FDS Coke Plant seeks local, state support
Written by Duane Ramsey | | news@toledofreepress.comFDS Coke Plant LLC is seeking support from local officials all the way to Gov. John Kasich for its proposed coke plant project on the Port of Toledo on Maumee Bay.
George Weber, president of FDS Coke Plant, sent a detailed letter to Kasich Jan. 18 seeking his and the state’s support of the project, describing it as “a tremendous opportunity to kick- start the State of Ohio’s economic resurgence in 2011.”
The project consists of a manufacturing plant that would supply raw material to Midwest steel plants ,serving the domestic car and finished product industries and thus create jobs and revenues in Ohio, according to the letter.
The project would include a 135-megawatt green-powered electrical plant located at the site to supply energy generated from excess steam to Ohio municipalities. It would be delivered by American Municipal Power in Columbus.
There would be a capital investment of more than $950 million during construction with an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 direct construction jobs, plus material purchases, subcontractors, supplies, equipment rentals, and labor costs estimated at $900 million, according to Weber’s letter to Kasich.
Location for the propsed FDS coke plant.
The final financing would include Toledo-based broker insurance, infrastructure to the site and Ohio Air Quality Development Authority bond issuance.
In the letter, Weber said, “The project will act as an ongoing economic engine for continued growth in Northwest Ohio with an estimated 220 on-site manufacturing jobs.”
Ohio sales and income taxes are estimated to be $45 million with additional local property and school taxes, according to FDS.
“We have not heard from the state or governor’s office about it,” said Tom Kovacik of TLK Consulting, who has been working on the coke plant project with the FDS team of Weber and Bill Garber.
Weber said the project has been delayed for the past six years by “Ohio’s environmental permitting hurdles and by ongoing litigation sponsored by Ohio opponents.”
During those six years, FDS has spent $20 million on the completion of detailed engineering plans, construction contracts and power plant electric grid interconnection activities, according to Weber’s letter.
The final financing has been delayed due to ongoing litigation from the Toledo Sierra Club led by local resident Sandy Bihn and residents of the Village of Harbor View, located adjacent to First Energy’s Bayshore coal-fired power plant and the BP refinery.
“We support the use of steam to generate electricity from the proposed plant,” said Bihn, who lives on Bayshore Road in Oregon near the project site and serves on Oregon City Council.
Bihn said the main problems opponents have with the project are that they have no idea who will own and operate the facility, the technology for it has not been used anywhere else and the investors appear to be marketing the permit for the plant.
Bihn said the design of the facility has changed since the permit was issued in 2003 and construction did not start on the project as required by the approved permit.
“We would like to have everything out in the open with a transparent process and that has not been the case,” Bihn said. “We don’t know who the investors are, but they seem to have a lot of clout in the state.
“It’s a bad way for the region to do business. For the amount of land and pollution involved, we think they should be investing in wind and solar components or other alternative energy that would be cleaner,” Bihn said.
Mayor Carl Stanoyevic of the Village of Harbor View could not be reached for comment.
“This local Sierra Club chapter and the Village of Harbor View are on the legal record before the Environmental Review Appeal Commission (ERAC) and the 10th District Court of Appeals as having no technical, public health, or environmental issues with the Ohio EPA Air Quality Permit to install a metallurgical coke plant in Toledo,” Weber stated in the letter.
“It took six years to get through ERAC instead of the usual 60 days. The district judge sent it back to ERAC,” Kovacik said.
All Ohio regulatory and statutory rules and regulations were satisfied with the issuance of the permit by the Ohio EPA, review of the attorney general with approval and issuance by the governor’s office, Kovacik said.
The plant would be owned by bond holders using the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority with bank underwriters such as Merrill Lynch. It would be operated by a bonded and experienced industrial operating company satisfactory to the banks and Ohio municipalities.
Kovacik reported that the technology for the process to produce coke has been used successfully in the past 80 years in Australia, India, China and the U.S.
Financial advisers include Raymond James & Associates and Merrill Lynch. Legal advisers include John McCarthy, executive partner, partners Martin Lewis, Mathew Cox and Irene Keyes-Walter and limited partners Anspach Meeks Ellenberger, KL Gates, Squires Sanders & Dempsey, Edward Sinick and Tucker Ellis & West.
The FDS Coke Plant project has received the support of local governments and economic development groups in Northwest Ohio.
