DOE, residents discuss generators
Greg Flibbert, the project manager on Microsoft's air quality permits, speaks during a community meeting.
QUINCY — Quincy residents and state Department of Ecology staff discussed a permit to add 13 new diesel generators to the Microsoft data center.
The department issued the permit for the new generators in October, bringing the total up to 37, according to DOE. The generators are used to power the data center when the electricity shuts off and are routinely tested.
“We’re really committed to doing the right thing in Quincy,” said Karen Wood, the DOE eastern region air quality program manager. “We put (Microsoft) through the wringer. We went further than we have on permits in the past.”
Wood explained they knew other server farms planned on locating in the city, and the particulate from diesel in general concerns the department.
The particulate from the generators measure about a quarter of the width of a human hair, and are able to get deep into people’s lungs.
“(Diesel particulate) is not fully (burned) hydrocarbon that is emitted from the generator engine and what makes the health concern is it usually carries and has the ability to carry other toxins,” said Greg Flibbert, the project manager for the data center’s permits.
Jeff Johnston, DOE’s air quality manager for industrial permitting, said the department is concerned about it, and created models showing the worst-case scenario.
The models were created assuming no wind and the generators running for 48 hours, Wood said.
Flibbert and Johnston said the department was only going to approve a risk of 10 cancer cases per 1 million people during 70 years. When Microsoft initially applied for the permit, DOE approved a risk of four cancer cases per 1 million people.
“Since Microsoft backed off on the amount of fuel and hours of operation, it has backed off to almost three in a million,” Flibbert said.
Johnston explained the background risk of cancer from diesel particulate in Quincy is about 30 people in a million during 70 years of living in the area.
“We felt (the addition risk) was very minor,” he said. “Ecology took what we believe is a very protective approach to Quincy because our typical way of permitting these facilities would be to look at each one individually ... We’ve taken what we’ve called a community-wide approach, we’re looking at what’s the level of risk here.”
The department doesn’t want the risk to rise above 100 in a million for all of the data centers in the city, Johnston said, adding the number is based on federal regulations stating the cancer risk for a single facility can’t rise above the amount.
“Most of the state is below 75 (per million), if you get up into areas such as Seattle, the Puget Sound, you get up into the 100s, around Olympia, where I live, it’s about 400 and that’s just from (Interstate) 5, all the traffic and from everything else,” he said. “So the risks we’re talking about here are significantly lower than that.”
Evan Landlin, an audience member, questioned the amount of time someone needed to be exposed to the particulate matter. When Johnston replied it would take 70 years of constant exposure for the worst case scenario to rise to three in a million, Landlin started calculating the risk for 10,000 people.
“So with 10,000 people we might expect 0.03 cancers in 70 years, or we could state it another way we can expect three cancers every 7,000 years,” he said. “There may be other issues, but unless we got the science for it, it’s just like sitting here and talking about whether a diesel engine on a truck is as efficient as a diesel engine on a generator. We’ve got to have the science, we can’t make decisions based on bad information.”
Johnston said analysts did examine nitrogen dioxide emissions from the generators, but the amount wasn’t enough to trigger further investigation.
Wendy Sauber, another audience member, questioned the way the models were created. Since there isn’t a monitoring station in Quincy, she asked if it was possible for the data centers to pay for a monitoring station.
Flibbert couldn’t answer the question, asking Sauber to e-mail the question to him.
“We don’t want to see looking 30, 40 years back and going, ‘What could we have done different?’” Sauber said. “I don’t want to be a Libby, Mont. I don’t want the fact that we’re going to have to spend for super funds, for lawsuits and all these things that occurred in those communities ... I just want to know the best thing has been done for this community.”
Flibbert said their confidence level in the estimates is high, and they can examine monitoring.