Never Let The Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Argument

In the local section of today's Republican-American there is an article regarding the state of the proposed Chestnut Hill Bio-Energy plant. Mr. Larson does a commendable job reporting the status of the plant, and the opposition against it. For someone who is new to the issue, the article is a wonderful primer on the ongoing debate.

My biggest concern about the article was is the closing paragraphs, where Mr. Mike Maynard's opinions of the opposition are stated. Since Mr. Maynard is one of the principle investors in Chestnut Hill, I expected him to be in support of the plant, but I didn't expect this.

(From the Republican-American 6/21/09)

Chestnut Hill blames a spate of negative "propaganda" as the cause of its public relations debacle. Some people were under the impression that it would build the largest anaerobic digester-fueled power plant in the world, and it would allow 400 truck trips a day - both of which are highly overstated.

"I feel this was the tyranny of the few, a small handful of people decided to do whatever they needed to do to make sure this wouldn't see the light of day," Maynard said.

While I agree that there have been people who have misrepresented the facts regarding Chestnut Hill, and it is important that people keep their facts straight in any debate. The more a person inflates numbers to make a point, the more likely it is that the point will be lost.

However, as a member of the Environmental Control Commission, I watched and participated in the debate over the proposal. In that debate no one argued about the number of trucks that would be coming into the city of Waterbury. We were just as concerned about the 54 trucks that they claimed to be bringing in, as we would have been about 400 trucks. We didn't need to inflate our numbers to make our point, their numbers were problematic enough in our minds.

Furthermore, while those of us on the Environmental Control Commission were concerned that this proposal would be the largest in the world, Mr. Maynard ignores the fact that one of the ECC's 31 questions was "How many plants of this size are in operation worldwide, and where are they?" We wanted to know how common these plants were so we could get appropriate information. At our March meeting we were told that there were 60 plants world-wide that cross the 100,000 tons/year threshold, but we were not given a number as to how many crossed the 200,000 tons/year line.

As we were unable to find any anaerobic digester that handled 200,000 tons/year in our own research, we had no choice but to assume that Chestnut Hill would be the largest such plant in the world. Now we are being told that it will only be the largest in North America, be we still don't know how many plants are larger then Chestnut Hill or where they are located.

It seems more and more obvious to me that the investors of Chestnut Hill are desperately hoping that the citizens of Waterbury don't look "behind the curtain", and they figure that the best way to marginalize the protests is to accuse them of lying.

After all, why let facts get in the way of a good argument?