Opponents of a proposed coal-ash landfill in Vernon County had a chance to ask a Dairyland Power Cooperative representative some hard questions about the issue.

On Thursday, April 24, Brian Rude, Dairyland's Director of External Communications, and a number of panelists were present at a Clean Energy Coalition meeting in La Crosse to discuss the project.

Rude said the project is not something Dairyland likes to do, but it is needed to "keep the lights on" and there is not an alternative right now if the company wants to meet new federal air quality regulations.

"Reliability is very important," said Rude "Our polling with our membership shows reliability is more important than affordability. If you don't have the electricity on when you need it, obviously you have a problem."

Rude said coal has been the industry choice because of its abundance with a 300-year supply and its affordability. More than 50 percent of the electric supply comes from coal nationwide and 70 percent in the Midwest, said Rude.

"Our need for a landfill is driven by federal regulation," said Rude

The regulations were something pushed for by environmental organizations, said Rude.

Rude responded to some of the suggestions put forth in the recent documentary about the Dairyland landfill issue called "Keeping the Lights On." Rude said the film suggested the utility could buy power on the open market.

"That be very risky financially," said Rude.

Rude responded to suggestions that the cooperative buy pollution credits and delay action. Buying credits and delaying the scrubber "would not be the right thing to do," said Rude.

"Its hard to believe that people who have encouraged us to choose that option (scrubbers) are asking us to deliberately pollute rather than clean up the air," said Rude.

Rude said $350 million will be invested in baghouses for particulates, scrubbers for sulfur reductions, nox burners for nitrous oxide and carbon injection for mercury reduction in all three of their facilities.

Two of the three plants that Dairyland operates account for 66 percent of the energy supply for 650,000 people on a daily basis, said Rude.

Dave Ebbert, who is a former Vernon County supervisor and has an environmental sciences degree, said he wrote the county resolution in support of the town of Harmony and asks for a full environmental impact statement from Dairyland. Ebbert said he would like to see an EIS in order to get some "accountability" for Dairyland's efforts to look for alternative solutions to the landfill.

"This is what environmental regulations do," said Ebbert. "We have been land applying, water applying and air applying this waste for a long time. Consumers have been able to say this is somebody else's problem for a long time."

Ebbert said too many times environmental planning does not take into account the whole picture and the town of Harmony residents are now aware of that.

"I think the community woke up when the company rudely said we want to come out here and test and we can come in here whether you want us to or not," said Ebbert.

Marty Herrick of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said he is ultimately one of the officials that will have to sign off on the permit Dairyland will need to site the landfill.

Herrick said the landfill designs and water monitoring have improved a great deal since the 1980s.

"The ash landfills are definitely a concern," said Herrick.

Herrick said monitoring around landfills sometimes shows leakage of boron, selenium, heavy metals and dioxin.

La Crosse County Solid Waste Administrator Brian Tippets said when the La Crosse landfill had to reapply for a permit in 1986 there was a huge controversy over the permit. Tippets said when the landfill applied for expansion a few years ago there was very little opposition. Tippets said the difference was they started to communicate with residents two years in advance of the project.

Tippets said with the tested liner and a drainage system the risk of leakage in the proposed Dairyland landfill would be almost "nill" if designed properly.

"You make the coal ash landfill sound so great everybody would probably want to live next to one," said Harmony resident Scott Leum. "…Trading pollution is not the answer."

Leum referred to an answer sheet provided by Dairyland that answers some of the points made in "Keeping the Lights On." One of the points in that piece of literature states that Dairyland is not trading one kind of pollution for another.

"I specifically asked Wendy Berndt (former Dairyland project manager Wendy Berndt) if we are trading one kind of pollution for another and she said 'Well, yes we are.' So, which is it Dairyland?"

Leum said the comment is posted on the website of the Harmony opposition group People for H.O.P.E. (Harmony Township Opposing Pollution of the Environment). Leum said many of the facts presented about the landfill seem to shift and there has been groundwater contamination at Dairyland's Alma ash landfill.

