Fernandina Beach residents asking questions about safety of proposed ethanol plant

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — More than a hundred neighbors asked questions about the safety of a proposed bioethanol plant in Fernandina Beach. Rayonier Advanced Materials or RYAM designed the proposal, and the company held a meeting tonight to explain what they plan to build.

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Some residents say they are concerned about how combustible this site could become if its created.

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“But I’m not sure I want to live in a place where I could explode, with having them in the process of helping the world,” Fernandina Beach resident Carole Bohn said.

RYAM held an open house at its Fernandina Beach power plant site tonight to address concerns about the bioethanol project proposal.

“We’re on the middle of a neighborhood, a very densely populated neighborhood,” Fernandina Beach resident Julie Ferreira said. “And I don’t feel like they’re taking us into consideration.”

Julie Ferreira and Carole Bohn are two of more than 150 people who came out to get some questions answered from about 25 engineers and scientists.

“The world is calling for a second-generation bioethanol to address global warming concerns and greenhouse gas concerns,” RYAM’s biomaterials manager David Rogers said.

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RYAM plans to bring a second-generation ethanol plant here to produce 7.5 million gallons of bioethanol for sale each year. This means about three trucks coming and going from the site each day.

Rogers says they would be building off the cellulose plant that’s already here.

“So, the ethanol that we produce will be made from a byproduct or existing pulp process, a sulfide mill like ours is able to extract the sugar stream,” Rogers said. “And because we already have the sugar stream extracted, we can then ferment that stream and make ethanol.”

Rogers says while the material is highly flammable, the bioethanol plant would be highly regulated.

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“There are large gas stations with which have more flammable material than then we will have on site,” Rogers said. “You know, we’ve been we’ve been operating this community for almost 85 years, we plan on doing this project, right.

For some, tonight’s meeting didn’t help.

“I think they’re throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks,” Ferreira said. “I didn’t get very many concrete answers. No.”

But for others, it did.

“I would say the jury is out; I can’t say they said anything that was a red flag,” Fernandina Beach resident Jan Cote-Merow said.

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Some people said they also had concerns about the traffic the trucks would add, but Rogers said they would be operating during non-peak hours.

There is no set timeline on this project as the designers are still in the engineering phases.

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