Solar Power Consumers Upset by Fossil Fuel Plant on Abaco

by Larry Smith

LITTLE HARBOUR, ABACO - Within sight of the smokestacks rising from BEC's heavy fuel oil power plant under construction at Wilson City just across the Bight of Old Robinson lies a solar-powered community of some 40 homes encircling a picturesque cove.

This unique settlement was founded by a Canadian art professor named Randolph Johnston, who sailed his family to the Bahamas in 1952 and initially housed them in a cave - like a modern-day William Sayle (who sought refuge in Preacher's Cave on North Eleuthera more than three centuries ago).

Johnston set himself up as a charter skipper and sculptor, becoming a local celebrity within a few years. His bronze statue of a Bahamian woman was installed on Prince George Wharf in 1975, while his autobiography, Artist on his Island, was published the following year.

When it was virtually worthless, Johnston acquired land at Little Harbour and over time sold bits and pieces to other vagabonds from varied backgrounds, creating the eclectic community that exists today anchored around Pete's Pub, a famous watering hole run by the sculptor's son. Little Harbour is now an attraction in its own right - drawing thousands of visitors a year.

Among the homeowners are artists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, airline pilots, and boat bums. One of the more recent settlers is Gordon Pearce, whose Cape Cod firm builds high-tech tennis courts and running tracks in Massachusetts. His comfortable 2,200 square foot home sits on a hill overlooking Little Harbour and - like all the houses here - it's powered entirely by solar panels.

"We collect rainwater, use energy-efficient appliances, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and have an insulated roof, " he told me last week. "And we've had as many as 11 people living here with no problem at all. We have everything except air conditioning. We just use things carefully."

Pearce has 16 190-watt photovoltaic panels installed on a wooden frame in his front yard. They supply power to 16 standard 6-volt golf cart batteries. Inverters convert the power from the batteries to household current, and everything is metered to monitor usage. A 10-hp diesel generator kicks in if the batteries get too low, but Pearce says that rarely if ever happens. The whole system cost $35,000.

Expensive you say? Well, right next door to Pearce live Bob and Allison Ball - two globetrotting hydrographic surveyors who arrived in 1992 and live here year-round. Their bungalow is powered by five panels and six batteries, with no generator. The batteries have a 12-year life span while the panels will last for 25 years. And their system cost less than $10,000.

"The batteries are the only things that need a little maintenance," Allison told me. "But we went through Hurricanes Frances and Jean and never lost power."

All of the homeowners at Little Harbour - which has no government services - are concerned about the $105 million power plant that BEC is building just across the water at Wilson City. Mostly, they are upset at the prospect that the plant was to have been the first on any out island to use heavy fuel oil - the most polluting of all fossil fuels.

Heavy fuel oil (also known as bunker C) is the carcinogenic residue that is left after crude oil has been refined into lighter products like gasoline or diesel. And it is a fact that HFO-based power plants produce higher and more dangerous smokestack emissions, as well as vast quantities of oily wastes that require off-site disposal or incineration.

The difficulties of managing waste oil increases the risk of leaks and spills and the burden of cleanup. In fact, the environmental costs and health risks of HFO-based power plants have made them prohibitively expensive in developed countries. But the fuel is still used by some utilities in less developed countries - like BEC's Clifton plant in Nassau - because its initial cost is cheaper than diesel and environmental regulations can be less onerous.

BEC's plan to burn heavy fuel oil at Wilson City has drawn much criticism on Abaco. It even stimulated the formation of a new activist group called Abaco Cares, which held a public meeting last week in Marsh Harbour (attended by many of the Little Harbour folks) to draw attention to the negative environmental impacts of the Wilson City plant.

Led by Pastor Clint Kemp, who operates a fly fishing business at Schooner Bay, the group invited local and US experts to talk about the potential hazards of bunker C fuel.

Brad Venman, a senior vice president and toxicologist at NTH Consultants in Michigan told an audience of about 100 residents that plans for the Wilson City plant were entirely generic and offered no details on pollution controls, biological impacts or measures to deal with catastrophic spills from fuel tankers navigating the shallow Bight of Old Robinson. In addition to these hazards, fuel handling and equipment maintenance costs were said to be higher in HFO-based plants.

The BEC plant - which will be operational by June - lies some 14 miles south of Marsh Harbour and about two miles from the coastal ruins of Wilson City, the fabulous lumber town that operated for about 10 years in the early 1900s. The site consists of a 25-acre fenced clearing, with another 75 acres of forested land assigned for future expansion. And the southeastern corner of the cleared site is less than 2100 feet from unspoiled tidal mangroves.

Access to the plant is via the old tramway that once hauled logs to the Wilson City sawmill, which has been widened to accommodate vehicles and transmission lines. From the plant the road continues towards the coast, but before reaching Wilson City proper it cuts to the right, crossing over to the Bight of Old Robinson, where a terminal will be built for tankers to offload fuel via a submarine pipeline. BEC plans to bury a 12-inch pipeline under the road to pump fuel from the terminal to the power plant.

Unfortunately, the entire coastline around Wilson City is a relatively untouched wilderness of mangroves, tidal creeks and shallow bights, all connected by a network of blue holes. In fact, the area is so ecologically sensitive that the Bahamas National Trust and Abaco Friends of the Environment want to make it a national park.

