BIOMASS HUB

Tom Giambroni of The Review reports that a U.S. District Court Judge has ruled to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two environmental activist groups challenging a permit issued for a coal and biomass to synthetic jet and diesel fuel project.

The Judge found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had properly followed procedures and the law in issuing a permit for Ohio River Clean Fuels (ORCF), which is owned by Baard Energy.

The Corps regulates the discharge of materials into U.S. waters, and the permit allows ORCF to fill nearly 6,000 feet of streams and 0.17 acres of wetlands as part of site development for construction of the plant complex on 522 acres. The property contains a total of 1.6 acres of wetlands, 2.3 acres of ponds, and 27,169 feet of stream channels the Corps determined to be “waters of the United States.”

The Corps issued the permit in 2008 after determining filling in the stream and wetlands would not have a “significant effect on human health or the environment” and its issuance “would not be contrary to the public interest.”

This prompted a lawsuit from the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council, which oppose the project for environmental reasons. The lawsuit accused the Corps of failing to conduct a proper review before issuing the permit. But the Judge determined the Corps had properly followed federal regulations in limiting its decision to the project’s impact on streams and wetlands instead of delving into the project’s overall impact on the environment, as the groups wished.

The lawsuit and appeals of the state air, water quality and water discharge permits by the two groups had been cited by ORCF as the reason for withdrawing its application for a $2.5 billion loan under the federal loan guarantee program. The U.S. Department of Energy is reluctant to issue such loans for projects subject to pending appeals.

More on the ruling.