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On Monday, about a dozen residents asked Follansbee Council to block the opening of a medical waste treatment plant while a representative of the company behind it stepped forward to refute their concerns.
During the last several weeks, officials with the city and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection have heard from residents concerned about air pollutants to be expelled by the proposed facility and the handling of medical waste transported there.
Plans call for the plant to be built at the former site of the Koppers plant near the Ohio River.
Many of the residents’ same concerns were voiced on Monday, with Duane Nichols, a former chemical engineer serving as coordinator for the Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition, submitting multiple pages of information and conclusions to council.
Nichols said the plant will release fine particles invisible to the eye but still harmful to the lungs and heart while contributing to global warming.
He said the plant also will produce odor and noise, with resident Natalie Rocchio adding residents near a similar plant in New Mexico have complained of odor.
She and others said the area has been dubbed “Cancer Valley” by various hospital staff because of the high incidence of cancer attributed to exposure to industrial pollution.
Some suggested such pollution has helped to drive younger generations away and deters new people from moving to the city.
Scott Ewusiak, president of Empire Diversified Energy -- parent company of Empire Green Generation, owner of the proposed plant -- said he and his family also live in Follansbee and he and the company have done much to clean up former industrial and other sites there.
Ewusiak said a landfill had existed on the property where he opened a car wash while companies led by him have removed drums buried beneath land now occupied by ball fields behind the Walgreens drugstore and asbestos that leached the ground of the former Koppers property.
He noted an environmental cleanup of more than 400 acres of former Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel property by his company earned an award at the West Virginia Brownfields Conference in 2017.
“I spent 25 years cleaning up Follansbee and now I’m getting bashed. This is a green project. Learn about it before you bash it,” Ewusiak told attendees.
He said rather than have medical waste deposited in a landfill, as occurs now, the plant will convert it to energy. Ewusiak said emissions from the plant will come from a generator powering it, not the process, called pyrolysis, used to dispose of the medical waste, which he maintained involves a closed system.
He said the pollution is equal to that produced by a school bus in a year.
In a notice for the permit application, the WVDEP’s Division of Air Quality stated the plant could release the following potential emissions: particulate matter less than 2.5 microns, 9.5 tons per year; particulate matter less than 10 microns, 18.5 tons per year; particulate matter, 31.6 tons per year; sulfur dioxide, 39 tons per year; oxides of nitrogen, 24 tons per year; carbon monoxide, 99 tons per year; volatile organic compounds, 24 tons per year; and total hazardous air pollutants, 2 tons per year.
But pollution wasn’t the residents’ only concern.
Rocchio noted the company is seeking a state permit to treat up to 99 tons of medical waste, one ton shy of the amount that would require it to comply with stricter federal regulations.
In addition to a permit from the Division of Air Quality, the company awaits approval through the state Department of Health and Human Resources’ Infectious Medical Waste Program.