Dec 29 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Greg Lacour, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

 

The 10 Catawba Valley governments that banded together three years ago to improve air quality have adopted policies that lay out their methods to save energy and reduce emissions.

Caldwell County, which adopted its policy, was the last, said Ron Hancock, a Western Piedmont Council of Governments planner advising the governments on conservation and air-quality issues.

Many of the plan's measures -- installation of low-energy lighting systems and proper insulation in county buildings, for example -- are things the county and its fellow governments have been doing for the past five years, since the state and federal governments began warning them about poor air quality.

But the plans are especially important as a gesture to the state Division of Air Quality and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hancock said. The plans show that the 10 governments involved -- collectively, on air-quality issues, called the Unifour Air Quality Compact -- have concrete plans for conserving energy, therefore reducing emissions, he said.

The EPA has threatened Catawba Valley governments in the past with sanctions and fines because of high levels of atmospheric ozone in the air. Since then, the governments have worked to find ways to reduce ozone emissions through the Air Quality Compact.

For the past two years, the area has met EPA standards for ozone, Hancock said. If those readings remain good, the EPA will reclassify the area in April 2008 and remove the threat of sanctions and fines.

"We're just saying to the EPA and anyone else who cares, 'If we build anything, we will design it to be as energy-efficient as we can make it,' " said Caldwell commissioner John Thuss, a member of the Air Quality Compact's board.

Thuss and fellow commissioner Herb Greene are working on another project that might vault Caldwell County into the forefront of conservation in the Catawba Valley.

They're trying to seek money for a processing plant that would produce biodiesel fuel, a cleaner-burning diesel fuel made from natural, renewable sources such as vegetable oils.

Their plan would be to place the plant at the old county landfill on Mount Herman Road in Hudson. The plant would harvest methane gas from the landfill and use it as a heat source during the processing of vegetable oil, collected from local restaurants, into biodiesel.

It's merely an idea for now. But county officials have discussed methane harvesting from the old landfill for years, and Thuss and Greene believe the biodiesel could fuel school buses, county vehicles and construction equipment to save money and reduce emissions.