Tire-burning power plant project now rolling

Jan 30 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - S. Heather Duncan The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

After a six-year delay, a power plant project that would turn scrap tires into electricity is moving forward in Toomsboro, promising to provide 75 permanent jobs in a county with a 10 percent unemployment rate.

The $140 million P.T. Power plant -- which stands for "power from tires" -- would be the first anywhere to vaporize scrap tires using a plasma arc, then burn the resulting hydrogen gas to make electricity. That, in turn, would be sold to power companies such as Georgia Power.

Blue Ridge Energy Development, the company behind the project, recently asked the Wilkinson County Development Authority to issue $110 million in bonds to help fund it, said Ralph Staffins, the authority's executive director. Staffins said the authority is drawing up the bonds and expects them to be issued this quarter.

The authority is also applying for a grant from Georgia's Employment Incentive Program to pay for extending a road to the power plant site.

The project received all its state environmental permits in 2005, and P.T. Power leaders at the time announced that construction would begin in 2006.

The subsequent delay was due to difficulty raising capital, followed by the economic collapse that stalled many projects, said Cory Stewart, vice president of Cookerly Public Relations and the spokesman for the project.

The plant is now scheduled for completion at the end of 2013.

"The company is finalizing the equipment procurement process for the project," he wrote in an e-mail. "We do not have a specific date when significant construction will begin in the field, but extensive planning is under way."

Stewart said the plant will provide more than 200 construction jobs, including both local hires and employees with specialized skills who will likely come from outside Wilkinson County.

Hiring and training for the permanent jobs, which will run three shifts a day, will begin when construction is nearly done, he said.

In early 2006, P.T. Power officials said the company had contracts to purchase about half the scrap tires produced annually in Georgia, and that it would need a supply of about 6 million tires a year.

Stewart said the plant will use the same technology, but confidentiality agreements prohibit the company from indicating how many tires it expects to process and where those tires will come from.

Toomsboro Mayor Roger Smith said he had heard from the company occasionally over the years as their investors changed, before receiving word a few months ago that a groundbreaking would be held in December. He said about 100 people attended, including state and local government officials.

The call "was a pleasant surprise," Smith said. "We hadn't heard anything from them in quite some time."

He said the weakened economy has made the projected new jobs and tax revenue even more significant to Toomsboro.

P.T. Power is receiving no tax abatements from local governments, Smith said.

David Franks, Wilkinson's county manager, estimated that the county could receive close to $700,000 in additional property tax revenue annually if the power plant is built.

"It would put a smile on my face," he said. "That would make somebody in Bibb County smile, and we're just poor old dirt farmers down here."

He and Smith said most residents welcome the plant and the jobs it offers. Franks noted that many Wilkinson County residents lost jobs at Baldwin County plants, such as Rheem Manufacturing Corp., that closed in the past few years.

Some Wilkinson residents initially opposed the project because of concerns about air and water pollution. The plant's discharge of wastewater into Commissioner Creek, which is on the state's list of most polluted waterways and which recently had a fish kill, was the largest concern for most people. It feeds almost immediately into the Oconee River just upstream from Ball's Ferry Historic State Park.

Perry Dominy, a Wilkinson County resident who remains concerned about the plant's potential effects on Ball's Ferry, said the technology the plant will use is too new for anyone to be sure how much pollution it would produce.

"I don't think anybody knows what we're getting into," said Dominy, who retired home from Perry 20 years ago after a career with the Soil and Water Conservation Service.

Dominy maintains that if the project were a good one, it could have found enough private backers to get off the ground during the last six years without the help of public bond money.

"It tried to get its own financing but got no takers, so now our county gets into the business," he said.

As a condition of its environmental permits, six years ago the company provided the Georgia Environmental Protection Division with a letter of credit for about $338,000, which would cover any tire cleanup if the project failed. Jeff Cown, the EPD's solid waste program manager, said the letter remains good and is part of what keeps the plant's solid waste permit current.

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.