Turning onto Schwartz Road in Bozrah, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in eastern Connecticut, there's nothing to indicate you're approaching the entrance to Kofkoff Egg Farms, the biggest egg operation in the Northeast.

A private, gravel roadway to your right climbs past sun-burnt fields of grass to a gate with a stop sign, and is unmarked except for the address. Driving up the road, there is a warning sign not to trespass in this "Biosecure Area."

Another clue you've arrived at Kofkoff: the two "Egg Express" semi-trailers that chug past you driving in as you are driving out after being stopped at the gate by a "security guard" dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.

Somewhere beyond the gate are the 5 million caged chickens that lay an astonishing 12 million eggs weekly, providing 90 percent of the eggs consumed in Connecticut, and many of the eggs eaten throughout New England. In so doing, Kofkoff's birds create an equally astonishing 340 tons of chicken manure every day. Which begs the question, what do you do with 680,000 pounds of chicken shit, each and every day?

Clearview Renewable Energy, based in New Hampshire, believes it has the answer — mix it with wood and gasify it into fuel to generate 29 megawatts of power, enough for about 30,000 homes. That fits in nicely with Project 100, a 2003 legislative mandate requiring the state to have long-term contracts for 100 megawatts of renewable energy in place by next year.

But Clearview has run squarely into another proposed project, 20 miles north in Plainfield, that would utilize the same clean wood it needs, plus construction and demolition debris, to generate 37.5 megawatts of electricity. Despite the fact that it's the darling of the environmental community, the Clearview project faces a politically well-connected foe in the Plainfield Renewable Energy Plant (see sidebar).

The Plainfield project, a joint venture of NuPower LLC of Norwalk and Decker Energy of Winter Park, Fla., already has the approval of the Connecticut Siting Council, and is already working its way through the permitting process at the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Clearview's best chance to prevail — it's neither before the siting council nor the DEP yet — may lie in those mountains of chicken manure that need some place to go.

Right now, the manure is mostly spread on fields as fertilizer, although when and how can be problematic, which has led to a "backlog," according to DEP spokesman Dennis Schain.

"There are environmental issues from the build-up of manure," said Schain. "The manure contains nitrogen, and excess nitrogen getting into waterways leads to issues with water quality and aquatic life."

Clearview's plant would be built right on the chicken farm, eliminating the build-up.

"We will have a contract to pull the manure from the farm," says Joel Rinebold, vice president of Clearview.

Rinebold explains that in addition to generating electricity, the Clearview plant will create ash that can be used for fertilizer.

"We've got a clean energy cycle," Rinebold said. "We're not disposing of ash in landfills."

Clearview will also capture the heat generated from gasifying the manure and wood to heat the farm's barns and coops and provide the thermal energy required for egg washing. The relatively "green" nature of the plant has attracted the attention of environmentalists like Roger Reynolds, senior staff attorney for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, who calls Kofkoff's chicken manure a "persistent problem for water pollution."

"The possibility of addressing that local waste stream is attractive to us," said Reynolds.

Arecent study by the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, a quasi-governmental agency created by the legislature to promote renewable energy in Connecticut, confirmed there isn't enough clean wood, from land-clearing, tree thinning and other sources, for both Plainfield and Clearview to go forward.

"We believe there's only enough wood basically to support one project," said Emily Smith, spokeswoman for the fund.

Both power plants were selected by the Fund for consideration under Project 100, intended to provide banks with the confidence to back projects like Plainfield and Clearview, both of which are in the $120-$130 million range to build. Any bank willing to loan money will also want to be assured contracts are in place for a supply of wood.

While there's general agreement that Clearview's plan to utilize chicken manure solves an environmental problem, Plainfield's plan to use construction and demolition debris has raised red flags among some in the environmental community.

Environment and Human Health Inc., a small group of doctors and public health officials based in North Haven, has called for a full environmental impact assessment of the Plainfield plant. The state of New Hampshire permanently banned using C&D debris for power in June, according to Colin Manning, press secretary for Gov. John Lynch.

Reynolds said the Fund for the Environment wants to make sure Plainfield's plan to use the debris gets a "good hard look to make sure if it is done it's done the right way."

"Construction and demolition waste can have a lot of toxic materials," Reynolds said. "This plant would not be allowed to burn hazardous materials such as creosote treating for wood and pressure-treated wood. The question is how are we going to ensure that doesn't enter the waste stream."

That's an easy question to answer, according to Donovan, who says the Plainfield plant will only use the "clean wood component" of C&D debris, which will be sorted out by so-called Volume Reduction Facilities before delivering the fuel to the plant. Besides, says Donovan, the entire process will be monitored by the DEP.

Schain confirmed the air and waste permits for the plant would set limits on the "types, storage volumes and processing volumes" of the materials used in the plant.

Schain said like most state environmental agencies, however, DEP relies on self-reporting of data for water and air permits. The agency can do spot checks, he said, or require a facility to hire an independent third-party to conduct regular compliance audits, but "it is not possible for us to be everywhere and check everything."

Exactly right, says Joe Rosenthal, an attorney for the Office of Consumer Counsel, which is charged with looking out for utility ratepayers.

"Construction and demolition debris is gross," said Rosenthal. "We probably will never be able to monitor it closely enough to make sure it's not filthying up the environment."

But Donovan has an answer for that too, and it comes from a highly credible source — the National Resource Defense Council, based in New York. Donovan, whose relationship with the NRDC goes back 15 years, asked Senior Scientist Allen Hershkowitz to evaluate his proposed plant.

