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About 30 people attended a meeting regarding the placement of two air monitors for the new SunCoke Energy coke plant, monitors that officials say are the first to be required by a permit.
While there already are five air monitors placed throughout Butler County collecting various emissions data, Christina Boss of the Hamilton County Department of Environmental Services said these are the first to be required by a permit issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
But some attendees at the meeting held Thursday, June 25, at the Middletown City Building, including Lisa Frye of SunCoke Watch Inc., said they were not impressed.
“Well, that’s probably because you have never put a coke plant in the middle of a school, nursing home and neighborhood, so it really is required,” said the Monroe resident.
The monitor placements will be determined by federal rules as well as modeling, which used five years of wind data to determine ideal points.
A monitor will be placed upwind to test ambient air before it reaches the plant as well as downwind between the SunCoke and AK Steel Corp. property lines to isolate the new facility’s effect on air quality, Hamilton County agency officials said.
Agency official Anna Kelley stressed that community input is also important.
“This may be one of the toughest parts of our project is finding locations for the monitors,” she said. “It would be great if we could put them everywhere, but to ensure collecting good data and validate our data ... we need to make sure we have good sites for monitors.”
Yankee Road residents Al Berns and Patrice Hardman offered to place monitors on their property for downwind testing. Jean Inwood indicated she would like a upwind monitor at her property on Hamilton-Middletown Road.
Attendees and environmental officials agreed that Amanda Elementary School in Middletown would be a preferred site for a monitor, but “there are things we still need to work out,” Boss said.
Several residents expressed concern over the frequency of collecting data from the monitors, as Kelley said particulates PM 2.5 would be collected every three days, PM 10 every six days and air toxins every 12 days.
Since SunCoke will know the collection schedule, Frye asked if it would be possible for SunCoke to alter operations to show fewer emissions on those days, which Kelley said was possible.
Brad Miller of the Hamilton County agency said they would use inspections and stack checks if they suspect irregularities, and could increase sampling without SunCoke knowing.
The plan is to get the two air monitors in operation before the plant is constructed to collect data on ambient air now.
Miller said it will take at least 12 months for the plant’s coke batteries to be operational.
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