Tondu may now eye Ludington for power plant
by
Kevin Braciszeski
Ludington Daily News
MANISTEE — Joe Tondu sought permission to build a huge coal-burning
power plant in Filer City, and he failed.
Then he sought permission to build the plant in Manistee, and failed
again.
After hearing the Manistee Planning Commission vote to reject his
request 8-0 with one abstention Thursday, Tondu said he has been
considering Ludington as a possible site for the facility.
“We’ve been looking at the Harbison-Walker site in Ludington,” he
said Thursday.
That location, however, doesn’t match the perfect site Tondu has
described in the past.
Tondu has said the ideal site would be an existing industrial
property with space for the plant and a large pile of coal. Coal
would be burned to create 425 megawatts of electricity at the plant
and the site should have docking space on a port for freighters
carrying the estimated 1.8 million tons of coal that would be burned
each year.
The Harbison-Walker site, Tondu said, presents logistical problems
because it does not have a dock on Pere Marquette Lake, and the coal
would have to be carried from the lakeshore to the plant.
Bill Kratz, Mason County economic development director, said he’s
talked to Tondu about the possibility of building the proposed plant
in Ludington.
“There’s been just some dialogue and discussion,” Kratz said.
“Manistee was their original site location, and we were being viewed
as being a fallback location; the developers were focusing all their
energies on the Manistee site.
“Now that Manistee has made their decision, that will open the door
to other locations, and certainly the Ludington area and Mason
County may be one of those alternate locations. We may not be,
also.”
The new EPA rules released Thursday “potentially complicate
matters,” Kratz said. The new ruling “potentially adds some more
regulatory review process.”
Mason County has been designated a non-attainment area for
ground-level ozone concentrations by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The EPA also includes Mason County in new rules
that state as of June 1 this year, “new 100-ton source facilities
will be subject to New Source Review and the area will continue to
submit Transportation Conformity Plans.”
According to an engineering firm’s study of the possible
environmental impacts of Tondu’s proposed power plant, the estimated
annual pollution emissions from the facility would be 1,777 tons of
oxides of nitrogen, 2,666 tons of sulfur dioxide, 61 tons of
hydrochloric acid, 6.1 tons of hydrofluoric acid, .42 tons of lead
and about 80 pounds of mercury.
Tondu said his proposed plant was designed to be built in any area
of the country, even in zones the EPA has designated as
non-attainment. He has said the plant would use state-of-the-art
pollution control devices.
Meanwhile, Tondu Corporation already owns land in Filer City that
cannot be used for the proposed power plant.
The
company bought the former Manistee Drop Forge property in Filer City
when it sought to build its 425-megawatt plant there. Tondu could
not secure permission from Filer Township officials to build the
plant there, but he said his company has already began cleaning up
the site for other potential future uses.
“It’s a slow process,” he said. “Cleanup started about a year ago
and we took some buildings down and hauled away some trash.”
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