"The East Abaco Creeks park is essential to sustainable development on this island," said Kristin Williams of Friends. "This area has the highest density of blue holes anywhere except for Andros and the creeks provide important nursery habitat. The health of these wetlands is vital to the entire marine ecosystem."

Sam Duncombe of the activist group, ReEarth, hammered on the other issue that has incited many Abaconians to criticise the Wilson City plant - the lack of public consultation. She said it was "unacceptable" for local communities to be kept in the dark about such projects: "There should have been full disclosure, and we need to demand laws that guarantee public process."

In the past BEC has dismissed such statements as "erroneous and irresponsible", but Pastor Kemp pointed to repeated requests for public meetings on the Wilson City project from as early as November 2008. It was almost a year before BEC responded to criticism by holding a standing room-only town meeting in Marsh Harbour. And the EIA for the project was not released until last November - months after construction had begun.

There is great skepticism among environmentalists about BECs claims that it will install and monitor pollution controls at the plant: "We are not confident that they will do anything they say they will do," Pastor Kemp said. "No-one will monitor anything and there will be no consequences for anyone at BEC when they screw up. I don't trust government's best intentions to monitor this."

In fact, BEC paid scant attention to such matters until the mid 1990s, when it belatedly introduced an environmental management policy. But independent audits have documented chronic failures over the years. For example, the disposal of oily waste into the ground at Clifton created a huge hydrocarbon plume in the freshwater lens as well as discharges into the sea from caves below the cliffs. More than a million gallons of oil was recovered from these caves in recent times, at great cost to BEC.

According to the Wilson City EIA, "Clifton has suffered significant impacts requiring ongoing assessment and corrective action...Poor handling of materials at Clifton and Marsh Harbour has required the need for extensive ground clean up and plant upgrading to remedy historical oil pollution problems." And added to this history of incompetence is the risk of a shipping disaster in pristine waters, which is not as rare as you might think.

There is talk of an informal agreement between BEC and the Bahamas National Trust/Friends of the Environment to set up a joint monitoring committee that would check pollution levels at the site and ensure a proper response when necessary. But BNT chief Eric Carey told me he has not seen the plant's environmental management plan, and does not know if one exists.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Earl Deveaux confirmed to me after last week's meeting that heavy fuel oil would not now be used at Wilson City. However, Michael Moss (the Freeport-based electrical engineer who replaced Abaco lawyer Fred Gottlieb as chairman of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation on January 1) told me that a final determination on possible higher rates for Abaco consumers had not been made.

All BEC customers are presently billed according to the same base tariff structure and a levelised fuel surcharge. It is not yet known whether BEC's billing systems can easily accomodate a fuel surcharge disaggregation, Moss said. And the cost of diesel varies from one island to another because of differing freight rates.

If the cost differential between diesel and HFO for the Wilson City plant is restricted to Abaco, Moss said, consumers there will face a surcharge increase between one and a half times and two times that incurred by BEC customers elsewhere in the Bahamas.

However, if the incremental fuel cost is spread among all BEC consumers throughout the country, customers will experience a fuel surcharge increase of around 0.30 c/kWh - a 3 per cent increase. This is because Abaco's fuel consumption is  relatively small compared with BEC's New Providence fuel consumption.

"While burning diesel at the Abaco plant would result in only a moderate increase in surcharge to the overall BEC customer base, and while the introduction of HFO to the plant has not yet taken place, and while HFO is not used in any other family island plant, its introduction to Abaco could be avoided," Mr Moss said.

In response, Abaco Cares argues that the continued use of diesel in Abaco should, if anything, result in a decrease in consumer rates due to the operation of larger and more efficient engines at the new Wilson City plant. It said the introduction of higher rates for Abaco consumers would be "purely punitive".

The additional costs of using diesel fuel at Wilson City have been variously put at $3.5 to $10 million a year by BEC spokesmen. Both the prime minister and BEC chairman Moss have said that the utility is working through the figures before a final determination on a possible rate increase is made.

But according to Pastor Kemp, "the current plant uses diesel, so there is no reason why doing so at the new plant should cost more. And because of all the complications involved in using heavy fuel oil, a large portion of any savings from the lower cost of HFO - perhaps a third or more - will be soaked up by additional construction and operating costs."

"I don't believe there would have been any chance for the fuel to be changed if we had not raised our voices," he added. "I hope that Abaco becomes a centre of environmental activism to call government to account. Wilson City is just one item on the list. We need everyone to join in so there is a bigger voice. We all have to become evangelists."

Meanwhile, the venerable 25.6 megawatt plant at Marsh Harbour is barely keeping up with the demand from Abaco's 15,000 residents, 1500 second home owners, and 100,000 visitors. They suffer through endless outages and load shedding, some of which are reportedly due to poor maintenance and others to lack of fuel.

Sam Duncombe expressed the view of many at last week's meeting. "The government needs to stop fossil fuel projects, launch a national energy conservation programme, change the law and pursue renewable energy projects."

All these initiatives are currently in the works. But as we all know, the wheels of government grind slowly.

Comments

[EekTheCat]

I thought I heard something about that plant being capable of burning a wide variety of things, even garbage. Not true?

[larry smith]

Yes, they can run on various petroleum-based or bio fuels, with some modifications (but not garbage). But this is the first time that a government minister has confirmed that HFO will not be used.