Link: http://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/pages/news.html#_5

Today's post are excerpts of a article in the Salem News by John Hambacker, a retired Salem High School science teacher who has spent time the past few months studying the possibility of a biomass facility that would produce electricity for Salem, MO. Thanks to the Salem Mo. News for printing his story. I have clipped some parts of the story of Dr. Hambacker. He asked questions and did the right thing for our community. Basically, this retire science teacher was invested enough in our community to investigate the impact using forest feedstock for the generation of power. I am really proud and inspired by his work.

The company presenting the proposal to the Salem City Council, is Proenergy, a company working mainly in countries known for corruption and exploitation of people and natural resources. The company presented a "folksy, down home two page outline" to the City Council as a proposal. It was a deliberate attempt to pass themselves off as "backwoods - just like you." Snake oil salesmen, I tell you! The countries that Proenergy operates in were listed on the front page of its website, until recently. Suddenly, Proenergy is not that proud of its operations in Ghana,Venezuela,Mexico,Argentina,Panama,
Pakistan. Now for John Hambacker thoughts on biomass, forest fueled power in Salem MO.

For 39 years my science club students participated in all kinds of outdoor activities, and I can only hope I instilled in them a better understanding of our immediate environment and the role each of us plays as stewards of this land, so that future generations might enjoy what we adults experienced in our youth. This involvement with nature has caused me to become very interested in the possible placement of a biomass electrical generating plant in Salem's industrial park.

The Biomass Generator plant met with some of the wood industries in our area.They presented water usage: 300,000 gallon per day. Second the number given for wood usage had changed to 325,000 green tons per year. ProEnergy was no longer interested in residual wood - now in round wood. ProEnergy was no longer interested in slabs. Since the charcoal industry had commented about their industry's 125 jobs potentially vanishing if ProEnergy came to town.

I calculated the amount of money ProEnergy would receive based on 10 cents per KWh and began to wonder where we were going to get the money necessary to run our police and park departments, which in the past had come from the residual remaining from citizens' electrical payments to our city.

I looked at the efficiencies of producing electricity using coal, wind, solar, nuclear and biomass and asked why biomass when other methods are not only more efficient but some are also much cleaner? I even did calculations where I tried to determine how many KWh we could produce using the gasoline and diesel fuel used by the loggers bringing the biomass material into the industrial park plant. The only calculation I could not perform, was the waste products f the charcoal plants use a high percentage of slabs. ProEnergy said they did not want the slabs because they have a high bark content. I began to wonder about other sawyers and their saleable wood products. Read more about citizen issues with forest fuled biomass power generation.