UPDATE: 11:25 a.m. – Wilmington City Council has postponed considering its incentive package for National Gypsum. According to Dylan Lee, spokesman for the city, “The Wilmington City Council will delay hearing this item for at least 30 days. The public hearing on National Gypsum will NOT be held tonight. Yesterday, the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners delayed hearing this item to seek more information and the city will do the same.”
WILMINGTON – New Hanover County Board of Commissioners postponed voting on a proposed $350,000 incentive to re-open the National Gypsum plant in Wilmington over concerns about emissions.
A major concern: formaldehyde. But how much will the plant produce?
It appears that back in 2008, National Gypsum’s last full year of production in Wilmington, its plant released nearly two tons of formaldehyde into the air — that’s more than 60 times the amount documented in North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s online records, the same amount which National Gypsum publicly quotes.
Pounds or tons?
Nancy Spurlock, a spokeswoman for National Gypsum, said that some media outlets had misquoted James Phipps, National Gypsum’s director of environmental services, and denied that Phipps had said National Gypsum would produce 8.77 tons of formaldehyde annually. That’s the maximum amount allowed by the 2016 permit issued by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
“No, I don’t think that’s what he said,” Spurlock said. “We’re permitted at 8.77 tons a year, but in 2008, when we ran the whole year, we produced 59 pounds of formaldehyde.”
Spurlock’s number matches the DEQ’s online records – but those records are apparently inaccurate.
According to local DEQ spokesman Dean Carroll, the last measurement taken for National Gypsum’s formaldehyde emissions was 2005: 59 pounds of formalehyde for the year. It appears that DEQ records used that number for the following years, through 2009. The amount is listed as “additional assumed amount.”
About a week after Carroll quoted the 59 pound amount, his supervisor Brad Newland issued a correction. According to Newland, the regional supervisor for the DEQ’s division of air quality, “(i)n 2008, the last year of full operations, the facility reported 3894 lbs. of formaldehyde in quarterly reports for the year.”
Outdated records at DEQ
Why the sixty-fold discrepancy? According to Jill Lucas, spokeswoman for the air quality division:
“As the Regional Supervisor in Wilmington, overseeing compliance of this facility, Brad (Newland) has access to 2008 quarterly reports that are not in our online database – because they are not part of the full emissions inventory, which is updated every eight years. Those reports indicate 3,894 pounds, or 1.9 tons, were emitted by National Gypsum in 2008,” Lucas said.
It’s difficult to reconcile that amount with Spurlock’s claim that the Wilmington facility never produced those levels of formaldehyde, saying the company produced pounds, not tons, of formaldehyde.
“I can’t say exactly what the amount produced would be…but it wouldn’t be tons,” Spurlock said.
Newland’s quarterly reports show that National Gypsum could easily produce tons of formaldehyde on any given year.
National Gypsum suspended operations at its Wilmington plant on Jan. 30, 2009, citing the slowdown in the housing market caused in part by the financial collapse the prior year. The company is currently considering reopening the plant, located on Sunnyvale Drive, off River Road.
Both the county and Wilmington have touted the plants potential to generate 51 jobs paying at least $57,000 and the company’s willingness to invest approximately $25 million in capital investments. Like the county, Wilmington is considering incentives, as much as $230,000 over five years.
According to Chairman Woody White, the Board of Commissioners had only intended to discuss the economic aspects of the incentives. White said the board would revisit the issue after board members and staff have a chance to address some of the science behind environmental concerns.
Wilmington City Council will consider its own incentives on Tuesday, Feb. 20.
