Bion officials meet with legislators in small groups

Carol Thompson 07-31-2010

by Carol Thompson

Several legislators said they have been invited to small group meetings with officials from Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc.

The meetings, according to the legislators, are designed for groups of three legislators and a representative from Operation Oswego County.

Bion is proposing a large-scale, integrated, closed-loop beef cattle/renewable energy project in Oswego County that was met with skepticism by some legislators, farmers and members of the general public when the idea was first introduced to the county legislature last year.

Under a proposal presented by Bion, there would be more than 70,000 head of cattle housed somewhere in the county. There would be an estimated 600 jobs created and it would be a “closed-loop” operation, meaning the cattle’s manure would be used for ethanol, according to Bion officials.

Few county legislators have expressed interest in the project, primarily due to the lack of information the company has provided.

The small group meetings, held this week, may provide an opportunity to have questions answered more clearly, Legislator Morris Sorbello said.

The project has been met with resistance from lawmakers and the public primarily due to the lack of information and the unproven technology.

The project may be located in the Town of Schroeppel and that town board has passed a resolution to support a preliminary look at the proposal. Several legislators said they do not understand why the company has approached them without being able to provide an exact location.
Some legislators are also hearing concerns from their constituents in regard to the proposed project, especially those legislators who are in close proximity to the Schroeppel area.

Sorbello said he is hearing from residents with concerns and Legislator Doug Malone said he too is hearing from constituents.

Although the Village of Pulaski is not close to the proposed site, Legislator Shawn Doyle said he has heard some concerns.

Doyle is one legislator who refused to attend the small sessions.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to meet legislators in small groups of two or three,” he said.

Doyle noted that he had been offended very early on by Bion representative Jeff Kappel and was not interested in meeting with him again.

“Until they have something more to tell us other than the same information they have given us over and over again, I see no reason to meet with them,” he said.

Legislature Chairman Barry Leemann, Doyle and other legislators have been critical of company officials for their lack of answering questions and for not providing new information.

Legislator Jacob Mulcahey said he would be attending his scheduled meeting and hopes to learn more about the project.

To date, approximately 500 people have signed a petition opposing Bion’s proposal and the list grows daily.

Many of the legislators said they will need much more information about the project before a decision is made as how to proceed.

A task force to review the project was discussed last summer, but when the company failed to provide the Oswego County Environmental Council with adequate answers to their questions, the legislature took no action on forming a committee.

The project was proposed in St. Lawrence County where officials there reportedly faced the same issue of a lack of information. Bion withdrew its proposal in that area.

Bion?s response to Viewpoint  ----Report in www.ValleyNewsOnline.com

07-31-2010

The following is Bion Environmental Technologies’ response to “Recent Bion forum was ‘enlightening experience’” by Karen Hall:

Bion was invited to present at a SUNY Oswego public affairs forum. We agreed to participate as we have in the past and will continue to do in the future. Bion will take every opportunity to speak directly with the Oswego community. We were informed by the event organizers that the format was to be an hour long presentation by Bion followed by a period for questions and answers.

There was no attempt to defend Bion’s technology, but rather an intent to describe its proven environmental performance as well as to point out the significant number of independent, third-party scientists and regulatory agencies that have reviewed Bion’s technology in great detail and have confirmed that it performs as presented. A public forum is not the appropriate venue to dive into a detailed discussion of the biological process.

As it was, there were some who objected to too much technical information being provided in answer to questions that were technical in nature. The fact that Ms. Hall was not persuaded does not change the fact that the waste treatment process works and has been vetted by numerous, independent professionals.

Ms. Hall’s conclusions do not reflect either the actual conversation or the reality of Bion’s dedication to meeting reason able community standards as they have been applied to all other economic activities. A community’s concern for risk to its environment is totally appropriate and requires a full and detailed response. For this reason, New York State has developed a process to address the concern for public impacts from a proposed project: the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR). SEQR provides an opportunity for all stakeholders to participate in a transparent, public review of all substantive concerns.

It also establishes the regulatory authority for agencies to set permit requirements, monitoring and oversight protocols and enforcement procedures. This is the process that has been successfully used for three nuclear power plants, a 100 million gallon per year ethanol production facility and a host of other large and small projects in the immediate region. Surely SEQR is up to the task of addressing the concerns of a cattle project that employs a proven waste treatment technology.

To begin with, there will be no “holding the bag” (Ms. Hall’s judgment laden phrase). Rather, all reasonable conditions and protections can effectively be incorporated into the SEQR review and subsequent permit requirements. Did the community ask for and receive bonding protection from any of the three nuclear power plants that are now successfully contributing to the regional economy? Was there a requirement for a bond placed on the ethanol facility in Volney, now re-opened by Sunoco and providing a robust market for area corn growers?

