Residents Concerned About Cancer, Pollution and House Values Prepare to Rally

Attleboro residents who fear the impact of a "green" company that has plans to build in the city are rallying the community to help stop the business that they believe will be harmful to their health, the environment and their house values. 

Attleboro Residents with Important Safety Concerns, @RISC, has been busy investigating, researching and uncovering what they believe to be a business that will bring harm to the city and its residents through risk of fire, explosions and long-term health problems. 

Signs 18'' by 24'' in size are being printed to line the streets of Attleboro to get the community's attention on the project and the group has created a website called greenattleboro and a Facebook page to reach out to others in the community. 

For weeks the group and hundreds of people in the community have packed to speak out against Ze-gen, a Boston-based company that plans to build a $20 million facility in the Attleboro Corporate Campus on Pleasant Street. The company has plans to bring 20 full-time positions and 100 jobs to Attleboro during construction. 

Ze-gen executives including David Robertson, recently named chief operating officer, have plans to build a gasification plant that will implement the waste-to-energy technology it has been testing at its facility in New Bedford.

Executives have said during public meetings that Attleboro is an ideal location for the plant because of its highway access, industrial park neighbors that are potential Ze-gen customers and more. 

Some residents and city officials, however, aren't buying it. They question the company's intentions, integrity and knowledge of long-term affects from the waste-to-energy process. 

At a gathering held by members of @RISC late Wednesday night, residents questioned conflicting statements made by Ze-gen's officials on the amount of waste that would be processed per hour and per day. 

The reason for the conflicting statements, according to Ze-gen, is because of change in process.

Last year the company prepared and submitted an Environmental Impact Report for Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) review, which stated the project would process up to 150 tons per day of feedstock material. Since receiving MEPA approval in October 2010, the company  said it decided to reduce its feedstock throughput for commercial reasons, given the changing economic conditions.

"We recognize that the public documentation on our project may be confusing as to how many tons per day we are proposing to process at the Ze-gen Attleboro facility," said Gideon Gradman, Ze-gen's vice president of corporate development. "Ze-gen is now proposing to process only 75 tons per day of feedstock, or one-half the plant size approved by MEPA."

The reduction in plant processing capacity also reduces its environmental footprint because the air emissions controls remain unchanged, according to Gradman.  

"The New Bedford pilot facility has a capacity of 300 pounds per day, which is 3.6 tons per day, but I have seen no proof that the facility has been rigorously tested at that capacity 24 hours a day for a continuous period," @RISC Member Charlie Adler said. "A Ze-gen presentation shows that from September 2 to November 29, 2009 the average was much less than one ton per day.

"Based on this data, the Attleboro plant would represent a scale-up factor of greater than 75 times," Adler added. "To scale up a new technology by that great a factor seems like a risky proposition to me. And that is with a 75 ton per day plant. Until recently they planned to build a 150 ton per day plant."

The lower processing capacity equals fewer trucks (8 to 10) transporting feedstock material to the facility, according to Gradman.

Members of @RISC, however, said they believe the Attleboro location is considered ideal by Ze-gen because of its location to the railroad. Residents worry that the company will expand and begin bringing rail carts full of the waste into Attleboro. 

Ze-gen will go before the Attleboro Conservation Commission again on June 8.