Company: Public would barely be aware of Portsmouth sulfur plant

PORTSMOUTH

The company eyeing Portsmouth Marine Terminal as a site for a sulfur-melting plant played down its environmental risks Tuesday.

The plant would cost more than $100 million to build and sit on up to 25 acres, said Tom Pasztor, a spokesman for PCS Phosphate.

The company withdrew plans for a similar plant six months ago in North Carolina after residents protested the potential for foul odors, fires, pollution and reduced property values.

"We are extremely confident that there will be no issues at this facility regarding dust, odors or any other environmental matter that residents could notice," Pasztor said. "Residents nearby should not even be aware of its presence."

The Portsmouth site is just one option among others the unit of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. is considering, Pasztor said. "We're just in a prescreening process."

On Monday, the company confirmed that it was looking at the Portsmouth terminal and had begun meetings, along with the Virginia Port Authority, with various community leaders and representatives to brief them on the idea.

PCS Phosphate said in a statement Tuesday that the proposed Portsmouth plant would comply with all "environmental obligations" and include a scrubber system that would minimize emissions and make it one of the most technologically advanced sulfur-handling operations in North America.

Scientific studies and industry literature show that sulfur-melting plants present environmental challenges that fall into at least three categories: sulfur dust, the possibility of fires and foul odors resembling rotten eggs.

If ignited, sulfur burns. When sulfur is being shuttled around on conveyer belts in the type of plant envisioned in Portsmouth, dust accumulates and can catch fire.

PCS Phosphate's now-dead plan for a melting plant in Morehead City, N.C., included sprayers to control dust and a fire extinguishing system to control any accident.

The plant would have consisted of two steam-heated sulfur melters, two scrubbing units to control air pollutants, two 15,000-ton molten storage tanks, two enclosed domes to hold as much as 100,000 tons of sulfur and an enclosed conveyor system. The estimated cost: $95 million.

Opponents in Morehead City organized the Clean County Coalition to fight the plant and questioned assumptions about safety and environmental impacts at every turn. They noted how smells would escape into the atmosphere routinely, and how dust fires had occurred at a related plant in nearby Aurora, N.C.

"There would be significant discharges to the air of sulfur dust, the gaseous forms of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide and lesser discharges of other toxic and non-toxic gases," the group posted on its website. "Noxious smells have the worst possible effect on tourism, property values and quality of life."

PCS officials said such talk was overblown and noted how North Carolina air-pollution regulators approved a permit for the facility as a minor new source of emissions.

The company has said it needs the plant to contain costs for molten sulfur and to ensure an adequate supply of the material used to manufacture chemicals, animal supplements and fertilizer.

Pasztor dismissed any suggestion that the Portsmouth proposal was being shopped in secret.

"We were pretty open," he said. "There was no intent, in any way, to keep anything from any of the stakeholder groups that we have in the Portsmouth area."

Requests to keep the matter quiet came from the Port Authority, which wanted to brief its board members first, Pasztor said. He added that the discussions were not subject to a nondisclosure agreement because it's too early.

J.J. "Jeff" Keever, senior deputy executive director/external affairs at the Virginia Port Authority, declined Monday to say anything more than that negotiations regarding a "potential use" of Portsmouth Marine Terminal were under way. He described them as "very confidential discussions."

Keever said the plan was to brief the board at its Jan. 24 meeting.

Ron Nading, vice president of Shea Terrace Civic League, said he went to a briefing Friday, attended by four or five other civic league representatives, company officials and Keever. He said Keever told them he did not want the media to learn about the project until after the deal was done.

Two other residents at the briefing disputed that account Tuesday. Tony Goodwin, president of Park View Civic League, and Sondra Eisenpress, president of the Hunters Point Civic League, both said Keever told them he didn't want the project in the media until Jan. 25, after the Port Authority's board could be briefed.

"I commend them for bringing it to the citizens," Goodwin said.

Nading, a retired Navy chief petty officer, said he was skeptical of the assurances that there would be a minimal impact on the community.

Portsmouth Marine Terminal has been dormant since container-handling operations were shifted to APM Terminals Virginia after the Port Authority signed a 20-year lease of that facility in July 2010.

In May, the Port Authority's board approved funding for a $25 million warehouse at Portsmouth Marine Terminal, which would have housed a paper-and-pulp import-export business. Those plans, however, fell through after engineers found the soil there wasn't strong enough to support the rolls of paper that would move across it.

Pilot writer Dave Forster contributed to this report.

Robert McCabe, (757) 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com