Atlantic Power hosted an open house at the Gibraltar Room in Williams Lake to once again discuss with the public their proposal to burn up to 100,000 tonnes of rail ties a year.
Among the new things presented Tuesday night was a final report on a study in which Western Operations Environmental Manager, Terry Shannon says was on an air model determining the contaminants associated with rail ties coming out of the plant’s stack.
“Their analyses indicated that the discharges from our stacks are well within the levels established by the Ministry. We also had a health assessment done of the emissions coming out of our stack relative to the potential for them to bio-accumulate over an 80 year time period and we did a modeling at that point of those emissions.”
Shannon adds that the health risk assessment was closely compared to many common foods.
“We compared the amount of dioxins you would take into your body from our plant’s emissions over 80 years to that what you take in from in say milk, ice cream, steak, or eggs, or hamburger and they were much less than those.”
Shannon says if they are to burn rail ties, they have an ash landfill, which has its’ own permit and would be used for the ash from the plant.
The Ministry of Environment has issued a draft permit and assessment and will be accepting public comment until July 25, 2016.
Atlantic Power is currently seeking to burn up to 50% of shredded rail ties at the Williams Lake Power Plant due to expected reductions in the annual allowable cut.