“The port authority supports this project which has passed every environmental review known to man. This argument is about a few individuals who are opposed to the project for nonenvironmental reasons,” said Matt Sapara, director of operations and property development for the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority.
The FDS project is proposed for a site owned by the port authority and currently leased to CSX Railroad, which is expected to release it back to the port authority for leasing to FDS. The site, on the borders of Toledo and Oregon, was chosen because of access to water and rail transportation, Sapara said.
“The project is also a catalyst for additional development on property owned by the port authority,” he said. It would increase the coal handling capacity of the Port of Toledo.
The City of Toledo is in full support of the FDS project. Mayor Mike Bell spoke to Kasich Jan. 31, expressing his support for the project and the importance of it to the region, according to Deputy Mayor Steve Herwat.
Kasich is scheduled to visit Toledo Feb. 7 to speak at a joint lunch event sponsored by the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club of Toledo at the Park Inn, according to Connie Wehrkamp, deputy press secretary for the governor.
Herwat said the mayor and city officials hope to discuss the project with the governor during his visit.
Toledo and Oregon have a joint economic development agreement and will share payroll taxes generated by the project on a 50-50 basis, reported Herwat.
If the project proceeds, the City of Oregon is prepared to participate in the joint revenue sharing agreement with the City of Toledo, said Oregon City Councilman Jerry Peach.
Toledo City Councilman Rob Ludeman wrote a resolution in support of the EPA granting the permit for the FDS project that was passed by Council Jan. 25.
The Northwest Ohio Regional Economic Development Association (NORED) recommended the construction of the coke plant project in a recent letter to Kasich. It stated that “the continued delay by a very few activists at the expense of thousands is not only hurting the economic recovery of Northwest Ohio but the State of Ohio.”
The project was endorsed by the Ohio Contractors Association signed by members of its executive board, Kovacik said.
“This is the cleanest plant for producing coke in the country,” said Kovacik, who said the industry is now forced to get coke produced by pollution-generating plants in China to make steel here.
For more information, visit www.fdscokeplant.com
Tags: City of Toledo, FDS Coke Plant, Governor John Kasich, Sandy Bihn, Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority
The majority of people here don’t want this gigantic and filthy coke plant. Let another town have it. Toledo and Oregon kids have choked on enough sulfur and nitrates and a hundred other chemicals from these rosy projects. The added mercury alone from burning SO much coal negates any claims they have to new mercury removal. When you burn/bake 200 rail cars of coal a day, you are going to be dumping the most potent neuro-toxin into the air, the water, and it ends up in our brains. It ends up in Toledo’s children as it moves up through the food chain via the fish that we eat too.
Coke plants don’t belong on the waterfront, people do. The waterfront is a part of the public commons typically used for enjoyment by the people in a democracy. As the common waterfront disappears, so generally do our rights.
These rich investors should not have the right, to be issued permits to pollute your childrens lungs, and brain, to harm their brains with mercury, but they get issued a permit and nobody is allowed to know who they are? Come on. This should be investigated as a crime of purchasing political influence, a corruption trial should follow.
Move it the heck away from people, capture the carbon dioxide and mercury and the Uranium and radioactive Thorium, .,,, jeez, just take it all away, build it anywhere else but here please.
Remove all the mercury, quit hiding the truth from the public too, and get it the heck off our waterfront. Industry over the last century has taken the entire waterfront on the Maumee and the Lake here in Toledo/Oregon area. They don’t each need their own shipping port, but that’s what they have. Can’t they share? If they were away from the waterfront too,, we’d be able to actually see their water discharge into Lake Erie. Lakefront companies discharges are often hidden underwater. That makes it harder for a bankrupt and intentionally castrated Ohio EPA to do anything about the pollution. Look how the Bayshore plant hid it’s fish kills for so long with their intake.
Ohio EPA doesn’t protect you at all, it’s job if you read state law, is merely to enforce the rules as Ohio writes them. Ohio has been writing them poorly for generations. So EPA issues permits to pollute, permits to kill, permits to cause suffering. The key is to make sure it’s a slow enough thing where not everyone notices at once. That’s called an acceptable dilution of pollution, when it’ kills someone else’s kid but not yours. Let’s build this coke plant in Ottawa Hills Mr Kovacik, see how far that gets,, or next to somebody really rich, like Cedar Point.
This comment was posted on February 5th, 2011 at 9:56 am