"So I don't think anyone can sit here and masquerade that this is a safe landfill," said Leum. "Safer? Possibly. This is not the solution to take 80 pounds of mercury out of the air and put it in the ground next to somebody. So, what is the solution? Do we want clean air? Of course we do. I want that like anyone else, but I don't want to make a 600-acre waste dump into a reality."

Vernon County board supervisor Philip Hooker asked what kind of rain or flood standard the landfill will be built to. Herrick said the standard for Wisconsin is a 25-year event. H.O.P.E. member Carl Volden said Dairyland's literature says it will be designed for a 25-year event.

"We have had a number of 100-year and 500-year events in Vernon County in the last several years," said Volden.

Tom Wilson, of the town of Viroqua, which is another potential site for the landfill, said the regulatory playing field is too uncertain to invest this much into systems that could be obsolete within a year or two.

"You talked about certainty for your members and keeping the lights on, but we are talking about $350 million investment in systems that could be outdated in 12 months," said Wilson. "We have no idea what kind of regulation could be coming down the pipe."

Rude said there will likely be Co2 regulation by 2009, but no one is sure what that will look like. Volden and Rude agreed that legislators have not looked at the complete picture when they passed legislation.

Rude said Dairyland has committed to reaching a 25 percent renewable energy production goal by 2025 because "we think that is where the country is going and we think that is what our members want, and it makes economic sense. But you still need to produce that other 75 percent."

Rude said the good part of all the recent controversy is there is greater public awareness about energy use.

"I don't think, frankly, the American people generally think about that very much," said Rude. "That is the challenge -- energy consumption, how to get people to realize their own usage."

Ebbert said that is part of the picture, but large companies can influence incentives and legislation that encourages energy conservation.

Vernon Electric Cooperative member Chuck Doerr encouraged Rude and Dairyland to look closer at IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) technology and said he has arranged for engineers who are working on a Massachusetts plant to come to Dairyland to speak to engineers.

Ebbert asked, given the uncertain regulatory future and the promise of IGCC, if Dairyland would buy pollution credits to delay action so it can consider other technologies.

"We certainly could buy credits as an alternative," said Rude "I don't think a delay would work for us in terms of legislation. I don't think a delay for us from the EPA would work. You have to understand these regulations came about because of enormous political pressure from environmental organizations. These things didn't happen because government woke up and said it is time to screw Dairyland to the wall. It happened because the public has been outraged by the traditional pollutants going into the environment. So, for us, it is an amazement to have citizens lobbying to delay and defer these rules and regulations that came about from citizen lobbies."

Rude said an IGCC plant would take up to 25 acres and would not fit at Genoa. Doerr said Dairyland has 87 acres at the Genoa site. Rude said most of that is in an old landfill and an unused nuclear facility. Doerr said his information states Dairyland can build on a "brownfield" area.

Rude said there is a need to find a way to burn coal "cleanly" in the future and perhaps IGCC can do that. When asked about keeping Genoa running as is, buying credits in the short term and siting a new gasification plant somewhere else Rude said "do you know how hard it is to site a new plant?"

"Probably not any harder than a landfill," said Volden.

Rude said the technology is not proven enough for a small cooperative to pursue and would be too risky for members at this point.

Volden suggested sending a group of experts to Europe that has zero emission coal facilities that recapture lime after the scrubber process.

"They place a premium on farmland in Europe," said Volden. "They don't have massive amounts of land that we think we have here in America. Endless amounts of land we can put landfills on. We are losing 33,000 acres of farmland every year in Wisconsin alone. Where are we going to produce our food for future generations? I sit here as father and hopefully a grandfather and I want my children to have reliable services and food. I think we need to go back and put a value on land instead of thinking we put a landfill anywhere we want as a Band-Aid approach to fix a long-term problem."

Volden asked Rude to look at delaying the scrubbers. Volden said Dairyland had not gotten all the DNR permits for the project and had not gotten approval for the landfill "and yet building and construction of the scrubber is going on in Genoa as we speak."

The landfill permit is not a certainty judging by Herrick's closing comment.

"I am in the regulation of landfills and I am not a big fan of landfills," said Herrick.

"I am not sure if that is biting the hand that feeds you," Rude said.