Have there been bonding requirements for other industrial activities in the region? Have any agricultural activities that have moved forward with no modern environmental treatment technologies been required to post bonds? Did the fact that none of these entities come forward with a bond mean that they were not interested in providing appropriate safeguards against environmental risk as Ms. Hall charges Bion?

Again, addressing the perception of risk is an appropriate obligation for any project developer and Bion will address each specific substantive risk through the appropriate venues. The mechanism for doing so is well established in law, in experience and in reality — and that mechanism is not bonding, it is the SEQR process.

The particular example of environmental risk from livestock operations raised by Nancy Weber, president of the County Farm Bureau, at the forum was a serious spill from a dairy manure lagoon in upstate New York.

In the meantime, we do agree with Ms. Hall that everyone should learn from the E3 Biofuels Project that failed in Mead, NE. Unfortunately, Ms. Hall and others have missed the real lesson in that project’s failure. In fact, Bion was quite familiar with the project having met with a number of its principals and participants during both project development and after construction was completed. We would respectfully request that if Ms. Hall or others wish to continue using the E3 Biofuels project as an example to learn from, they should study the specifics of the problems that arose at those facilities and then provide us with specific items that could be addressed based in fact rather than simply engage in inflammatory language such as “holding the bag” and “disaster”!

Once again there is a refusal to recognize the difference between the risk for environmental impact from treated and untreated waste. This is like multiplying the risk profile from an outhouse by 100,000 to arrive at a projection of risk from a municipal waste treatment plant serving that many people. The issue of risk is not a direct reflection of the number of head, but rather requires a willingness to look a bit deeper to understand the real impacts from implementing a waste treatment system with animals as with humans.

Simply put, Ms. Hall’s assumption that the advent of large, agriculturally related activities in Oswego County means the demise of small farms is not supported by reality. Actually quite the opposite is true. Were the small regional corn producers better off when the Volney ethanol plant was shut down? That facility is very much like Bion’s cattle facilities in that both create robust, long-term markets into which area producers can sell.

If you were to poll the small farms now selling corn to the Sunoco ethanol plant, we suspect that you would find producers happy with the opportunity to improve their net family farm income.

The position of the Town of Schroeppel is simply that they would be interested in having the project move forward as long as it can successfully address environmental and community issues through the SEQR and other regulatory processes. Clearly that is not a high enough standard for some, but for many, that position is in the larger interest of the community and therefore “the right thing” to do. We leave sorting out those questions to the community.

When someone calls for a process to be shut down because there are a lot of questions, it almost always means that they are not interested in the answers —that no answer could possibly alter their opposition. For those, on the other hand, who would be interested in the economic opportunities and benefits if the project is able to satisfy high community standards.

Bion has provided a gold standard in response — it will be regulated the same as any other large scale industrial activity. It will prepare and file an environmental impact report and it will be fully subject to SEQR review, oversight, regulations and penalties.
If Oswego can permit nuclear power plants and large industrial activities through such a process, it should be able to use it to permit cows in a manner that will safeguard the community.

The truth is that many of the attacks on this project are not really based on environmental consequences or the implementation of safeguards. If that were true, use of existing regulatory processes would satisfy the concerns, as it has for any number of other large and small projects throughout New York.

Rather, many objections are based on particular social agendas couched in environmental terminology. Bion believes that only the community can determine if these social agendas are in the greater public interest and should be adopted.

In the end, the community needs to decide — but that process needs to include full representation of a full range of community interests including both the agricultural community and the business community (including the real estate industry, both commercial and residential, merchants, shopkeepers, auto dealers and repair facilities, supermarkets, cafes and restaurants, equipment suppliers, and more).

And somewhere along the line, someone needs to stand up to represent the unemployed who could become employed directly by the project and indirectly by the $20-plus million of payroll and additional project spending that will be injected into the local economy.

This is a 21st century industrial/agricultural enterprise and the question for the community and before the county leadership is what really constitutes the public interest.

Discriminatory regulation is a slippery slope with significant unintended consequences. To rely on discriminatory requirements when a proven public regulatory review process is available will inevitably produce a severe chill to new business development and a negative impact on the expansion of existing businesses. Companies seeking sites in upstate New York need to understand the requirements for development.

An honest and clear answer that defines what is acceptable to the community (and what is not) can be respected by all and used by business developers in making their regional business plans.

Bion’s request is simple: we ask if the community will welcome the project with its economic benefits based on successfully meeting environmental and other community standards as applied to existing regional economic activities through the full scope of SEQR and all other appropriate regulatory reviews. If not, we need to know that now.

Jeff Kapell
Bion

Bion aims to work with community in bringing