A proposed plant to burn wood chips to make electricity in the city of Lithonia has divided the town into two camps.

On one side are economic development proponents who want the jobs and taxes the plant will generate. On the other are residents concerned about health and environmental risks that they don’t know enough about.

Green Energy Partners-DeKalb LLC wants to locate a gasification biomass plant on a 26-acre property on Bruce Street to incinerate 100,000 tons of yard waste – wood chips from trees and leaves – and generate 10 megawatts of power, enough to power 7,000 homes.

The company has a 20-year contract from DeKalb County to collect and convert yard waste into electricity using a non-emission technology. On its Web site, www.gep.us.com, it said the yard waste, along with cooking oil and greases, will be burned and turned into electricity.

Neville Anderson, the company’s CEO and managing director, said the plant, which will be built at a cost of $60 million, will generate $200,000 in revenue for DeKalb County government, create 100 jobs during construction and 25 permanent positions, and add $50 million to the city’s tax digest.

He said the plant also will pay property and significant sales taxes from its sale of energy to Georgia Power.

Anderson said they have a contract on the Bruce Street property, which is currently zoned for mixed use, and that he will apply to the city before the end of month for it be rezoned to M-2 industrial.

The property, which was annexed into the city, was originally zoned Industrial M-1.

Anderson said he also will apply within 30 days to the state Environmental Protection Division for an air emission permit for the plant.

If the rezoning is approved, he said construction will start next May and be completed by December 2011.

Novel use for gasification

While gasification has been around for 1,000 years, Anderson said its use to create steam used to drive turbines to make electricity is a new application.

“There is no smoke, no odor and no noise,” he said. “More plants like this are being built because of the push for renewable energy to get us off our dependence on foreign oil. Green renewable, sustainable energy is the wave of the future.”

But while the company and its supporters say the plant is environmentally friendly, some residents and opponents are urging caution.

Ric Dodd, a City Council member, said that the city seems equally split over the plant.

“I heard an equal number for and against,” he said Thursday. “A number have spoken loudly about it.”

He said he has not yet taken a side but that the process described to him seems to be cutting-edge technology.

“Right now, I am all for inviting businesses to the city,” he said. “We have a lot of vacant property and vacant storefronts. In 1992 when I came to the city, the downtown was a thriving place. I would like to see it rejuvenated.”

Sweetening the pot

Anderson said Thursday that when construction begins on the plant, Green Energy Partners will give $1 million to the city to fund an economic development office for the city for 10 years to spur development around its plant.

“This office will work with county, state and federal governments,” he said. “Lithonia has never had that laser focus on economic development.”

He also is offering to develop a nonprofit Friends of Bruce Street to restore the park and maintain the cemetery.

Anderson admitted that those offers could be viewed as attempts to buy their way into the city.

“Or you could view it as us coming in as an awesome corporate partner,” he said. “We are showing that private businesses can lead the way to revitalize our communities.”

City Council member Deborah Jackson said there are too many unknowns to jump on the bandwagon without further information and research.

“All that glitters is not gold,” she said. “And everything that is called green is not necessarily good for health and the environment.”

Jackson said she has seen studies documenting environmental and health hazards and wants to learn more about the process and the plant’s impact on the city and its residents.

City Council member Doreen Carter, who sponsored a Sept. 9 community meeting for Green Energy Partners to discuss its proposal with residents, says she is always in support of something that will be positive for the city.

“It can potentially be good from a business standpoint,” she said. “The fact that it is green it could put Lithonia in the forefront of a progressive movement. I am in support of seeing the process through.”

Some of the city’s residents have organized Citizens for a Clean and Healthy Environment to gather information and educate themselves.

Barbara Lester, a lifelong resident and a former councilwoman, said they are bent on finding out as much as they can.

“We just said, ‘Let’s make sure that we know all of the ramifications of what this is all about,’ ” she said.

Some members of the group, including Lester, went on a Nov. 1 field trip to Dalton to tour Shaw Industries’ gasification plant. The trip was sponsored by Green Energy Partners.

On Nov. 17, members of the group will share their impressions of that plant and information they have located about gasification. The meeting takes place at 7 p.m. at the Lithonia Women’s Club on Wiggins Street.

Lester said she will speak about her impressions at that meeting.

“I will tell it one time on Wednesday at 7 p.m.,” she said.

The Dalton plant, which is co-owned by Siemens, one of Green Energy Partners’ four team members, incinerates carpet fibers and wood chips.

Anderson said he wanted the Lithonia residents and council members to tour the Shaw Industries plant and see the process at work. To quell charges of environmental racism, he said he wanted them to see that the plant is located in a developed community that is not African-American.

Anderson said the 50,000-square-foot Lithonia plant will be twice the size of the Dalton plant, and it will be the third one in Georgia and DeKalb’s first and only gasification plant.

Carter, one of three council members who took the trip, said she saw nothing at Shaw Industries to sour her on a similar plant in Lithonia.

“The one thing I didn’t like was that the plant there was open,” she said, “but they told me the one in Lithonia would have a roof over it. The picture I saw, it looked like an office building.”

Jackson and Councilman Al T. Franklin also made the trip.

Information insufficient

The Lithonia plant is Green Energy Partners first project, but Anderson said they plan to build similar plants in distressed communities across the country and internationally to help them revitalize.

He said the gasification process is as safe as sitting around a campfire or burning wood in your fireplace at home.

“I defy anyone to prove that the process of gasification has any negative effects,” he said. “There are no health or environmental risks. There is more risk from using your cell phone and from driving your car than from a biomass plant.”

Shirley Jones, who lives less than five minutes from the site of the proposed plant, said she has found information that suggests that the plant will be toxic.

“I am concerned about the health issue,” she said. “I might be dead and gone tomorrow, but there are young people in this city, and seniors, and students going to a middle school. No way do we want this.”

Jones, a retired accountant who has lived in the city on and off for 33 years, said a similar plant that was proposed for Briarwood Road was denied by the county but Green Energy’s application was approved.

“ ‘Let’s go and dump it in Lithonia, which is predominantly black, poor people, with no voice,’ ” she said. “That’s what we believe they said.”

Jackson, who is a lawyer, said the trip to Shaw Industries made her want to find out a lot more about the gasification process.

“I want to do more research to ensure that this is not a health and environmental hazard to the community,” she said.

“The information provided to us so far is insufficient to make that determination.’

Jackson says she favors alternative energy but that there might be other processes instead of gasification and incineration.

“It’s about jobs and economic development,” she said. “But that ought to be balanced against a good quality of life as well.”