Tire-burning debate heats up

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer

The tire-burning debate heated up again Wednesday, as environmental and health advocacy groups declared Holcim Inc.'s application to burn tires for fuel incomplete and inaccurate.

"We concerned citizens of Gallatin County have done a lot of work researching tire burning," said Kris Thomas, a member of Montanans Against Toxic Burning. "We have concerns about what comes out of the stack and how it might affect our health."

The group hired an independent environmental engineering firm to evaluate Holcim's application and make recommendations to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The study, conducted by Optimised Operations, was paid for by MATB and the Montana Environmental Information Center.

Although cement kilns are generally a viable means to dispose of tires and tires are an inexpensive fuel source, Optimised engineers found Holcim already runs inefficiently and adding tires to the mix isn't going to solve that problem.

"Their whole goal, in their permit application is to efficiently use their fuel," said William Thiel, the engineer for Optimised Operations who analyzed the proposal. "They are not efficiently using their fuel now."

The application should be denied based on an overall lack of information, he said.

"I'm not saying the DEQ shouldn't issue a permit with what they are proposing in principal," he explained. "I'm saying a permit shouldn't be issued because they haven't provided enough information to receive a permit."

Specifically, the report pointed to holes in Holcim's description of the changes that would need to be made to the cement kiln in order to insert whole tires midway through the cement-making process.

"I challenge anybody to find in there more than two sentences to describe what they are going to do to modify this process," Thiel said.

Nicole Prokop, environmental manager for the Trident plant, said the company did not include engineering sketches of the modifications to the kiln because they haven't decided which style to use.

"It's kind of, which do we do first," she said. "Because there are several mid-kiln technologies, we don't know which one we are going to pick. The valve would be different, the door would be different ... Until we get a permit, we haven't signed on with an engineering firm."

David Klemp, air permitting supervisor for the DEQ, said in some situations the department will issue a permit based on general information and include conditions requiring the company to submit more information once it decides how to modify its system.

The important piece is to know how a mid-kiln tire feed is going to affect the kiln, he said. Neither Klemp nor Prokop had read the Optimised report Wednesday afternoon.

Among other issues, the report recommended Holcim look into burning chipped or shredded tires rather than whole tires because they burn more efficiently and could be inserted in the same way as coal and petroleum coke is now.

"That is an economic decision because it costs money to shred," Prokop said. "If we can handle it as a whole tire, why would we want to deal with them as chips. Logistically it's easier."

Holcim submitted its application to the DEQ in October and since then the department has twice asked for more complete information, particularly regarding health risks and air pollution emissions. The company has until the end of May to gather that information.

Members of the health and environmental groups said they issued their report now, before the application is complete, to give the DEQ time to ask for a more complete application based on their findings.

"There is a lot of information missing from this application, information that DEQ has not identified in its letters to Holcim," said Anne Hedges, of MEIC, in a prepared statement. "There are underlying problems in the calculations. The permit application attempts to draw conclusions without having adequate information or by comparing information that is not equivalent."

Kayley Mendenhall is at kmendenhall@dailychronicle.com.