SHOLAN ASPHALT PLANT AIR PERMIT APPLICATION DRAWS PUBLIC FIRE

Plant Would Be Second Asphalt Facility on Whitlock Street
 

     The Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources’ Environmental Protection Division (EPD) held a question and answer session, followed by a public hearing on Sholan’s application for an environmental air quality permit in the Brunswick High School cafeteria Thursday night, August 24.  The proposed plant’s location is 4090 Whitlock St. in Brunswick and is not far from an industrial site that is already permitted for another asphalt plant.  Douglas Asphalt Co. received an EPD permit for the other Whitlock St. site three and a half years ago but has not built the plant.

     EPD representative James Capp told the approximately two dozen people who attended last week’s hearing, "The Douglas Asphalt plant was permitted nearby several years ago, but has not been built and there is now some question as to whether it will be built.”  Capp works in the EPD’s Air Protection Branch as the manager of the Stationary Source Permitting Program.

    Of the 20+ citizens attending the meeting last week, there were no Whitlock St. residents present.  Nor were there any Glynn County or Brunswick City Commissioners present and no members of the Glynn County Board of Education, even though the pro- posed plant site is within a half a mile of Brunswick High and Jane Macon Middle schools.

    Capp told the crowd that using computer models of both proposed asphalt plants, the EPD determined that Sholan’s plant met the state agency’s minimum requirement for air pollution standards for toxic emissions.  Later, during the public hearing portion of the meeting, Daniel Parshley, Project Manager for the Glynn Environmental Coalition (GEC), criticized the EPD and challenged their emissions numbers.  Pointing out that cancer rates in Glynn County are higher than the national average, Parshley said, “Glynn County has also been identified as having higher (cancer) rates than the state rate. We don’t need any more carcinogens in our air. This is shameful use of data by the state EPD. They cooked the data. Shame on them.”

     Parshley had copies of a GEC produced report on air quality in Brunswick available at the meeting.

     Two other points stressed by Parshley were that Brunswick’s only air quality monitor is a mile away from the asphalt plant sites on the Coastal Georgia Community College campus and that there are no air quality monitors for Hercules, Inc. or the Koch pulp mill (formerly Ga Pacific).  "There’s two asphalt plants permitted within a half mile of two schools,” said Parshley, “but the plants are a mile away from where the air quality is measured.  Think about the people who live closer to the source than the air monitors.”   Parshley also questioned the accuracy of the air quality monitor’s results saying, "The wind doesn’t blow in the same direction all the time.”

     The EPD stood by their data saying the Hercules plant and the pulp mill were too far away to impact potential emissions from the asphalt plants.  Capp said, ‘The pulp mill and Hercules impact is in the area surrounding those plants.  They do not add to the asphalt plant sources, they are too far away.  But, in our study, even when we added in the emissions from Hercules and the pulp mill, they were not over the asphalt plants’ acceptable levels.”

     Capp also noted that the EPD health risk statistics, which follow federal guidelines, are based on a lifetime of exposure at certain levels of exposure to the toxic emission. In response to a question from Parshley about the distance between the air quality monitor and the air pollution sources, Capp pointed out that the monitor picks up emissions from all sources not just local industry. “If you drove a car here tonight,” said Capp, “it was emitting pollutants.”

     Gloria Lookadoo, president of the Brunswick chapter of the NAACP, asked Sholan if he purchased the property specifically for the asphalt plant.  Sholan responded saying, “When we bought the property it was a junk yard and we went to great expense to close and clean it up.  We did not purchase the property with the intention of building an asphalt plant.”  Sholan went on to explain that his company is a construction company that primarily paves parking lots.  “Right now we have to purchase asphalt from other companies that have plants, like the Seaboard Construction Company plant out in Sterling,” explained Sholan, “but because of the growing economy, we have a hard time getting the asphalt because they are using it for their own jobs.”  Sholan continued to explain that the plant he proposed to build would be much smaller than the existing Seaboard plant and the proposed Douglas plant.  “The plant will make asphalt to supply our needs only,” said Sholan.  “We won’t be selling to other contractors like Seaboard.  I think this plant we propose to build will be the smallest in Georgia.  We will make about six to twelve loads of asphalt a day."

     Larry Rodgers, a former EPD engineer, who now works for Sholan's consultant, EMC Engineering Services, Inc., [stated that] the plant Douglas Asphalt has permitted is four times the size of Sholan's.  Rogers also noted that Sholan's plant would only run a maximum of 32 hours a week.  It would not be a 24-hour a day operation.

     All this did not assuage those who opposed the plant, one of whom was Bill Owens, president of GEC.  Owens asked if Sholan’s permit is granted, was there a way to cancel Douglas Asphalt’s permit.  “This is a bruised community," said Owens, “that has faced decades of environmental laws being flaunted and circumvented by industry.”

     Capp said under current rules and regulations he did not see a legal way to revoke Douglas’s permit.

     The public hearing wrapped just short of 8:00 PM, with Capp telling the group that the EPD would take all their comments into consideration when deciding whether to issue Sholan an air quality permit for the plant.