Hershkowitz contends that even if contaminated C&D debris ends up being incinerated in the Plainfield plant, it's better than the alternatives — landfilling or composting.

Landfilled, the debris breaks down into methane gas, which is "22 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas," says Hershkowitz, and generates "carcinogenic emissions." Composting, which also relies on using exclusively clean material to be safe, is notoriously not on the "up and up" and threatens groundwater with contaminants like creosote and arsenic, according to Hershkowitz.

If the Plainfield plant ends up burning contaminated debris, on the other hand, Hershkowitz says the heavy metals and other pollutants will be captured in its state-of-the-art filtration systems, and can then be safely landfilled as ash.

"Given the uncertainty on composting and landfills, combustion (of C&D debris) is something NRDC supports," said Hershkowitz.

The Plainfield plant has a second environmental fight brewing over its plans to draw as much as a million gallons of water daily from the Quinebaug River for cooling purposes. The wide, serene, tea-colored river flows through the nearby town of Canterbury, where a group of citizens called Canterbury First are mobilizing to force the Plainfield plant to use air cooling for its combustion process instead of water.

Bob Noiseux, president of Canterbury First, said the Quinebaug is an "old industrial river" with a long history of abuse including a Superfund site, and that it has only begun to recover in the last 10 years. He worries that drawing up to a million gallons a day from the river, especially during the hottest months of the year, could be a fatal blow.

"This river is the best resource we've got in Canterbury," said Larry Northrop, Canterbury First treasurer. "Anybody who screws around with it better come early and pack a lunch."

Donovan says the Canterbury Firsters are overreacting, pointing out that 500,000 gallons daily — a more likely scenario for the plant — would amount to only 1 percent of the Quinebaug's mean flow during the worst drought.

"People are blowing this up into something that's not a real issue," said Donovan.

But the executive director of another well-respected environmental group, Margaret Miner of the Rivers Alliance of Connecticut, isn't so sure. Miner said that in a dammed river like the Quinebaug, which already suffers from low flows, diversions of the size the Plainfield plant is proposing could damage fish habitat.

"You can be sure it will make habitat less sustaining if that much water is pulled out," said Miner.

The dueling projects are currently in the hands of the state's utilities — Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating — which will sign the long-term contracts under Project 100.

The utilities are not judging the merit of the projects but are simply making sure they pass muster logistically. They expect to forward the projects to the state Department of Public Utility Control by the end of the month, and DPUC is expected to decide by mid-September whether one or both will move forward under the auspices of Project 100.

Mark Quinlan, DPUC's supervisor of electric, said his agency's decision-making process is "very open," with public hearings. He said DPUC will take into account the economics of each proposal, but will also make some "subjective judgments" about the costs and benefits of the plants. "If they both get to the point they're before us we'll have to look at the fuel supply and determine whether it's possible to do both," said Quinlan. "We haven't gotten into that yet."

The Politics of Power

In addition to the environmental concerns swirling around the Plainfield Renewable Energy Plant, there’s another set of political concerns that has observers questioning the proposal. First, there was the energy bill in 2006 that through the clever use of language made Plainfield the only private plant in Connecticut allowed to use construction and demolition debris.

Rep. Vicki Nardello, D-Prospect, co-chair of the energy committee, said the bill looked on its surface like a simple pro-environmental measure limiting the use of C&D debris, and thus got votes.

“The reality is what it does is give an advantage to the Plainfield plant,” said Nardello. “It allows them to burn the construction debris. That’s why vetting of bills is so important.”
Surprisingly, Nardello said no environmental groups brought the bill to her attention, which may be a tribute to the obfuscation of the bill’s language.

Both Donovan, who acknowledges his project was exempted from a ban on burning C&D debris, and Energy Committee Chairman Rep. Steve Fontana, D-North Haven, say the real purpose of the bill in question was to stop power plants outside the state from cashing in on renewable energy incentives offered by Connecticut.

Said Fontana: “We tried to craft laws that limit the burning of (C&D debris) and at the same time promote the development of the biomass industry in Connecticut.”

A second source of concern is NuPower vice-president J. Scott Guilmartin, a member of the Republican State Central Committee who was involved in another proposed wood-burning plant in Waterbury that was never built, costing the Clean Energy Fund the $1.5 million it invested in the project.

Guilmartin sat on the board of Connecticut Innovations, Inc., which oversees the Clean Energy Fund, when he voted to loan money to the Waterbury project.

Only later did he reveal that if the project had gone forward, he would have received a one-third ownership interest.

Adding insult to injury, the Waterbury project was supposed to generate nearly 130 megawatts of power, a ridiculous amount that should have been a deal-breaker to all involved.

“It was never feasible at 130 megawatts,” said Margaret Miner of the Rivers Alliance of Connecticut. “There wasn’t enough wood in New England.”

As a result of Guilmartin’s dubious past involvement in the Waterbury project, he was banned by the Clean Energy Fund from being a principal in the Plainfield project, meaning he can’t have an equity interest or make any management decisions.
That was a condition of the $500,000 loan the Fund advanced the Plainfield Renewable Energy Plant.

Lise Dondy, president of the Clean Energy Fund, said she was assured by Donovan that Guilmartin is not a principal in the Plainfield project.

“When we fund any project, not to cast dispersions on Scott Guilmartin whatsoever, but we look at the management team,” said Dondy.