Pop singer Jewel behind plan to burn American garbage in B.C.
Only weeks after rocker Neil Young played a clean air benefit in Duncan, news has surfaced that the British Columbian government is considering plans to produce electricity on northern Vancouver Island by burning U.S. garbage.
Pop singer Jewel made headlines last year with her involvement in Green Island Energy Ltd., a company that wanted to convert the pulp mill in Gold River, B.C.--closed five years ago--into an "environmentally friendly" power plant which would apparently burn wood waste.
At the time, Gold River locals complained that they were being kept in the dark on the project's details. Now we know why.
Wood waste is expensive. Green Island Energy wants to generate 250 megawatts of power at the Gold River plant, and each megawatt requires 20,000 tons of wood waste. That's five million tons of wood waste per year.
Now the other shoe has dropped. It turns out Jewel and co. want to burn "refuse-derived fuel," a seemingly innocent term for pellets made from household garbage.
Household garbage is cheap. And a large supply of it lies just to the south in the United States. The problem is that burning it produces dioxins and heavy metals that build up in the environment and are hazardous to human health in tiny quantities.
The BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection revealed that about 480,000 tonnes of refuse derived fuel could be shipped annually to Gold River from America. Green Island Energy has applied for pollution permit so it can begin burning the garbage.
How can a plan to import and burn American garbage be 'environmentally friendly'? In an era when we should be increasing recycling and reducing energy use, proposals like these only make it easier to maintain North America's inefficient, wasteful and polluting ways.
As reported by Sierra Life: - Issue 7, October 2004
Jewel Generates Sierra Club Scorn in Plan to Burn Trash
Singer Jewel Kilcher has upset yet another part of her fan base by her involvement with a plan to convert the closed Bowater Pulp Mill at Gold River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The facility produced pulp and generated power from wood waste until it was closed over 5 years ago. The plant's closure was devastating to the economy of the small town resulting in the loss of at least 400 jobs. The Bowater Pulp Plant was recently purchased by Green Island Energy Ltd. which is jointly owned by Jewel's Clearwater Project and an Idaho Potato farmer named David O. Kingston. Sources have said that the plant has already received government permission to ship trash to the plant site.
The initial plan was to burn biomass from wood processing industries in the area, but since many of these businesses have closed, the amount of wood biomass has dropped below the amount needed to make the plant profitable.
In a bizarre twist the Sierra Club of British Columbia has posted an article on their website critical of the plan. The Sierra club claims that burning trash will cause pollution to the environment. Above is the article available on the Sierra Club of British Columbia's website.
Surprisingly, the project is not supported by Nedra Carol (Jewel's mother) who is usually as quick as the
World Jewel Forum bunny to hop onto any bandwagon or to stake a claim in her daughter's projects. Instead she teamed up with Sir Bob Geldof to form an action committee to protest the vast amounts of toxic waste that will inevitably be released into the atmosphere. It has been recommended (by sources within Atlantic Records) that the energy proposed to power the plant is primarily composed of fuel pellets made from the stockpiles of unsold copies of 0304.
Geldof and Carol eventually did concede however that drastic measures must be adopted as the noise pollution derived from 0304 (no matter how low the volume) far exceeded British Columbian restrictions.
Premier Gordon Campbell had previously dismissed burying 0304 along with regular land fill for fear of it breaking down and leeching into British Columbia's sensitive waterways. In the photo below, Jewel gave BC Premier Gordon Campbell a copy of her poetry collection in order to mesmerize the government leader into supporting the proposal.
The British Columbian government is currently conducting an environmental impact study to determine the safest possible way to dispose of the toxic waste
that the power plant would eventually generate by melting down 0304. They have not ruled out the possibility of approaching NASA to blast 0304's toxic residue into the active volcano of Jupiter's moon, Io.
If only it were feasible to run a pipeline from the ASPCJ fortress in Sydney Australia, then North America would have enough disposable natural gas to avoid oil exploration in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve for many years into the future.
Surely the irony isn't lost here... our Alaskan Jewel who was raised in a Homer Alaska cabin (with no electricity or running water) is buying an electric power plant on a Canadian river? Anyway, more power to you, Jewel... 0304 will burn up more than the dance floor!
April 2004 to discuss plans for a new power generation facility.
Jewel generously presented him with an autographed copy of 'A Night Without Armor'
but sadly, like most people, Premier Gordon Campbell mistook Jewel's poetry as comedic.
"Hey Jewel, ain't it about time you released your new poetry book ??? The ASPCJ is running out of angles to crucify 0304. 
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