unquantified and uncontrolled. Emissions of other toxic air pollutants will increase and affect the health of the soil community, and there would still be waste materials, but now of unknown composition. I urge the DEQ to reject this permit application, or UNC to withdraw it, because we are not assured that the marginal benefits of this proposal are worth the potential impacts that the university wants (in order) to be a good neighbor and global citizen. They need to find permanent, clean, and sustainable solutions.”
Council Member Berry spoke on behalf of a neighbor who lives approximately 100 yards from the cogeneration plant, iterating the neighbor’s concerns about PFAS emissions. She decried the one-year trial period’s expense for sampling and testing PFAS emissions, while also expressing displeasure that the facility would still burn coal and natural gas, though in smaller quantities.
“North Carolina communities and organizations like OWASA are spending millions to count PFAS and slow chemicals. It is self-defeating to add more PFAS to the environment,” said Berry. “We don’t know how the various components of the pellets might be altered from incineration. The composition of the pellets themselves can vary.”
“The cogen plant creates 10,000 tons of coal ash annually,” added Berry. “In response to environmental injustice and economic crisis, we owe it to ourselves to course-correct by installing existing and widely available non-polluting energy sources. The university should lead in this regard instead of putting forward feckless half-measures. The Town Council and mayor (past and present) have done a lot to establish that Chapel Hill is more than just the university’s location. However, improving the use of these pellets or continuing to burn gas or toxic coal will blow that effort and show that the university has more impact in the lives of citizens than our elected government.”
Local journalist suggests UNC and NCDEQ aren’t prepared for yearlong testing
“I think the DEQ should take a step back,” stated Ross. “The university should pursue other alternatives. My main concern is that this permit allows the cogen plant to become an incinerator for the plastic fiber and paper registries. Some people say burning this stuff is a good idea, but it’s hard to believe that any of them would advocate setting up shop in our downtown, or any downtown.”
Haw River Keeper brings up potential impacts to local air, water supplies
Emily Sutton, Executive Director and Haw River Keeper at the Haw River Assembly has actively supported environmentally friendly initiatives throughout the local region. For several years, she and her colleagues successfully fought the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) expansion into adjacent Alamance County. In January 2024, MVP Southgate announced that it would not extend its pipeline into Alamance County. Sutton is an expert in water quality and has made numerous points regarding potential impacts on local water and air.
“Our mission is to protect the Haw River and Jordan Lake, but I’m also here speaking on behalf of our communities who would be impacted by this permit if approved,” said Sutton. “NCDEQ has acknowledged the dangers of burning coal and has even committed to phase out coal completely by 2020. Not only has that promise been broken, but this permit modification continues to allow for coal burning, adding new threats. Those new threats include volatile organic chemicals, lead, benzene, acronyms, and PFAS. This proposal would allow unknown levels of unknown toxins to be released into the air and into the lungs of our communities. Conversion has stated that these pellets may contain a wide range of anywhere between 15 to 49% plastic. The contents of these pellets pose unknown risks to North Carolinians.
“We know that what goes up in the air stacks comes down into our drinking water supplies,” added Sutton. “North Carolina has received international attention for our contaminated water crisis due to toxic PFAS discharges into surface water. But these toxins are not only getting in the water supplies from industrial wastewater discharges.”
Former Council member suggests permit approval will harm local children
Palmer, who founded the first Spanish-language church in Chapel Hill in the 1990s, mentioned the large number of her congregation members who work at UNC and her concerns about how the approval of the permit for PFAS usage would potentially affect air quality for children and future generations.
“I’m here as a member of our community to ask you to deny this permit. Many of the people in the church that founded it worked and still work at UNC in maintenance and housekeeping. On behalf of all our families, we want to ask you to deny this and not to allow UNC to conduct an experiment with the air we breathe without our consent. I don’t know who the administrators are who requested this permit. Are they not concerned for their own children, or do they not believe in Chapel Hill? Do they trust that extensive filters will keep them safe from exposure to poisonous chemicals? Now, for a community, we believe all people are God’s children, and that we should protect all of them, as well as the environment. We need to say no to risky experiments that harm any of our residents.
“There is no doubt that burning trash, even with fancy names, is bad for God’s creation,” continued Palmer. “My church asks you to keep the faith with our community and deny this burning. I’m totally blown away by all the science that has been shared. They totally convinced me that this is scientifically wrong, but it’s also morally wrong.”
NCDEQ continued its public comments period through Wednesday, January 23, prior to making a final decision on the proposed permit requested by UNC.
Adam Powell is a reporter on local news and sports and an education communications professional. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the Mebane Enterprise, News of Orange County and TarHeelIllustrated.com. The public information officer for Rockingham County Schools in Eden, N.C., Powell is the author of four books and lives in Mebane with his wife and two children. This reporter can be reached at: Info@TheLocal Reporter.press
