The plant\'s future, though, suddenly is in question, and management has turned to non-profit, government and community groups for help choosing an environmentally safe, cost-effective fuel source that will stabilize its operations in the Midway.
The plant employs about 500 people, most of whom are represented by the United Steelworkers union.
Changes at Xcel Energy, which supplies Rock-Tenn with steam produced by coal at the High Bridge plant downtown, have thrown a wrench into Rock-Tenn\'s operations. When the High Bridge switches its fuel source from coal to natural gas later this year, Rock-Tenn will lose its thermal-energy source.
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The Rock-Tenn plant is one of only a few major industrial employers remaining in St. Paul. Union Advocate photo |
Temporarily, the company plans to fire up its on-site boilers with fuel oil and natural gas. But those burners, which date from the mid-1960s, are not viable long-term – not economically, not environmentally.
The company, the St. Paul Port Authority and District Energy have begun exploring alternative energy sources, a process that received a shot in the arm when state lawmakers appropriated $4 million for a study of potential fuel sources at Rock-Tenn.
But a few of the plant\'s St. Paul neighbors already have organized opposition to one particular fuel source included in the study, and they voiced that opposition at a community forum at Hamline on May 29.
Legislation authorizing the study does not express a preference for any single fuel source, but that did not stop members of Neighbors Against the Burner from peppering panelists at the forum – Sen. Ellen Anderson, in particular – with questions about refuse-derived fuel, or RDF.
One community member claimed RDF has been proven to cause breast cancer; another worried about carbon emissions from the semi-trucks needed to deliver the fuel from a processing plant in Newport to the Midway.
Even assurances from University of Minnesota environmental health sciences professor Gurumurthy Ramachandran that organic emissions from all known RDF plants in the U.S. and the European Union are "within allowable amounts"did little to assuage their concerns.
"We cannot remove 100 percent of (carbon material), but we can remove enough of it that most health concerns are allayed,"the professor said.
Anderson, whose district includes neighborhoods near Rock-Tenn, said the purpose of the state-funded study is to get the facts – pros and cons – about all potential fuel sources, from biomass to RDF, from solar to wind.
"We want to have a very detailed study of all fuel types,"Anderson said. "We need to have that information in front of us to ... inform the next level of decision making.”
Rock-Tenn has said it needs a fuel source that costs about what it paid for steam from the High Bridge. Anderson defended that stance.
"It\'s a good plant,"she said. "It recycles. It creates a lot of jobs.”
Reprinted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Used by permission. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.org
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The plant\’s future, though, suddenly is in question, and management has turned to non-profit, government and community groups for help choosing an environmentally safe, cost-effective fuel source that will stabilize its operations in the Midway.
The plant employs about 500 people, most of whom are represented by the United Steelworkers union.
Changes at Xcel Energy, which supplies Rock-Tenn with steam produced by coal at the High Bridge plant downtown, have thrown a wrench into Rock-Tenn\’s operations. When the High Bridge switches its fuel source from coal to natural gas later this year, Rock-Tenn will lose its thermal-energy source.
 |
|
The Rock-Tenn plant is one of only a few major industrial employers remaining in St. Paul. Union Advocate photo |
Temporarily, the company plans to fire up its on-site boilers with fuel oil and natural gas. But those burners, which date from the mid-1960s, are not viable long-term – not economically, not environmentally.
The company, the St. Paul Port Authority and District Energy have begun exploring alternative energy sources, a process that received a shot in the arm when state lawmakers appropriated $4 million for a study of potential fuel sources at Rock-Tenn.
But a few of the plant\’s St. Paul neighbors already have organized opposition to one particular fuel source included in the study, and they voiced that opposition at a community forum at Hamline on May 29.
Legislation authorizing the study does not express a preference for any single fuel source, but that did not stop members of Neighbors Against the Burner from peppering panelists at the forum – Sen. Ellen Anderson, in particular – with questions about refuse-derived fuel, or RDF.
One community member claimed RDF has been proven to cause breast cancer; another worried about carbon emissions from the semi-trucks needed to deliver the fuel from a processing plant in Newport to the Midway.
Even assurances from University of Minnesota environmental health sciences professor Gurumurthy Ramachandran that organic emissions from all known RDF plants in the U.S. and the European Union are "within allowable amounts"did little to assuage their concerns.
"We cannot remove 100 percent of (carbon material), but we can remove enough of it that most health concerns are allayed,"the professor said.
Anderson, whose district includes neighborhoods near Rock-Tenn, said the purpose of the state-funded study is to get the facts – pros and cons – about all potential fuel sources, from biomass to RDF, from solar to wind.
"We want to have a very detailed study of all fuel types,"Anderson said. "We need to have that information in front of us to … inform the next level of decision making.”
Rock-Tenn has said it needs a fuel source that costs about what it paid for steam from the High Bridge. Anderson defended that stance.
"It\’s a good plant,"she said. "It recycles. It creates a lot of jobs.”
Reprinted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Used by permission. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.org