Letter: City of Jasper shouldn’t keep mum about biomass articles

Healthy Dubois County challenges the City of Jasper to publicly respond to the two articles published as both identify serious public health, ecological and financial risks associated with the proposed biomass incinerator. While Bud Hauersperger is quoted in a recent article as saying, “We’ve discussed it with each other off and on, but we are waiting to talk to our attorneys to see if it would be in our best interest to make a response to it.” (The Herald, May 15; “Officials keeping mum about biomass article”)

We would suggest as public officials that they act in the public’s best interest instead of their own, especially since acting in the public’s overall best interest would only serve to decrease their liability in a lawsuit.

Ironically the lawsuit was filed and in great part persists because of their failure to acknowledge and act upon the serious risk the plant poses to the public. As an Open Door lawsuit it is focused on specific governmental practices such as the un-noticed volunteer group meetings, but the ultimate harm arises because of information and dialogue that the public never hears, seriously impairing its understanding of the situation.

Mr Hauersperger also alleges that there is incorrect information in the first article. We insist that he speak specifically as to the nature of any inconsistency, especially given the fact that underlying assumptions were all either taken directly from the Twisted Oak documents and the review completed by Dr. Shaddix, or quoted from standard accepted scientific literature.

We would also like to know specifically which sources he spoke to, as he is a public official and such interaction would be a matter of public record.

A second peer reviewed article detailing the costly fallout from the proposed Jasper Biomass incinerator has been published in the scientific journal Biological Theory.

Dr. Kristin Shrader-Frechette of the University of Notre Dame Departments of Biology and Philosophy analyzed the Twisted Oak biomass conversion proposal at the request of Healthy Dubois County because neither the Jasper Common Council nor the Utility Service Board had any independent health risk or environmental risk assessment done besides those paid for by Twisted Oak.

Dr. Shrader-Frechette is a world-renowned authority on environmental risk assessment, having authored nearly 400 articles and 20 books. Her work was done pro bono (free of charge) because of her deep concern for the effects the plant would have on the citizens of Jasper and the surrounding area given the multiple errors in science and ethics that were obvious to her in the proposal.

This article outlines the dangers of ultrafine particulates and how current regulations fail to assess the tremendous risk to the public. She proposes a system of converting the risk of ultrafines from surface area based to mass based by using a conservative conversion factor of 25.

Current independent scientific thought is that ultrafines are 65 times more toxic than an equivalent weight of the larger PM2.5-PM10. She uses the conservative conversion factor of 25 to calculate the yearly death toll from the proposed plant at 40 persons from the ultrafine particulates alone, with 4193 lost work days, 30 hospital admissions, 35 emergency room visits, 75 heart attacks, 20 bronchitis cases and 730 asthma attacks.

A third article has been written and Dr. Shrader-Frechette anticipates publication, but it is still in the peer-review process.

It is a reflection of Dr. Shrader-Frechette’s standing in the international scientific community that her work would be so quickly published in renowned independent scientific journals.