Scientific Assessment Concludes Energy Center is Safe for Area Residents Elk Point, SD– A recently completed health risk assessment by Environmental Resources Management (ERM), working with RTP Environmental Associates (RTP), concludes that the Hyperion Energy Center poses no significant cancer risk to area residents from exposure to emissions from the facility.
“We’re very encouraged by these findings,” said Hyperion Project Executive Preston Phillips. “We know that the health of everyone who lives, works and plays near the energy center is of utmost concern. To confirm – based on a scientifically sound assessment – that the facility would be expected to increase cancer rates by less than one-in-a-million is important to us and to the public.”
ERM’s findings have been submitted to Steven M. Pirner, Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources. DENR is the agency responsible for issuing the air quality permit needed by the Hyperion Energy Center. The assessment is just one of numerous documents already submitted to DENR, and the air quality permit is one of several permit and approvals that must be obtained by Hyperion.
ERM is one of the world’s leading providers of environmental, risk, health and safety consulting services. For this project ERM teamed with RTP, the nation’s leading experts in the field of air quality dispersion modeling and permitting. The two companies served as consultants to Hyperion.
In scientific vernacular, the report concludes that if 1,700,000 individuals resided at one of the census block centroid locations outside of the facility during plant operations and were present outside consistently for 24 hours per day for 70 years, one of those individuals would be statistically expected to contract toxicant-mediated cancer as a result of inhalation of emissions from the facility. In other words, ERM’s assessment shows that the likelihood of any one individual contracting cancer as a result of the Hyperion Energy Center is less than one in 1 million, the level established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as an acceptable level for residential communities.
“Our assessment was conducted pursuant to the established methodology used by the Environmental Protection Agency to assess predicted health effects from refineries across the U.S.,” said Todd Hall, the environmental expert who oversaw the assessment for ERM. “Our environmental scientists and engineers worked with RTP to assess the potential cancer risks and found that the predicted cancer risk levels were better than the thresholds established by the Environmental Protection Agency for a residential setting.”
“We’re pleased that the report supports the underlying premise of our approach to designing, building and operating the Hyperion Energy Center,” Phillips said. “We are committed to achieving high environmental standards and the Energy Center will provide Americans with the cleanest fuel, while having a very minimal impact on the environment and, more importantly, the people who live near the facility.”
Copies of the report are available to the public and may be picked up at Hyperion’s office in Elk Point or downloaded from the Energy Center website.
The Hyperion Energy Center will include a 400,000 barrel-per-day refinery producing ultralow sulfur gasoline and diesel and an IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) power plant. The center will incorporate green principles in its everyday functions and integrate the most advanced commercially feasible emission control technologies in its operations.
Additional information on ERM is available at: http://www.erm.com More information on RTP can be found at: http//www.rtpenv.com |
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