43
Company cancels plans to build waste-burning plant
YOUNGSTOWN
The company that proposed to build and operate a $250 million waste-burning electric-power plant in Smith Township, Mahoning County, has canceled its plans to build the plant.
The company, Jefferson Renewable Energy LLC, of Warwick, R.I., asked the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in Columbus to revoke the smokestack emissions permit the agency had granted in April 2009 for the plant, which would have been called the Mahoning Renewable Energy plant.
On Feb. 28, the OEPA revoked the permit, which would have been needed to build or operate the facility.
The plant would have occupied about 30 acres at Transload America’s Central Waste landfill, 12003 Oyster Road, near Alliance.
Gregory L. Benik, Jefferson’s president, did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the company’s reasons for canceling the project.
A telephone number listed for the company in a company brochure was intercepted by a recording saying the number was not in service. The company’s listed website could not be accessed.
The proposed plant had its vocal opponents. Robert Stuhlmiller, president of SAN-CORP Liner Technology in Alliance, which makes food wrappers and pill-bottle inner seals, delivered 175 petition signatures to the Mahoning County commissioners against the incinerator, whose emissions he said could contaminate his company’s plant.
Besides the air- emissions permit, the Smith Township facility would have needed a solid-waste handling permit and a permit to operate, both from the OEPA.
The company never fully pursued and never received those permits, said Mike Settles, Ohio EPA media-relations coordinator.